Pope Francis left Thailand on Saturday after a three-day visit and headed to Japan, where he is to visit the ground zeros of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as part of his campaign against nuclear weapons, APA reports citing Reuters.
The pope, 82, was accompanied to the airport by his cousin, Sister Ana Rosa Sivori, a nun who has worked in Thai schools for more than 50 years and was his translator on the trip.
In Thailand, he celebrated Mass with the small Catholic minority in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country, and spoke out against human trafficking and sexual exploitation of women.
In Japan, Pope Francis is expected to turn his focus to his anti-nuclear campaign, particularly on Sunday, when he visits Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world’s only two cities to suffer nuclear attacks.
About 400,000 people were killed, either instantly or from radiation illness or injuries resulting from the atomic bombs that the United States dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945 and on Nagasaki three days later, as it sought to end World War Two.
Francis will meet blast survivors, pray, and read a message on nuclear weapons at the bomb epicenter in Nagasaki. He later visits Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima.
In the Japanese capital, he will meet survivors of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
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