By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Pope Leo XIV has criticised foreigners who he accused of exploiting the wealth of Africa for profit during his visit to the central African nation of Cameroon.
It is one of several forthright comments in recent days, including blasting those who spend billions on wars and telling Cameroon’s government to root out corruption for peace to prevail.
He has spent his Thursday in Bamenda, a city at the centre of Cameroon’s brutal and prolonged separatist battle.
Internal problems were exacerbated by outsiders who “in the name of profit, continue to lay their hands on the African continent to exploit and plunder it”, he told an estimated 20,000 worshippers at a Mass at Bamenda Airport.
Earlier, joyful crowds sang, drummed and waved flags to welcome the leader of the Catholic Church, who arrived under military escort in a bullet-proof white vehicle.
Ahead of his visit, Anglophone separatists had announced a period of “safe travel passage”.
The Pope’s first stop was at a peace meeting in Bamenda held at Saint Joseph’s Cathedral about the nearly 10-year insurgency in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions that has left at least 6,000 people dead and many more forced from their homes.
“The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants,” he told the gathering comments that follow US President Donald Trump’s recent criticism of the pontiff, who last year became the first US-born Pope.
“Those who rob your land of its resources generally invest much of the profit in weapons, thus perpetuating an endless cycle of destabilisation and death,” the 70-year-old Pope said.
Since 2017, those seeking to create a breakaway state in Cameroon’s Anglophone region have been fighting government forces.
They are angered by what they see as the marginalisation of Cameroon’s English-speaking minority by the Francophone-dominated government.
On Wednesday at the presidential palace in the capital, Yaoundé, he gave pointed advice to the government during at address also attended by President Paul Biya.
“In order for peace and justice to prevail, the chains of corruption – which disfigure authority and strip it of its credibility – must be broken,” he said.
Paul Biya, the world’s oldest head of state, greeted Pope Leo in Yaoundé before the pontiff headed off to Bamenda.
Cameroon’s 93-year-old president won an eighth term last year in a disputed poll and his administration faces criticism over allegations of corruption, bad governance and a failure to tackle security.
