ROME – Pope Francis will visit the Balkan nations of Bulgaria and North Macedonia May 5-7, encouraging the nations’ small Catholic communities, reaching out to the Orthodox and to Muslims and paying tribute to two popular saints.
St. Teresa of Kolkata was born Aug. 26, 1910, in Skopje, which is now the capital of North Macedonia. And St. John XXIII served as apostolic delegate in Bulgaria from 1925 to 1935; for the theme of Pope Francis’s trip, the Bulgarian bishops chose the title of St. John’s 1963 encyclical, Pacem in Terris (“Peace on Earth”).
The Vatican April 17 released a full schedule for the trip, updating the an outlined itinerary, which was published in early March.
