Pope lands in Congo, a region where his priorities converge
In his 10 years leading the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis has called attention to the plight of refugees and the poor and to the plunder of the earth’s natural riches. He has traveled to the peripheries of the church to touch the wounds of its afflicted and most forgotten. And he has welcomed young Catholics, especially in the booming global south, to a more inclusive church.
On Tuesday, Francis landed in Congo, a country that crystallizes all those priorities. He is the first pope since 1985 to visit the nation, where local church leaders have declared a moral emergency desperately in need of the pope’s, and the world’s, attention.
The turnout to welcome Francis was overwhelming in Kinshasa, the capital. Tens of thousands of people lined the road from the airport, cheering and waving flags in colorful local dress and Catholic school uniforms under enormous billboards of Francis (often alongside the country’s president).
“Torn by war, the Democratic Republic of the Congo continues to witness within its confines conflicts and forced migrations, and to suffer from terrible forms of exploitation, unworthy of humanity and of creation,” Francis said.
“This country, so immense and full of life, this diaphragm of Africa, struck by violence like a blow to the stomach, has seemed for some time to be gasping for breath,” the pope said.
Francis, 86, who often uses a wheelchair, will also visit South Sudan, where the church is deeply involved in peace negotiations and democracy building, on a trip that will last until Sunday.
In the meantime, violence in Congo’s embattled east has flared up again, with more than 120,000 people fleeing rebel attacks in the countryside and seeking shelter in the city of Goma. The fighting has forced Francis to scrap that leg of the trip, and victims of the region’s violence will instead come to see him in the capital of Kinshasa.
But as much as Congo embodies the wounds that Francis hopes to heal, it is also a country with potentially great influence on the church’s future.
About half of Congo’s more than 95 million people are Catholic, making it the faith’s deepest well in Africa, the continent many hope will replenish the church as attendance shrinks in the West.