(AFP) – Pope Leo XIV on Saturday held a huge public mass in Cameroon before leaving for Angola on the third leg of a landmark African tour marked by a war of words with US President Donald Trump over the Middle East conflict. Leo is set to become the third pontiff to visit the fossil fuel-rich southern African country, where around 44 percent of the population identifies as Catholic, after John Paul II in 1992 and Benedict XVI in 2009.
The American pope concluded his three-day visit to Cameroon with an open-air mass at Yaounde airport before 200,000 people, who once again cheered him with songs and dances. In his homily delivered in French, he thanked the people of Cameroon and urged the crowd to have “the courage to change habits and structures,” in a country ruled with an iron fist by 93-year-old Paul Biya since 1982. He then flew at midday to Luanda, the capital of Angola, where he was scheduled to land at 3:00 pm (1400 GMT).
Elected in May 2025, Leo had until now been more discreet and measured than his Argentine predecessor Francis (2013–2025). But in recent days, he had adopted a more assertive style after being sharply criticised by Trump. Leo is due to meet Angola’s President Joao Lourenco and deliver a speech. Tens of thousands of worshippers are expected to flock to catch a glimpse of the head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics before his departure on Tuesday.
“It’s as if God were very close to us,” 40-year-old human resources manager Helena Maria Miguel said of the pope’s visit. Leo’s increasingly vigorous calls for world peace are likely to resonate in Angola, which emerged in 2002 from a 27-year civil war that erupted in the wake of independence from Portugal in 1975.
Throughout his 11-day four-nation Africa visit, the pope has delivered pointed warnings against corruption, the plunder of the continent’s resources, and the dangers of artificial intelligence, as his tussle with Trump drags on.
After Trump’s Catholic Vice President JD Vance urged the Vatican to “stick to matters of morality,” Leo on Thursday said the world was “being ravaged by a handful of tyrants” and piled on more criticism of those who use religion to justify war. During his stop in Cameroon, Leo demanded the country’s leaders tackle corruption and condemned “those who, in the name of profit, continue to seize the African continent to exploit and plunder it.”
Like his calls for peace, Leo’s warnings against graft and exploitation are likely to strike a chord in Angola, where a third of the population live below the poverty line despite its vast fossil fuel reserves. The country’s economy is heavily dependent on oil, leaving it exposed to price fluctuations, while rampant corruption has even spread to the family of former president Jose Eduardo dos Santos.
“There is a lot of suffering, a lot of poverty in Angola. I hope the pope will see with his own eyes the needs of the youth here,” said Antonio Masaidi, a 33-year-old engineer.
On Sunday, Leo will celebrate a giant open-air mass in Kilamba on Luanda’s outskirts, where facilities including a large food court are being built to host tens of thousands of worshippers. In the afternoon, the pope will travel by helicopter to the village of Muxima, about 130 kilometres (80 miles) southeast of Luanda, home to a 16th-century church overlooking the Kwanza River that has become one of southern Africa’s most important pilgrimage sites.
A basilica is under construction in Muxima, where slaves were once baptised before being shipped out of Africa, as part of a multimillion-dollar government project to turn it into a major tourism destination. “It is a historic moment of grace, a moment of profound emotion, with tears in our eyes and gratitude in our hearts,” the rector of the shrine, Father Mpindi Lubanzadio Alberto, told the Catholic news site ACI Africa.
On April 20, the pope is due to travel more than 800 kilometres from the capital to visit a retirement home in Saurimo and celebrate another mass before departing the following morning. Leo will then fly to Equatorial Guinea, the final stop of a whirlwind 18,000-kilometre journey that began in Algeria.
© 2024 AFP
