The Pope ends the controversy with Trump: right here for African Catholics, to not debate with him | EUROtoday

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LUANDA – “It is not in my interest at all” to debate additional with Donald Trump within the midst of a mission meant for “African Catholics”. On the papal flight from Yaoundé to Angola, the penultimate stage of his African tour de drive, Pope Leo thus dismissed the controversies with the White House, relegating them to the background of his essential goal: to stimulate consideration on Africa, the continent which is recording probably the most highly effective progress when it comes to demographics and Catholic inhabitants.

The tour de drive between 4 nations and 11 cities was accompanied by intermittent sparks with the US chief, who began attacking a “terrible” and “weak” Pope in his statements in opposition to the struggle in Iran and returned to the dispute with a polemical submit on his social community Truth.

Leone definitively closed the chapter, talking of a “narrative, not entirely accurate” and of “comments on comments”, as within the case of his assault on the “handful of tyrants”: “It was interpreted as if I were trying to debate the president again” Leone identified, “when it had been prepared two weeks earlier” and needed to be understood within the native dimension: that of the town the place it was pronounced, Bamenda, the epicenter of the Anglophone disaster that has been tormenting the nation for a decade and sees pitting English-speaking independentists in opposition to the central authorities of 93-year-old Paul Biya.

«Here for African Catholics»

“I come to Africa mainly as a pastor, as head of the Catholic Church, to be with, to celebrate with, to encourage and accompany all African Catholics” declared the Pontiff, earlier than beginning the third stage of the mission which has already taken him to Algeria (13-15 April), Cameroon (15-18 April) and can finish in Equatorial Guinea from 21 to 23 April.

The Pope landed in Luanda and headed to the presidential palace for the assembly with the Angolan president João Lourenço. Subsequent conferences are deliberate with the diplomatic corps and, within the night, with the Angolan bishops. Angola is among the essential African crude oil producers, has relaunched its diamond aspirations and performs a strategic function as an outlet for the Lobito hall, the maxi-infrastructural mission that may hyperlink Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo to exports to the Atlantic. But its pure wealth has by no means flowed to learn a inhabitants suffering from excessive charges of unemployment and inequality, leading to avenue protests in 2025 in opposition to an increase in gas costs.