Many people flocked to a stadium in Cameroon’s commercial hub, Douala, on Friday for Pope Leo XIV’s massive, open-air mass, the highlight of a visit highlighted by his calls for peace and a feud with US President Donald Trump.
Many Christians had traveled far or came the night before to secure their seat to witness the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics deliver Mass.
“It’s the achievement of a Christian lifetime. When I was little, I thought you couldn’t see the pope with your own two eyes,” Marguerite Tedga, 72, stated after waiting all night with friends from her parish on the esplanade outside the stadium.
The pope’s historic 11-day tour of Africa has seen him discard his traditional reserve to give emotional pleas for world peace—and clash with fellow American Trump, who chastised him for calling for an end to the Middle East conflict.
“The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants,” Leo said Thursday in a solemn speech at Saint Joseph’s Cathedral in the city of Bamenda in northwestern Cameroon, the epicenter of a nearly decade-long separatist insurgency that has killed thousands of people.
Trump later noted that the pope could say what he liked but needed to understand the realities of a “nasty world.”
Far from the Trump feud, Leo has been met with loving, singing-and-dancing crowds wherever he travels in Cameroon.
Douala’s 50,000-seat Japoma Stadium is likely to be packed for his liturgy at 11:00 a.m. (1000 GMT), followed by a visit to Saint Paul’s Catholic Hospital.
Marcianus Nzegge, 36, who drove four hours from the conflict-torn English-speaking region to Douala for the mass, said the pope’s message of peace moved him.
However, some Cameroonian Catholics feared that Leo’s presence would assist President Paul Biya, who has ruled the country with an iron fist since 1982, in improving his image.
Douala, one of Central Africa’s main ports, was among the places to see a brutal crackdown on protests against the re-election of a man who, at 93 years old, is already the world’s oldest head of state.
Witnesses said that security officers fired live rounds into the throng. The authorities have acknowledged dozens of deaths without providing an exact figure.
Leo has delivered unusually scathing statements during his African visit, defying Catholic US Vice President JD Vance’s appeal to “stick to matters of morality” without addressing Trump or Biya by name.
“Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth,” Leo said in Bamenda.
In a mass on Thursday, he also condemned “those who, in the name of profit, continue to lay their hands on the African continent to exploit and plunder it.”
Cameroon is endowed with natural resources such as oil, lumber, cocoa, coffee, and minerals, which have attracted both foreign and local businesses for decades.
After landing in Cameroon on Wednesday, the pope urged Cameroon’s leaders to root out corruption and injustices committed in the name of order—all within earshot of Biya.
“Security is a priority, but it must always be exercised with respect for human rights,” the pope told officials in the capital Yaounde.
Ahead of the visit, the Archbishop of Douala, Samuel Kleda, one of Biya’s most vocal detractors among the Cameroonian clergy, expressed hope that the pontiff’s visit would assist in resolving the country’s challenges.
“Our country has gone through many crises; some crises are still ongoing. The fruit we must draw from this visit is to commit ourselves as architects of peace,” Kleda said.
The Catholic Church has a significant societal impact in Cameroon, where more than one-third of the population of 30 million is Catholic.
Prior to Cameroon, Leo visited Muslim-majority Algeria, where two suicide attacks occurred.
He departs Cameroon after a last mass on Saturday, heading for Angola before ending up his frenetic 18,000-kilometer (11,200-mile) visit in Equatorial Guinea.
