Pope Francis was welcomed in an exalted atmosphere Thursday morning in Kinshasa by tens of thousands of young people in the hope of a message of peace, on the third day of his visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), plagued by endemic violence.
The spiritual leader of the Catholic Church arrived shortly after 9 a.m. (0800 GMT) at the Martyrs stadium aboard his "popemobile" greeting and blessing the crowd who cheered him with songs and cries.
The doors of this 80,000-seat sports arena opened at 3 a.m. and many young people are waiting for a message of reconciliation in this very Catholic country plagued by deadly violence in the east.
As conflict, unemployment and power struggles cloud the future of the country, where around 60% of the population is under the age of 20, 21-year-old Sheila Mangumbu hopes for a "message of love for our brothers and sisters of Goma may finally be at peace".
"The M23 is killing a multitude of us in the east, I would like all this to stop because it has been going on for too long," she told AFP, referring to the rebel group accused by the government. to be supported by Rwanda.
In the stands, thousands of teenagers, students but also parents sang while clapping their hands to the rhythm of the drums. Many are dressed in T-shirts, shirts or caps bearing the likeness of Jorge Bergoglio, the first pope to visit the country since John Paul II in 1985.
Highly anticipated, this visit surrounded by great fervor was marked on Wednesday by a sequence charged with heavy emotion during which Francis launched a "vibrant appeal" in the face of the "cruel atrocities" perpetrated in the east of the country, after having heard the testimonies of four victims.
The sovereign pontiff was also "outraged" by the "bloody and illegal exploitation of the wealth" of the DRC, where violence by armed groups has killed hundreds of thousands of people and thrown millions more on roads.
“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 just have to cry, remaining silent,” said François, who intends to draw attention to the tragedies affecting certain "peripheries" of the world.
The pope was supposed to travel to the east of the country, to Goma, but this step was canceled due to security risks.
The 86-year-old Pope, who travels in a wheelchair due to knee pain, will meet Prime Minister Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde at the end of the morning at the Apostolic Nunciature, "embassy" of the Holy See in the DRC.
In the middle of the afternoon, he will go to the Notre-Dame du Congo cathedral, built in 1947, where he will deliver a speech in front of priests and religious.
As usual during his travels, the Argentinian Jesuit will end this third day of visit with a private meeting with members of the Society of Jesus.
Despite the growing influence of the Evangelical Churches since the 1990s, the Catholic Church retains a major role in education, culture, politics or the maintenance of socio-health infrastructures in the DRC, where it has often acted as a counter -power.
On Wednesday, the pope celebrated an open-air mass which, according to the authorities, gathered more than a million faithful, at an airport in the east of the capital.
This is the fortieth international trip of the head of the Catholic Church since his election in 2013, the fifth on the African continent.
On Friday, he will join Juba, capital of South Sudan, the youngest state in the world and among the poorest on the planet.
02/02/2023 10:22:20 - Kinshasa (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
