Pope Francis will offer prayers for Korean reconciliation in Seoul next week,

Pope Francis will offer prayers for Korean reconciliation in Seoul next week, but they are unlikely to be heard in North Korea which pays lip-service to religious freedom but treats unsanctioned acts of devotion as criminal.

The pope is scheduled to conduct a special Korean “peace and reconciliation” mass on August 18 at the end of a five-day trip to South Korea that will highlight the courage and sacrifice of early Catholic believers across the peninsula before its division.

While Catholicism has prospered in the South since the 1950-53 Korea War, in the North its presence is little more than a facade.

A recent report compiled by a UN Commission of Inquiry into human rights in North Korea concluded that practising Christianity outside the state-sanctioned church amounted to a “political crime” in the country.

Pyongyang’s state-run Korean Catholic Association (KCA) has no ties with the Vatican and is often referred to as the “Church of silence” by Catholics in the South.

A North Korean lay catechist runs the church, along with a few elders, and Hammond says the front pews were mostly taken up by “veiled women in black” who were probably mobilised by the authorities.

The KCA claims there are 3,000 Catholics in the country, while the UN estimates around 800.

Frequent visitors and rights groups say the closed nature of the North makes it impossible to provide a meaningful figure, although it is clearly a tiny community.

And a foreign passport is no protection.

Source AFP