Two Koreas are ‘one family, one people’–Pope

Pope Francis meets with South Korea’s religious leaders at Myeong-dong Cathedral in Seoul, South Korea, on Monday, Aug. 18, 2014. AP

SEOUL, South Korea–Pope Francis urged the divided Koreas to unite as “one family, one people” in a spirit of mutual forgiveness at a mass Monday that coincided with a South Korea-US military drill condemned by the North as a prelude to war.

“Forgiveness is the door which leads to reconciliation” although it may seem “impossible, impractical and even at times repugnant”, Francis said at a special mass for inter-Korean peace and reconciliation in Seoul.

At the start of the Mass for peace and reconciliation on the Korean peninsula Pope Francis blessed and consoled a group of women who were used as sex slaves for the Japanese military during World War II.

Francis greeted each of the seven women, most in wheelchairs, at the front of Seoul’s main cathedral Monday.

He was given a pin from one of them which he immediately pinned to his vestments and wore throughout the Mass.

In an interview with The Associated Press ahead of the encounter, Lee Yong-soo, 86, said she hoped the meeting would provide some solace for the pain she and the other “comfort women” still feel more than seven decades after they were forced into sexual slavery.