"Your tears are my tears": Pope Francis on Wednesday launched a "vibrant appeal" to the "cruel atrocities" perpetrated in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), after celebrating a mass in front of a million people in Kinshasa.
On the second day of his visit to the largest Catholic country in Africa, the sovereign pontiff said he was "outraged" at the "bloody and illegal exploitation of the wealth" of the DRC, where violence by armed groups killed hundreds of thousands of people and threw millions more on the roads.
“I address a vibrant appeal to all people, to all internal and external entities that are pulling the strings of the war in the DRC, looting it, flagellating it and destabilizing it,” Pope Francis said.
He was initially to go to Goma, in North Kivu, a Congolese province bordering Rwanda, which has been plagued by numerous killings and the resurgence of the armed group M23 which has conquered large swaths of territory in recent months.
But this stage, which appeared in the trip planned for July 2022, then postponed, was finally canceled due to the risks to its safety.
On Wednesday, the 86-year-old pope, however, heard the "excruciating suffering" of four victims in unfiltered testimonies describing "people cut up, disembowelled women, decapitated men", while women displayed their mutilated arms before the moved gaze. from the pope.
Emelda M'karhungulu recounted the "abuse" she suffered for three months as a "sex slave". "Sometimes they mixed people's heads into animal meat. It was our daily food."
“Faced with the inhuman violence that you have seen with your eyes and experienced in your flesh, we remain in shock. And there are no words; we must only cry, remaining silent,” replied the Argentinian Jesuit. , which intends to draw attention to the dramas affecting certain "peripheries" of the world.
These testimonies contrasted with the festive and high-energy atmosphere of the morning during a giant mass in the megalopolis of some 15 million inhabitants, another highlight of the day.
More than a million people, according to the authorities, took part in this outdoor celebration on the tarmac of Ndolo airport, in the east of the city. Most had spent the whole night there.
On board his "papamobile", the pope greeted the crowd who cheered him with flags and traditional songs, under a bright sun and an important security device.
"When the pope (John Paul II) came for the first time it was history, I was 15 years old. Today I am 55 years old. So attending a first papal mass is very important" , underlines Adrien Louka to AFP, hoping for a message of "reconciliation" from the pope "so that the countries around us leave us in peace".
At the end of the afternoon, the pope will deliver his third and last speech of the day in front of representatives of charities at the apostolic nunciature.
Shortly after his arrival on Tuesday, Jorge Bergoglio had denounced the "economic colonialism" which "is unleashed" in this country in the basement of immense wealth and fertile land, but of which two thirds of the approximately 100 million inhabitants live on less than $2.15 a day.
Highly anticipated, Pope Francis was greeted with popular jubilation by tens of thousands of people along the main avenues of the capital adorned with the flags of the DRC and the Vatican as well as numerous welcome signs.
This is the fortieth international trip of the head of the Catholic Church since his election in 2013, the fifth on the African continent. After Kinshasa, on Friday he will join Juba, capital of South Sudan, the youngest state in the world and among the poorest on the planet.
02/01/2023 17:56:54 - Kinshasa (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
