A group of South Korean religious leaders will meet Pope Francis in the Vatican City later this month as part of a pilgrimage to develop a better understanding and dialogue between religions.
The seven-member delegation will hold a meeting with Pope Francis on Sept. 19, the Korean Council of Religious Leaders, announced in a statement on Aug. 31, Korean news agency Dong-A Ilbo reported.
The council is a consultative body of seven religious groups in Korea -- Buddhism, Won Buddhism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Cheondoism, Confucianism, and the Association of Korea National Religions.
The council’s current chair is Venerable Wonhaeng of the Joyge Order, a major group representing Korean Buddhism.
The Sept. 13-21 "pilgrimage" will visit Jerusalem in Israel, the Vatican" and other places, Venerable Wonhaeng said in the statement.
The pilgrimage is being hosted by Catholic members of the council, he said.
This will be the third meeting of Korean religious leaders with the pope in the Vatican. Earlier, the council members met with Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 and Pope Francis in 2017.
It was proposed by Archbishop Hyginus Kim Hee-Joong of Gwangju during an inter-faith pilgrimage to Honam in Gwangju in April this year.
Archbishop Kim is the chairman of the Korean Catholic bishops’ Committee on Church Unification and Inter-religious Communication.
During his 2014 visit to South Korea, Pope Francis met a delegation of 12 religious leaders.
About 50 percent of South Koreans are non-religious, 28 percent are Christians, 15 percent are Buddhists and the rest adhere to other faiths including Confucianism and Shamanism, according to government data as of 2020.
Catholic Church has an estimated 5.6 million members spread across three archdioceses, 14 dioceses, and a military ordinariate.