On his second day in Angola, Pope Leo urged the impoverished population not to give in to despair, but to build hope and make a social commitment to helping those in need. Source: Crux.
He also issued a call for peace, lamenting a recent escalation of hostilities in Ukraine, while lauding the recently announced ceasefire in Lebanon as a cause for hope.
Speaking at a open-air Mass in Kilamba, about 30km outside of the capital city of Luanda on Sunday, the Pope told Angolans that “today we need to look to the future with hope and to build the hope of the future”.
“Do not be afraid to do so! The risen Jesus, who walks the path with you and breaks himself as bread for you, encourages you to be witnesses of his Resurrection and protagonists of a new humanity and a new society,” he said.
Pope Leo arrived in Luanda on Saturday as part his April 13-23 tour of Africa that has so far taken him to Algeria and Cameroon, and which will also take him to Equatorial Guinea before he returns to Rome.
Despite extensive natural resources, including oil, Angola is plagued by extreme poverty and remains deeply divided in the wake of its war for independence, which ended in 1975.
In a meeting with civil authorities and members of the diplomatic corps Saturday, the Pope issued a call to Angolan leadership to put the “cycle of interests” and “logic of extractivism” that have long plagued Africa aside and work for the good of the people.
Leo in his homily on Sunday focused on the Gospel account of Jesus’s appearance to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, who after Jesus’s death were returning home “disappointed and disheartened,” as the one they had believed and hoped in was dead.
The conversation between the two disciples on what happened to Jesus, he told the approximately 100,000 people present, was a reminder of the pain that Angola has suffered following “a long civil war with its aftermath of enmities and divisions, of squandered resources and poverty.”
What God asks for is not only a commitment to walking with him, but also “a generous commitment on our part to soothe wounds and rekindle hope” among all those who have lost it.
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Pope in Angola offers message of hope, urges social action amid poverty (By Elise Ann Allen, Crux)
