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Pope says world haunted by atmosphere of war

– Lack of trust –

Despite a show of unity to welcome the pope, it was not hard to find reminders of how fragile Bosnia’s unity is.

It was noticeable that there were far more red and white Croatian flags being waved than Bosnia’s blue and yellow ones.

The national anthem played for Francis on his arrival remains without words because the three communities have been unable to agree a common text.

Katarina Dzrek, a Bosnian Croat who was in the stadium crowd said: “Bosnia is in need of the message of peace the pope will send because there is still a lack of trust between the communities.”

The 1992-95 Bosnian war left nearly 100,000 people dead and resulted in half the population, some two million people, being forced to leave their homes, many of them never to return.

More than a third of Bosnia’s pre-war ethnic Croat population have left the country which is now divided in two between a Bosnian Serb republic and a Croat-Muslim federation.

At the city’s cathedral Francis heard testimony from Catholics who suffered during the war. Ljubica Sekerija, a nun, told him how she had been beaten and threatened with death by “foreign soldiers” if she did not convert to Islam, while Jozo Puskaric recounted his four months spent in a concentration camp. “It was 120 days that felt like 120 years for me,” the priest told Francis.

Francis said interfaith dialogue was vital to overcoming the legacy of such bitter memories.

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“Dialogue is a school of humanity and a builder of unity,” he said at the inter-faith meeting he attended.

Around 40 percent of the population of Bosnia is of Islamic heritage, just over 30 percent are from the Serbian Orthodox tradition and around one in ten, almost uniquely Croats, describe themselves as Catholics.

Francis is the second pope to visit Sarajevo after Jean-Paul II, who braved a snowstorm to come two years after the end of the war.

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