Pope Francis calls for peace, reconciliation in DRC

By Francis JJunju

1^st Feb 2023

Pope Francis has called for peace in DR Congo, saying warring sides should forgive one another and grant their opponents a “great amnesty of the heart”.

Celebrating one of his biggest masses, in Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital, Kinshasa at N’dole airport, on the second of his six-day visit to Africa, Pope Francis said it’s of great importance to cleanse one’s heart of “anger and remorse, of every trace of resentment and hostility”.

Wednesday’s mass was tipped to be one of the pope’s largest-ever masses with over one million people, second only to one held in the Philippines in 2014, according to Christopher Lamb, the Rome correspondent of the Catholic magazine The Tablet.

It is more than 37 years since a pope visited the mineral-rich but conflict-ridden country.

On Tuesday, the Pope met President Félix Tshisekedi and delivered a speech condemning historical exploitation of Africa’s resources, which he described as “economic colonialism”.

He also addressed DR Congo’s plight, as minerals have played a key role in more than three decades of armed conflict there: emphasizing that “Hands off the Democratic Republic of the Congo! Hands off Africa! Stop choking Africa, it is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered.”

However, a planned visit to the eastern city of Goma has been cancelled for security reasons due to fighting against armed militia groups.

According to the United Nations, some six million people have been forced to flee their homes in DR Congo in the eastern provinces of South Kivu, North Kivu and Ituri, one of the largest populations of displaced people in the world, alongside places like Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and Ukraine.