ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE – Pope Francis says he hopes to visit Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay this year, as well as the Central African Republic and Uganda.
The 2015 trips, still in their planning stages and not confirmed, would come on top of his planned three-city visit to the United States in September.
Francis disclosed his travel plans during an in-flight news conference Monday on the way home from the Philippines.
Francis said he planned to canonize the 17th-century missionary Junipero Serra, who established nine missions in California, during the Washington leg of the U.S. trip.
But he essentially ruled out travelling to El Salvador to beatify slain Archbishop Oscar Romero, saying the ceremony would be celebrated by a Vatican official, as is the norm for beatifications.
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