Bombay Durpun - Pope Leo blasts 'exploitation' as he wrap up tour of resource-rich Angola

The American pope travels to Equatorial Guinea Tuesday to wrap up a mammoth 18,000-kilometre (11,000-mile) tour taking in four African countries.

On Monday morning, he visited the city of Saurimo, some 800 kilometres (500 miles) east of the capital, before returning to Luanda in the evening.

Under tropical heat and heavy security, Leo drove through the city of around 200,000 people along a route lined by hundreds of singing and cheering locals dressed in colourful outfits and waving white scarves.

Saurimo is the capital of the historically marginalised Lunda Sul province. It sits close to Angola's largest diamond mine, Catoca, which extracts around 75 percent of the country's diamonds.

Portuguese-speaking Angola is one of Africa's top producers of crude oil and diamonds.

But its riches benefit mainly the political and economic elite, as well as foreign companies, while around a third of its people live below the World Bank poverty line.

"We can see today how the hope of many people is frustrated by violence, exploited by the powerful and defrauded by the rich," the pope said in Portuguese at a giant open-air Mass at Saurimo.

"Consequently, when injustice corrupts hearts, the bread of all becomes the possession of a few."

Authorities estimated that about 40,000 people attended the service with another 20,000 taking part from surrounding areas.

The pope also criticised tyranny and exploitation in the first two legs of his marathon Africa journey, in Algeria and Cameroon, showing a tougher tone from a previously more reserved style.

- Meeting the elderly -

On landing in Saurimo, the pope visited a home for the elderly, underscoring the Catholic church's role in providing support in the impoverished area.

"Your presence in this home is a blessing from God," 72-year-old Antonio Joaquin told him.

Lunda Sul province, bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo, suffers extreme poverty, with mining blamed for environmental damage and the displacing of communities.

On the first day of his Angola stopover on Saturday, the pope spoke out against the harm caused by the rampant exploitation of the continent's natural resources.

"How much suffering, how many deaths, how many social and environmental disasters are caused by this logic of exploitation," he said in an address to government officials, including President Joao Lourenco.

Back in Luanda later Monday, Leo met members of the clergy to discuss challenges facing the church in Angola, including a lack of resources and the growing influence of evangelicism, witchcraft and cults.

"There's this phenomenon of small churches springing up in neighbourhoods. It's worrying because they don't preach the Gospels; they preach prosperity, money," Father Vincent M'bra Yao, 58, told AFP.

In his address at the Our Lady of Fatima Parish, the 70-year-old pope said: "Continue to be a generous Church, cooperating in the integral development of your country.

After John Paul II in 1992 and Benedict XVI in 2009, Leo is the third pope to visit Angola, which was badly battered in a 27-year civil war that erupted after independence from Portugal in 1975.

At a Mass Sunday attended by 100,000 people, he called for Angola to overcome divisions of the past and create a future where "the scourge of corruption will be healed by a new culture of justice and sharing".

Some 44 percent of the population, about 15 million Angolans, identify as Catholic, according to a 2024 census.

R.Khurana--BD