Pope Francis has delivered a prayer at the Vatican today ahead of his five-day trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan.    

Pope Francis will travel on Tuesday to the two African nations where Catholics make up about half of the populations.

The trip, between the 31 January and 5 February, was scheduled to take place last July but was postponed because Francis was suffering a flare-up of a chronic knee ailment. 

While he still uses a wheelchair and cane, his knee has improved significantly.

DRC, which is the second-largest country in Africa and has a population of about 90 million, is getting its first visit by a pope since John Paul II travelled there in 1985, when it was known as Zaire.

Francis had planned to visit the eastern city of Goma but that stop was scrapped following the resurgence of fighting between the army and the M23 rebel group in the area where Italy's ambassador, his bodyguard and driver were killed in an ambush in 2021.

Francis will stay in the capital, Kinshasa, but will meet there with victims of violence from the east.

The Vatican's ambassador to DRC, Archbishop Ettore Balestrero said: 'Congo is a moral emergency that cannot be ignored.'

According to the U.N. World Food Programme, 26 million people in the DRC face severe hunger.

The country's Catholic Church has a long history of promoting democracy and as the pope arrives, it is gearing up to monitor elections scheduled for December. 

Britain's ambassador to the Vatican, Christ Trott, who spent many years as a diplomat in Africa, said: 'Our hope for the Congo is that this visit will reinforce the Church's engagement in support of the electoral process.'

That trip is being made with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby and the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Iain Greenshields.

'Together, as brothers, we will live an ecumenical journey of peace,' Francis told tens of thousands of people in St. Peter's Square for his Sunday address.

The three Churches represent the Christian make-up of the world's youngest country, which gained independence in 2011 from predominantly Muslim Sudan after decades of conflict and has a population of around 11 million.

'This will be a historic visit,' Welby said. 'After centuries of division, leaders of three different parts of (Christianity) are coming together in an unprecedented way.'

Two years after independence, conflict erupted when forces loyal to President Salva Kiir clashed with those loyal to Vice President Riek Machar, who is from a different ethnic group. The bloodshed spiralled into a civil war that killed 400,000 people.