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By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis on Thursday received an invitation to visit North Korea and the United States said he would consider making a trip to the country.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in relayed the invitation from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to the pope verbally during a 35-minute meeting in the Vatican.
Any visit would be the first one to be taken into consideration. There is little information on how many of their citizens are Catholic, or how they practice their faith.
North Korea's constitution guarantees freedom of religion as long as it does not undermine the state.
But beyond a handful of state-controlled places of worship, the church of Pyongyang has no office.
Kim told Moon, a Catholic, of his wish to meet the leader of the South Korean leader before he said that he would be relaying a message.
According to the president's office, Francis expressed his strong support for efforts to bring peace to the Korean peninsula. Moon's office quoted the moon as saying "do not stop, move forward. Do not be afraid."
Asked if Kim should send a formal invitation, Moon's office quoted the pope as responding to Moon: "your message is already sufficient but it would be good for a formal invitation."
"I will definitely answer if I get the invitation, and I can go," the president's office quoted the pope as saying.
RECONCILIATION
A meeting with Pope Francis would be the latest in a string of major diplomatic meetings for Kim Jong Un this year.
The two Koreas have held three summits this year. Kim also held a presidential summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in Singapore in June, where the leaders promised to work towards denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
The next visit of the pope is expected to visit Japan.
China has long been looking for a bishops to attend the Vatican meeting, where they invited the pope to visit China.
A Vatican statement made no mention of the verbal invitation from North Korea's Kim.
It speaks only of "the promotion of dialogue and reconciliation between Koreans" and "the common commitment to fostering all useful initiatives to overcome the tensions that still exist in the Korean Peninsula, in order to usher in a new season of peace and development."
Any trip to the North, however brief, could be contentious for the pope, given what the United Nations says is a record of gross and systematic human rights abuses.
Aids close to the pope have said that it is possible for them to take a step back to where the Church has been in the hope that the situation could improve.
Church officials estimate that North Korea had a Catholic community of about 55,000 just before the 1950-53 Korean War.
Religious agencies have estimated the number to be around 4,000.
Priests from the South, usually accompanying aid deliveries or humanitarian projects.
(Additional reporting by Josh Smith in Seoul, Editing by Nick Macfie, Andrew Heavens and Lincoln Feast.)
