Pope, in Africa, urges end to Congo violence

KINSHASA, Congo — The thumping church music, booming choir and exuberant crowd of about 1 million people greeting Pope Francis for an open-air Mass on Wednesday in Kinshasa, capital of Congo, felt a world away from the violence ravaging the country’s east, where scores of competing armed groups are pillaging villages, plundering resources and heightening tensions with neighboring Rwanda.

But Francis, who was forced to abandon his plan to visit the east because of the spike in fighting there, tried to touch the region’s wounds by bringing some of its victims of violence to him.

“We continue to be shocked to hear of the inhumane violence that you have seen with your eyes and personally experienced,” Francis said after listening to the searing stories of survivors in a private meeting at the Apostolic Nunciature in Kinshasa on Wednesday.

“To you, dear inhabitants of the east,” Francis continued, “I want to say: I am close to you. Your tears are my tears; your pain is my pain. To every family that grieves or is displaced by the burning of villages and other war crimes, to the survivors of sexual violence and to every injured child and adult, I say: I am with you.”

On his second day in Congo, part of a six-day trip that will also take him to South Sudan, Pope Francis focused on that often-overlooked violence, seeking to bring a measure of peace to an overwhelmingly Christian country that has known little of it.

Francis on Wednesday directly appealed to the warring groups to put down their weapons, and condemned “the massacres, the rapes, the destruction and occupation of villages, and the looting of fields and cattle.”

Sitting beside Francis in the National Palace on Tuesday, the country’s president, Félix Tshisekedi, accused the world of forgetting Congo, of plundering its natural resources and of engaging in complicity in the atrocities of the east through “inaction and silence.”

“It causes indignation to know that the insecurity, violence and war that tragically affect so many people are disgracefully fueled not only by outside forces, but also from within, for the sake of pursuing private interests and advantage,” Francis said on Wednesday.

Earlier, during his homily, he urged “all of you in this country who call yourselves Christians but engage in violence” to put down their guns.

Gregorio Borgia/Associated Press Pope Francis caresses a victim of violence on Wednesday in eastern Congo. Francis is in Congo and South Sudan for a six-day trip, hoping to bring comfort to two countries that have been divided by poverty and conflicts for centuries.