Pope ends controversy with Trump: here for Catholics Africa, not to debate with him

LUANDA - "It is not at all in my interest" to debate with Donald Trump. On the flight from Cameroon to Angola, the penultimate leg of his African tour de force, Pope Leo dismissed the controversy with the White House in this way, relegating it to the background of his main objective: to stimulate attention on Africa, the continent with the fastest growing demographic and Catholic population. The four-country, 11-city mission was accompanied by sparks with the US leader, who lashed out at a Pope described as "terrible" and "weak" for his anti-war remarks. "Could someone please tell Pope Leo that Iran has killed at least 42,000 innocent people," Trump reiterated on Truth, his social network, while his deputy JD Vance urged the pontiff to "prudence" on theological issues.

Leone attempted yesterday to dismiss the chapter, speaking of a 'narrative that was not entirely accurate' and of 'comments on comments', as in the case of his attack on the international 'handful of tyrants': 'It was interpreted as if I was trying to have another debate with the president,' Leone objected, 'when it had been prepared two weeks earlier' and was to be understood in its most pointed dimension: that of the city where it was pronounced, Cameroonian Bamenda, epicentre of the Anglophone crisis that has been plaguing the country for a decade and pitting English-speaking independentists against the government of 93-year-old Paul Biya.

"I come to Africa primarily as a pastor, as the head of the Catholic Church" to "encourage and accompany all African Catholics," said the Pontiff, before formally launching his visit to Angola from yesterday to 21 April: the third leg of a mission that has already taken him to Algeria (13-15 April), Cameroon (15-18 April) and will conclude in Equatorial Guinea from 21 to 23 April, with a face-to-face meeting between the Pontiff and 83-year-old leader Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. Leone's African mission has consecrated a change of course in the pontiff's rhetoric. If his debut year had been dominated by caution, the first days of the African journey marked a dialectical crescendo against inequality, warlike impulses and corruption, culminating in sorties such as the criticism of 'tyrants' and that of the 'whims of the rich and powerful'. Similar tones to those adopted in Luanda, the Angolan capital, where the Pope met yesterday with local leader João Lourenço and reiterated his condemnation of the short-circuit between natural wealth, radical inequalities and a poverty rate estimated at over 40% by the African Development Bank.

Angola contends with Nigeria for the supremacy of crude oil exports, has revived its diamond aspirations to the point of undermining Botswana's dominance, and plays a strategic role as the outlet of the Lobito corridor: the maxi-infrastructure work that will connect mining hubs such as Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo to export flows over the Atlantic Ocean. But growth on a macro scale has never benefited a population plagued by high rates of unemployment and inequality among the highest on the African scale, a combination that has led to street protests such as those that erupted in 2025 against high fuel prices.

Leone explicitly addressed the issue in his speech in the presence of Angolan leaders, challenging the drifts of 'extractive logic' and the repercussions suffered by a country of just over 40 million people.