Pope Francis will be spending two days in Bulgaria, the European Union's poorest member and a country with an unreceptive climate for migrants that conflicts with the pontiff's view that reaching out to vulnerable people is a moral imperative.
Francis is expected to tour a refugee center during the visit that starts Sunday and address the Vatican's complicated relations with the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.
The pope's trip opens with a meeting with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, who leads a center-right coalition government that has three nationalist parties as partners. The government has called for strengthening EU borders to keep out migrants and installed a barbed-wire fence for that purpose at Bulgaria's border with Turkey.
Francis plans a day trip on Tuesday to neighboring North Macedonia, the first by a pope to the former Yugoslav republic.
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