Pope Francis ended his six-day trip to Africa on Sunday by delivering mass to an estimated 100,000 people gathered in the South Sudan city of Juba as he urged for peace in the country.

Francis, who spent last week in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, departed from Juba's International Airport on his papal plane around 11:56 a.m. to return to Rome, according to Vatican News -- the news agency operated by the Holy See.

Francis also urged people in the country to reject what he called the "venom of hatred" while telling the country's leaders to focus on ending conflict, the BBC reported.

Sudan, which once also included South Sudan, was essentially governed by British colonial rule via a governor-general appointed by Egypt until 1956.

British colonial forces largely maintained a policy of treating the northern and southern parts of the country as two separate territories, focusing on developing the Arab northern region while neglecting the southern region.

Eventually, control of the country was seized by dictator Omar al-Bashir in another military coup in 1989 amid a second civil war in Sudan which began in the southern region.

Al-Bashir suspended political parties in the country and introduced an Islamic legal code at the federal level while imprisoning political opposition and journalists.

The second civil war ended in 2005 but South Sudan ultimately gained its independence from Sudan and became a sovereign nation in 2011 after a referendum.

South Sudan was plagued with its own civil war from 2013 to 2020 after a fallout between the country's president and his then-vice president.

The pope ended his message to South Sudan with encouragement to "never lose hope and lose no opportunity to build peace," a similar message he delivered to the Democratic Republic of Congo which has endured its own conflicts in past decades. By Adam Schrader, UPI