He Pope Francis cancelled his schedule on Monday, September 23 due to a “mild flu“What he is maintaining, for the moment, are the trips he has planned for this Thursday at Belgium And Luxembourgas the Vatican press office announced in a statement.
“Due to a slight attack of influenza, and as precautionary measure “Due to travel in the coming days, the papal audiences scheduled for today are canceled,” said the brief statement released by the Vatican.
Pope Francis has cancelled his scheduled audiences on Monday due to a mild bout of flu, as a precaution ahead of his upcoming visit to Luxembourg and Belgium.
—Vatican News (@VaticanNews) September 23, 2024
Francis is expected to arrive in Luxembourg on the morning of September 26, after a two-hour flight, where he will meet as usual with the country’s authorities. In the afternoon, at 4:30 p.m., the Pontiff will deliver his second speech in front of the Catholic community in the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Luxembourg.
The pontiff will fly to Brussels at 6:15 p.m., where he will land at 7:10 p.m. He will stay there until Sunday, September 29, when he will end his visit with a mass at 10 a.m. at the stadium. King Baudouin. Landing at the international airport Rome/Fiumicino It is scheduled for 2:55 p.m.
The Pope and the migration crisis
On the other hand, the highest representative of the catholic church He expressed last Friday that he was considering going to the Canary Islands due to the migration crisis that the islands are experiencing and to show his “proximity to leaders and people“.
“I think a little about this, about going to the Canary Islands because there is the situation of migrants arriving from the sea and I would like to be close to the leaders and the inhabitants of the Canary Islands,” the Pope said when asked about a visit possible to the islands, which could be a stopover during a possible future trip to Argentina, his native country.
The possibility of Francisco moving Canary Islands has been on the table since January 22, when the president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijoconfirmed after his meeting at the Vatican that the Pope had told him he would “think about it” and showed him that he was aware of the humanitarian emergency that is being experienced on the Atlantic Route. With a possible visit to the Canary Islands, Francisco would become the first pontiff to set foot on the archipelago, and it would also be his first trip to Spain.
A total of 6,267 migrants They arrived in the Canary Islands during the months of July and August and with these arrival figures this summer, it is a record since there are statistics and their number is significantly different from that of the last five years of the same period. Until September, 25,524 people arrived on the Canary Islands coast, which represents a figure increase of 123% compared to the same period in 2023.
