Conditions would have to be met before invitation from Kim Jong-un could be accepted

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Pope Francis will seriously consider making an unprecedented visit to North Korea, but some conditions would have to be met, a senior Vatican official has said.

An invitation from the closed state’s leader, Kim Jong-un, was relayed to the pope by South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, who is Catholic, during a private audience at the Vatican on Thursday. The South Korean presidential office said Moon had “conveyed [Kim’s] desire for a papal visit to North Korea”, with a formal invitation directly from Pyongyang to follow.

Speaking on Thursday evening, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, told reporters: “The pope expressed his willingness. We have to wait for it [the invitation] to be formalised.”

Asked if there were conditions that the north would have to meet, Parolin added: “This will come later, once we start thinking in earnest about the possibility of making this trip, then we will have to think about conditions in which the trip can take place.”

North Korea is one of the worst countries in the world for persecuting Christians, thousands of whom are incarcerated in labour camps.

Kim’s invitation follows a request this week from two Chinese bishops for Francis to visit China, after an agreement between Beijing and the Vatican last month on the appointment of bishops in the communist state.

“We invited Pope Francis to come to China,” said Joseph Guo Jincai, one of the two bishops who attended the Vatican synod. “We are waiting for him.”

The pope has already announced his intention to visit Japan next year, a trip that could be extended to take in highly symbolic visits to China and North Korea.

Kim is attempting to transform his image from an eccentric and dangerous leader of a pariah state to a player on the global diplomatic stage. He has met and corresponded with Donald Trump, leading the US president to declare last month that the two leaders had “fallen in love”.

During a summit between North and South Korea last month, Kim told Hyginus Kim Hee-joong, a South Korean archbishop, that he wanted the pope to know of his desire for peace.

North Korea has topped a list of 50 countries ranked for the persecution of Christians for 16 years in a row. The list, compiled by the Christian watchdog Open Doors, highlighted the imprisonment in labour camps of Christians and Christian missionaries in the state.

It said: “Due to constant indoctrination, neighbours and family members, including children, are highly watchful and report anything suspicious to the authorities. If Christians are discovered, they are deported to labour camps as political criminals or killed on the spot; their families share their fate.

“Meeting for worship is almost impossible, so is done in utmost secrecy. The churches shown to visitors in Pyongyang serve mere propaganda purposes.”

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2018 annual report said: “The North Korean government’s approach toward religion and belief is among the most hostile and repressive in the world. Freedom of religion or belief does not exist in North Korea.

“The regime exerts absolute influence over the handful of state-controlled houses of worship permitted to exist, creating a facade of religious life in North Korea. In practice the North Korean regime treats religion as a threat, particularly faiths associated with the west such as Christianity, and is known to arrest, torture, imprison and even execute religious believers.”

According to Open Doors, there are an estimated 300,000 Christians in North Korea’s population of 25.4 million, and 50,000-75,000 Christians in the its labour camps.