Pope Leo arrives in Angola, calls for fostering ‘just model of coexistence’

LUANDA, Angola (OSV News) — Pope Leo XIV touched down in the Angolan capital of Luanda on Saturday, April 18, beginning a three-day visit to the southern African country that is home to 20 million Catholics.

The pope’s visit comes as Angola continues to grapple with deep social challenges. Despite robust economic growth fueled by oil and diamond revenues, the country ranks among the world’s lowest in life expectancy and among the highest in infant mortality. Inequality and corruption remain persistent concerns in the country still healing from a decades-long civil war.

“Dear friends, I have mentioned the material riches upon which powerful interests lay their claim, even within your own country. How much suffering, how many deaths, how many social and environmental disasters are brought about by this logic of extractivism,” the pope said in his first speech to Angola’s government authorities. 

Pope Leo urged Angola’s wealthy political leaders to “place the common good before every particular interest, never confusing your own part with the whole.”

“The Catholic Church, whose service to the country I know you greatly esteem, desires to be leaven in the dough and to foster the growth of a just model of coexistence, free from the various forms of slavery imposed by the elite who are laden with much wealth but false joys,” he said.

The scars of Angola’s brutal civil war, which killed between 500,000 and 800,000 people between 1975 and 2002, have not fully healed. Land mines still litter the countryside, and Bishop Vicente Sanombo of the Diocese of Kuito-Bié said he hopes the papal visit will serve as a catalyst for continued national healing, an aspiration expressed in the motto for the papal visit, “Pope Leo XIV, pilgrim of hope, reconciliation, and peace, blesses Angola.”

“Your people have suffered time and again when this harmony was violated by the arrogance of a few. They bear the scars not only of material exploitation, but also of the presumption of imposing an idea upon others,” Pope Leo said. “Africa urgently needs to overcome situations and dynamics of conflict and enmity that tear apart the social and political fabric of many countries, fostering poverty and exclusion.”

Angola’s Catholic roots run deep. Catholicism arrived with Portuguese missionaries in 1491, and the country remained under Portuguese colonial rule until 1975. According to the latest Vatican statistics, nearly 58% of the population identifies as Catholic, with 1,511 priests serving more than 20 million faithful, a ratio of more than 13,000 Catholics per priest.

“True joy frees us from such alienation — joy which faith rightly recognizes as a gift of the Holy Spirit,” the pope said. “Let us therefore examine our own hearts, dear friends, because without joy there is no renewal; without interiority there is no liberation; without encounter there is no politics; without the other there is no justice.”

The papal plane, a chartered ITA Airways jet, landed just before 4 p.m. on Saturday afternoon after a two-hour flight from Yaoundé, Cameroon. At the airport, the pope was welcomed by Angola’s President João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço. 

Aboard the papal plane, Pope Leo spoke to journalists, pushing back against the media “narrative” that has pitted him against President Donald Trump since the start of his 11-day apostolic journey to Africa. 

“I primarily come to Africa as a pastor, as the head of the Catholic Church to be with and to celebrate with, to encourage and accompany, all of the Catholics throughout Africa,” he told the press corps.

Pope Leo traveled from the airport to the presidential palace in an open air popemobile, greeting crowds who lined the streets. He then met privately with President Lourenço, who is currently serving his second term as president since 2017.

The papal visit to Angola, scheduled to run through April 21, will take Pope Leo beyond the capital city. He is set to travel to the pilgrimage site of Our Lady of Muxima Shrine, one of the country’s most revered Catholic sites, where he will lead a public rosary with pilgrims. He will also visit the northeastern city of Saurimo to celebrate an outdoor Mass and visit a nursing home, where many refugees from neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo are expected to attend, before meeting members of the local Catholic community at Luanda’s Parish of Our Lady of Fatima.

Cornelio Bento, an Angolan Catholic radio journalist traveling in the Vatican press corps for the trip with Pope Leo, told OSV News that Muxima is a place where many people go on pilgrimage every day, bringing their worries and their hopes to the heart of Our Lady. He added that it is a place of particular pilgrimage for women who are seeking to have a child. 

“If you go to Muxima Shrine, you will listen to a lot of history of miracles,” Bento said.

“The information I got from my colleagues in the country is that Muxima is full. It’s full and the people continue coming,” he added, noting that a large crowd has already gathered on the day before the pope is scheduled to visit the Marian shrine. 

Bento works for the Catholic news outlet Radio Ecclesia, which was shut down along with other Catholic institutions by Angola’s Communist government shortly after the country declared independence in 1975 and did not reopen until the late 1990s. 

In Pope Leo’s speech in the country, he assured Angolans that he is praying for the victims of the heavy rains and floods in the central city of Benguela, Angola, expressing his closeness to the families who have lost their homes. The pope’s speech concluded his public schedule for the day and was followed by a private dinner with the Catholic bishops of Angola.

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