YAOUNDE, Cameroon – Pope Leo XIV is arriving on April 18 in Angola, the third leg of a landmark African tour marked by a war of words with US President Donald Trump over the Middle East conflict.
Pope Leo is set to become the third pontiff to visit the fossil fuel-rich country, where around 44 per cent of the population identifies as Catholic, after Pope John Paul II in 1992 and Pope Benedict XVI in 2009.
Before his expected arrival at 1400 GMT (10pm, Singapore time) in the capital Luanda, where billboards bearing his beaming likeness have been put up to welcome him, Pope Leo will wrap up his three-day trip to Cameroon with an open-air Mass at Yaounde airport.
The first pope from the United States will then meet Angola’s President Joao Lourenco and deliver a speech, the latest on a trip that has seen him sharpen his rhetoric after being targeted by Mr Trump.
As in Cameroon, 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 early on April 21.
“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.
Pope 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 Mr Trump drags on.
Without mentioning his fellow American by name, Pope Leo has, in recent days, abandoned his previous restraint to adopt a more forceful tone.
After Mr Trump’s Catholic Vice-President J.D. Vance urged the Vatican to “stick to matters of morality”, Pope Leo said on April 16 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, Pope 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, Pope 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.
His visit comes after torrential downpours have left nearly 50 dead in the coastal Benguela region since early April.
And it comes less than a year after a deadly crackdown on protests over the high cost of living killed 30 people and saw hundreds arrested.
“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 Mr Antonio Masaidi, a 33-year-old engineer.
On April 19, Pope 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, he will travel by helicopter to the village of Muxima, about 130km south-east of Luanda, home to a 16th-century church overlooking the Kwanza River that has become one of southern Africa’s most important pilgrimage sites.
Pope Leo arrives for a meeting with university students and professors at the Catholic University of Central Africa in Douala, Cameroon.
PHOTO: EPA
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 800km from the capital to visit a retirement home in Saurimo and celebrate another mass before departing the following morning.
Pope Leo will then fly to Equatorial Guinea, the final stop of a whirlwind 18,000km journey that began in Algeria. AFP