VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis will visit Bulgaria and Macedonia in May, the Vatican announced Thursday, adding to a 2019, schedule which is already swiftly filling up.
The pope has accepted invitations to travel to Bulgaria from May 5 to 7 and to Macedonia on May 7, Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said in a statement.
The Argentinian pontiff, who turns 82 next week, is gearing up for a full schedule in 2019, having already penciled in a February trip Abu Dhabi.
That trip will follow hard on the heels of World Youth Day, which the pontiff will attend in Panama in January.
He will then travel to Morocco for two days at the end of March before heading to Bulgaria, where Catholics, as in Macedonia, constitute a small minority in an overwhelmingly Orthodox country.
Visiting two Orthodox nations will reinforce the image Francis wishes to project of a pontiff who is seeking wider dialogue with other branches of Christendom as well as other faiths.
In September, Francis said he hoped to visit Japan in 2019 and a trip to Madagascar has also been mentioned.
In contrast the Vatican has yet to unveil which invitations from Catholic nations will be taken up next year.
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