Aboard the Papal Plane (AFP) – Pope Leo XIV on Thursday held an open-air mass in Equatorial Guinea in front of tens of thousands of followers, wrapping up his first major international tour that began with harsh criticism of his stance on Iran from US President Donald Trump. The leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics had been in the closed-off central African nation since Tuesday, where he took aim at the suppression of civic freedoms and called for prisoners to be better treated in a country infamous for its brutal jails.
On his final day in the oil-rich former Spanish colony of two million people, where most of the population lives in poverty, he officiated at a mass before 30,000 people at a stadium in Malabo, the former capital. It rounded off a four-country, 11-day Africa tour that was overshadowed at the start by Trump, who called the US-born pontiff “very weak on crime and other things” and said he was “wrong” to call for an end to violence in the Iran war. The pope later expressed regret that his speeches were being interpreted as a response to the US leader’s criticism and maintained he had no interest in debating with him.
Yet throughout the trip, from Algeria to Cameroon, then on to Angola and Equatorial Guinea, he piled high his calls for social justice, peace, and respect for human dignity, while denouncing inequality, corruption, and the unfair exploitation of natural resources by “tyrants”. His newly forceful style, blasting those who “in the name of profit, continue to lay their hands on the African continent to exploit and plunder it”, was a marked departure from the restraint he has shown since he was elected in May last year.
Leaders of the four countries he visited have all been criticised — in varying degrees — for authoritarian tendencies. Addressing reporters on the flight back to the Vatican, Leo defended meeting “authoritarian leaders”, arguing that maintaining diplomatic relations — “with at times great sacrifice” — allowed the Vatican to work behind the scenes. “We don’t always make great proclamations, criticising, judging or condemning,” he said. “But there’s an awful lot of work that goes on behind the scenes to promote justice, to promote humanitarian causes,” he said.
Equatorial Guinea, ruled with an iron fist by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema since 1979, has long faced claims of human rights abuses as well as the trampling of civil freedoms. Leo urged the country to place itself “in the service of law and justice” and condemned “troubling hygienic and sanitary conditions” for prisoners. On Wednesday, the pope went to Equatorial Guinea’s notorious Bata prison, where he was greeted by hundreds of shaven-headed inmates in the driving rain.
Pope Leo — born Robert Francis Prevost — is at 70 relatively young for a pope and has shown energy that contrasts sharply with the declining health of his Argentinian predecessor, Francis, who died a year ago at 88. His next trip abroad will be to Spain from June 6 to 12.
© 2024 AFP
