Pope Leo XIV concluded his historic 11-day visit to Africa last week. We watched him arrive with fanfare in Algeria, moving to Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea.
Across the continent, the visit was widely welcomed as a sign of hope, a moment of spiritual encouragement, and a reminder that Africa still matters on the global stage.
But there is an uncomfortable side to this trip that deserves honest reflection.
Some of the countries on the Pope’s itinerary are ruled by dictators with long and troubling records of human rights abuses.
Visiting them could be seen as quietly legitimising their oppressive regimes, whether intended or not.
Take Cameroon for example, whose President Paul Biya has been in power since 1982, when Ronald Reagan was still in the White House and the Soviet Union still existed.
Forty-four years later, Biya remains firmly in office, longer than most Cameroonians have been alive.
This is not just longevity in politics but a reflection of a political system that has effectively shut down any meaningful chance of democratic renewal.
Biya’s rule has been marked by consistent allegations of manipulated elections, repression of opposition voices and the shrinking of political space.
Now 93 years old, Biya appears more committed to ruling until his last breath than to preparing the country for a democratic future.
By Yesim Dikmen and Joshua McElwee
Kilamba, Angola — Pope Leo urged Angolans on Sunday to overcome divisions after decades of bloody conflict in an address to an estimated 100,000 people who flocked to a Mass in a dirt field near the capital Luanda.
In one of the biggest events of his four-nation Africa tour, the pope called Angola, which experienced a bloody, 27-year civil war from 1975 to 2002, a “beautiful yet wounded country”.
He urged Angolans to “build together a country where old divisions are overcome once and for all, where hatred and violence disappear”.
At the end of the Mass, the pope decried the recent ramp-up in the Ukraine war, calling “for the weapons to fall silent and for the path of dialogue to be followed”.
He also praised the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, to end fighting between Israeli forces and Iran-backed Hezbollah, as a “reason for hope”.
Believers began arriving before dawn at Kilamba, a sprawling housing complex, braving hot and humid conditions to hear the address from the pope, who has become outspoken on war and inequality and angered US President Donald Trump.
By the time the Mass began, throngs of people filled the site, dancing and shouting as Leo drove through in his white popemobile.
Among those welcoming Leo was Sister Christina Matende, who arrived around 6am for the Mass.
“The pope coming here is a joy,” she said. “We are living in a moment of a lot of difficulties.”
Angola is one of the leading oil-producing countries in sub-Saharan Africa, but its population of 36.6-million people is still confronting extreme poverty, with more than 30% living on less than $2.15 a day, according to the World Bank.
More than half of the country identifies as Catholic.
Despots and tyrants
Leo, the first US pope, is visiting Angola on the third leg of a four-nation Africa tour. In a speech to the country’s political leaders on Saturday, he decried the exploitation of natural resources on the continent.
The pope blasted “despots and tyrants” who he said guarantee wealth but do not deliver on their promises, leading to suffering and deaths.
He also urged political leaders to focus on helping all their people and not just corporate interests.
“History will then vindicate you, even if in the near term some may oppose you,” he said.
Anielka Caliata, 25, who was in the crowd waiting for the pope in Kilamba on Sunday, said she was grateful for the way the pope has debuted a forceful speaking style on his Africa tour.
“Our country needs a lot of this message, and I think the pope will help us to think and reflect about that, knowing that all of us need to work together and do our best to have peace,” she said as she stood with her fiancé and parents.
Inaccurate reports
On Saturday, Pope Leo sought to downplay his feud with US President Donald Trump, saying reporting about comments he has made so far during his Africa tour “has not been accurate in all its aspects”.
Speaking to reporters in English aboard his flight to Angola for the third leg of his ambitious 10-day Africa tour, the first US pope said comments he made two days earlier in Cameroon decrying that the world was being “ravaged by a handful of tyrants” were not aimed at Trump.
That speech, said Leo, “was prepared two weeks ago, well before the president ever commented on me and on the message of peace that I am promoting”.
Vice-president JD Vance, who had criticised the pope’s remarks last week, welcomed his latest comments.
“I am grateful to Pope Leo for saying this,” Vance posted on social media platform X. “While the media narrative constantly gins up conflict — and yes, real disagreements have happened and will happen — the reality is often much more complicated.”
Equatorial Guinea, the Pope’s final stop, presents an even darker picture.
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has ruled for 47 years.
His time in power has been defined by manipulation of elections, authoritarianism, corruption and systematic human rights abuses.
A simple thing such as having a different preference for a leader to lead the country can land you in jail or get you mysteriously killed because there is no tolerance for genuine political contest in that country.
In such a political atmosphere, a visit from a global figure like the Pope can easily be read as a quiet endorsement of the status quo.
And dictators are experts at managing optics.
For them being seen shaking hands with the Pope, hosting him in grand ceremonies and taking pictures with him offers a powerful political legitimacy.
They ensure the streets are calm and clean, and the visit appears orderly and successful.
In doing so, they turn a spiritual moment into political capital for propaganda purposes.
With his previous insults towards African countries and his gutting of foreign assistance, US President Donald Trump has offended the continent’s Catholics more than once before, but his spat this week with Pope Leo has raised eyebrows nevertheless.
“I was utterly shocked to read President Trump’s remarks about the pope. Nowhere in modern history have we witnessed such verbal recklessness against an institution as revered as the papacy,” said Blaise Bebey Abong, 38, a Cameroonian diplomat in Yaounde, where Leo arrived on Wednesday for the second stop of his four-country Africa tour.
Since late March, Pope Leo, the first US-born leader of the Catholic Church, has been an outspoken critic of the war that began with US-Israeli strikes on Iran.
Trump on Sunday called Pope Leo “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” in a post on Truth Social. Trump also posted an AI-generated image of himself as a Jesus-like figure, drawing widespread criticism even from some religious conservatives who typically support him. The post was removed on Monday morning.
Calling Trump’s comments “unthinkable”, Abong said the pope represented “high moral authority” even for non-Christians and that the dispute would damage the perception of Trump in the region, even among those who previously backed him.
Disagreement over Iran war
Pope Leo told Reuters on Monday that he would keep speaking out about the war, and Trump reiterated his criticism on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Leo, flying from Algeria to Cameroon, did not respond to Trump directly, instead urging respect for all the peoples of the world.
Kwaku Amoah, who worships at Ghana’s St. Peter’s Cathedral Basilica, located in the city of Kumasi, said he understood why Leo would opt not to engage.
“Public insults are not the way to go,” he said on Wednesday. “The Church often encourages responding to hostility with restraint rather than escalation, and I commend the pope for exercising restraint.”
Trump seemed to take a different approach. On Wednesday he posted another apparently AI-generated image, this one showing a depiction of Jesus embracing him.
The original post had the caption: “I was never a very religious man ... but doesn’t it seem, with all these satanic, demonic, child-sacrificing monsters being exposed ... that God might be playing his Trump card!”
Regardless of whether the dust-up continues, African Catholics have suggested it would colour their view of Trump for the long term.
“The church has endured emperors, revolutions, and ideological storms. It will endure this moment as well,” Cardinal Stephen Brislin, the Archbishop of Johannesburg, wrote in an op-ed in the Daily Maverick. “But endurance is not the same as indifference.”
Reuters
Defenders of the Pope will argue that engagement is better than isolation.
They would say diplomacy sometimes requires sitting at uncomfortable tables.
Maybe the Pope had hoped to quietly nudge the dictators towards compassionate governance that takes care of the poor.
That argument has merit. But it is also dangerous because history shows that quiet diplomacy with dictators hardly produces meaningful change.
When moral leaders appear too comfortable with oppressive rulers, many ordinary citizens do not hear a message of justice, but of silence and indifference.
So, should the Pope have avoided these countries entirely?
Not necessarily. There is nothing inherently wrong with visiting them.
But how he shows up in politically fragile environments matters.
Instead of prioritising choreographed meetings with discredited rulers, the Pope could have centred his visit on the people themselves, the victims of repression, civil society activists, the poor and the marginalised.
The Catholic Church has done this before. Even during apartheid in SA, when parts of the church were complicit with the evil white regime, others chose a different path.
