‘Hands off Africa!’: Pope rips foreign plundering of Congo
KINSHASA, Congo — Pope Francis demanded Tuesday that foreign powers stop plundering Africa’s natural resources for the “poison of their own greed” as he arrived in Congo to a raucous welcome by Congolese grateful he was focusing the world’s attention on their forgotten plight.
Tens of thousands lined the main road into the capital, Kinshasa, to welcome Francis after he landed at the airport, some standing three or four deep.
“The pope is 86 years old but he came anyway. It is a sacrifice and the Congolese people will not forget it,” said Sultan Ntambwe, a bank representative.
Francis denounced the centuries-long exploitation of Africa by colonial powers, today’s multinational extraction industries and the neighboring countries interfering in Congo’s affairs that has led to a surge in fighting in the east.
“Hands off the Democratic Republic of the
Congo! Hands off Africa!” Francis said to applause in his opening speech to Congolese government authorities and the diplomatic corps in the garden of Kinshasa’s national palace.
Calling Congo’s vast mineral and natural wealth a “diamond of creation,” Francis demanded that foreign interests stop carving up the country for their own interests and acknowledge their role in the economic “enslavement” of the Congolese people.
“Stop choking Africa: It is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered,” said history’s first Latin American pope. Francis has long railed at how wealthy countries have exploited the resources of poorer ones for their own profit.
The six-day trip also includes a stop in South Sudan and was originally scheduled for last July, but was postponed because of Francis’ knee problems, which were still so serious Tuesday that he used a wheelchair.
The trip was to have included a stop in Goma, in eastern Congo, but the surrounding North Kivu region has been plagued by intense fighting between government troops and the M23 rebel group, as well as attacks by militants linked to the Islamic State group.
The fighting has displaced some 5.7 million people, a fifth of them last year alone, according to the World Food Program.
President Felix Tshisekedi in his speech to the pope accused the international community of forgetting about Congo and of its complicit “inaction and silence” about the atrocities occurring in the east.
“In addition to armed groups, foreign powers eager for the minerals in our subsoil commit cruel atrocities with the direct and cowardly support of our neighbor Rwanda, making security the first and greatest challenge for the government,” he said.
Rwanda has been accused of — and has repeatedly denied — backing the M23 rebels operating in Congo.
The continent is one of the only places on Earth where the Catholic flock is growing. Half of the Congo’s 105 million people are Catholic and the country counts more than 6,000 priests and 10,000 nuns.