Pope Francis set to travel to Bulgaria and Northern Macedonia tomorrow

Pope Francis will embark on his 28th journey abroad on tomorrow  May 5. Once again, he will travel to the Balkans. This time, he will visit North Macedonia and Bulgaria.

Orthodox theologist Bojidar Andonov says Bulgaria is "a poor country, even though it's in the EU; the people here live poor and humble lives."

This is the pope's 11th trip within Europe. So far, he's only made brief visits to western Europe, for instance to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the birthplace of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) in Sweden, the World Council of Churches in Geneva and to Portugal's Fatima pilgrimage site.

Pope Francis has focused most of his attention on the continent's poorest countries. He visited Albania in 2014 and Sarajevo in 2015. He will travel to Romania, which is the EU's second most poor member, in June.

Pope Francis' visit to the country follows a familiar pattern made up of political discussions and a speech in a public square as well as a trip to a refugee camp in the capital Sofia.

He will also join children in the majority-Catholic town of Rakovski to celebrate their first communion.

The pope will spend Tuesday, the last leg of his Balkan trip, in North Macedonia. Here, he will visit the Memorial House of Mother Teresa in the capital Skopje. Mother Teresa was born in 1910 in Skopje, which then belonged to the Ottoman Empire.