Pope to visit Georgia, Azerbaijan

(ANSA) - Vatican City, September 29 - Pope Francis is heading to Georgia and Azerbaijan this weekend, aiming to bring a message of peace to areas rocked by border tensions.
    Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin said in an interview with the Vatican Television Centre that following the pontiff's visit to Armenia in June, he would be taking a similar approach to Georgia and Azerbaijan - arriving as a friend, to meet the people and understand their daily lives.
    The pope would encourage people to "make difference a motive for mutual enrichment, not conflict," Parolin said.
    The area of Orthodox Christian Georgia and mainly Shiite Muslim Azerbaijan is at the meeting point of a range of different religions and political movements whose differences are fuelling the civil war in Syria, paralysis in Iraq and the growth of extremist group ISIS. Aside from praying for peace in Syria and Iraq, the pope will also visit the Azerbaijan capital Baku to call for an end to the conflict in Nagorno Karabakh. The Armenian enclave pushed for independence in the early 1990s and became the scene of a war with more than 20,000 victims, with tensions still flaring up sporadically.