Pope announces Africa trip

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict ended a synod of Roman Catholic bishops on Sunday announcing his first trip to Africa as pontiff and urging Chinese bishops whose communist government banned them from attending to persevere amid hardships.

Benedict told the closing Mass of the three-week gathering he would travel in March to Cameroon to deliver the working document of next year's Vatican synod on Africa and to Angola to celebrate 500 years of evangelisation there.

It will be Benedict's 11th trip outside Italy since he was elected in 2005. His predecessor, John Paul II, travelled widely throughout Africa during his more than 26-year pontificate.

In his homily at the Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, which he celebrated with more than 300 cardinals, bishops and priests, Benedict also sent a "special thought" to Chinese bishops who were banned from attending by Beijing's communist government.

"I would like to speak on behalf of them and thank God for their love for Christ, their communion with the universal Church and their faithfulness to the successor of the apostle Peter," he said.

Beijing bans its Catholics from recognising the pope's authority and forces them to join a state-backed Catholic church if they want to worship publicly. China's 8 to 12 million Catholics are split between the officially approved church and an "underground" one loyal to the pope.

"They are present in our prayers ... We ask (God) to give them apostolic joy, strength and zeal to guide, with wisdom and far-sightedness, the Catholic community of China that we love so dearly," Benedict said.

Bishops from Macao and Hong Kong, regions with wide autonomy from Beijing, attended the synod, which discussed the role of Scripture in the modern world.