At Uganda stop, pope notes air of ‘hope’
KAMPALA, Uganda — Pope Francis arrived Friday in Uganda on the second leg of his Africa pilgrimage, declaring Africa the “continent of hope.”
Francis arrived from Kenya at Entebbe International Airport, where Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni welcomed him along with a military brass band and traditional drummers and dancers.
Francis, who also is to visit Central African Republic, is in Uganda mainly to honor the memory of Ugandan Christians killed in the late 19th century on the orders of a king eager to thwart the growing influence of Christianity.
Those victims, known as the Uganda Martyrs, included 45 Anglicans and Catholics killed between 1885 and 1887. Pope Paul VI canonized the 22 Ugandan Catholics in 1964.
At Namugongo, where most of the martyrs were burned alive, he will celebrate Mass in their honor.
“They remind us of the importance that faith, moral rectitude and commitment to the common good have played, and continue to play, in the cultural, economic and political life of this country,” Francis told Museveni and other Ugandan authorities and diplomats at a welcome ceremony at the Statehouse.
Later Friday, an enthusiastic crowd, complete with more traditional dancers and shrieking faithful, greeted Francis as he arrived at a shrine honoring the martyrs in Munyonyo, where they were condemned to death. Francis said their witness helped Christianity grown in Uganda, and that the king’s plot to “wipe out the followers of Christ” had failed.
Francis arrived in Kampala after a busy final day in Kenya where he visited one of the capital’s 11 slums and an un- planned monologue to thousands of Kenyan youths about preventing young people from falling prey to corruption and radicalization to go fight with extremist groups.
In the Kangemi shanty, Francis denounced conditions slum dwellers are forced to live in, saying access to safe water is a basic human right and that everyone should have dignified, adequate housing, access to sanitation, schools and hospitals.
“To deny a family water, under any bureaucratic pretext whatsoever, is a great injustice, especially when one profits from this need,” he said.
Residents lined the mud streets to welcome Francis, standing alongside goats and hens outside the corrugated tin-roofed shacks where many of the shantytown’s small businesses operate: beauty parlors, cellphone “top-up” shops and storefront evangelical churches.
Upon Francis’ arrival, those at St. Joseph’s parish broke into cheers and hymns, waving paper flags printed with his photo and the “Kariba Kenya” welcome that has been ubiquitous on the pope’s first-ever visit to Africa.
Francis, known as the “slum pope” for his ministry in Buenos Aires’ shantytowns, has frequently insisted on the need for the three L’s — land, labor and lodging. On Friday, he focused on lodging as a critical issue facing a world in which rapid urbanization is helping to upset Earth’s delicate ecological balance.
Kangemi is one of 11 slums dotting Nairobi, East Africa’s largest city, and is home to about 50,000 people. The U.N. Habitat program says some 60 percent of Nairobi’s population lives on just 6 percent of the city’s residential land in the unofficial settlements lacking basic sanitation or regular running water.
Francis denounced the practice of private corporations grabbing land illegally, depriving schools of their playgrounds and forcing the poor into ever more tightly packed slums, where violence and addiction are rampant.
In January, police teargassed schoolchildren demonstrating against the removal of their school’s playground, which purportedly has been grabbed by powerful people. After an outcry, the Kenyan government declared the playground the property of the school.
“These are wounds inflicted by minorities who cling to power and wealth, who selfishly squander while a growing majority is forced
to flee to abandoned, filthy and run-down peripheries,” Francis said.
He called for a “respectful urban integration” with concrete initiatives to provide good quality housing for all.
Francis raised the matter of environmental deterioration in cities in his encyclical Praise Be, saying many megacities today have simply become health threats, “not only because of pollution caused by toxic emissions but also as a result of urban chaos, poor transportation, and visual pollution and noise.”
After the visit to Kangemi, Francis received a raucous welcome at Kasarani stadium, where he was driven around the track in his open-sided popemobile. The stadium was so packed with the faithful that many more stood outside, unable to enter.
Francis abandoned a prepared speech and spoke off the cuff at length about problems young Kenyans are facing, including the temptation to go the way of Kenya’s many corrupt officials and institutions or to go off and join an extremist group.
Francis told the crowd that the way to prevent the young from being radicalized is to give them an education and a job.
“If a young person has no work, what kind of a future does he or she have? That’s where the idea of being recruited comes from,” he said.
Kenyans make up the largest contingent of foreign fighters in the Somali based al-Qaida-linked extremist group al-Shabab, which has staged attacks in Kenya.
On Sunday, Francis is to arrive in Central African Republic for his final stop.