(BBC News) Pope Leo has criticized leaders who spend billions on wars and said the world was “being ravaged by a handful of tyrants” in unusually forceful comments during a visit to Cameroon.
The pontiff blasted those he said had manipulated “the very name of God” for their own gain, while touring a region ravaged by a deadly insurgency.
The remarks come just days after a high-profile spat with US President Donald Trump, who posted a lengthy attack on the Pope, a vocal critic of the US-Israeli military operation in Iran.
The Pope had voiced his concern about Trump’s threat that “a whole civilization will die” if Iran did not agree to US demands to end the war and open the Strait of Hormuz.
Leo, who last year became the first US-born Pope, has previously questioned the Trump administration’s approach to immigration.
“Leo should get his act together as Pope,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post at the time.
The Pope told reporters at the start of his Africa tour that he did not want to get into a debate with Trump but would continue to promote peace.
Speaking in Cameroon, the Pope criticized leaders who “turn a blind eye to the fact that billions of dollars are spent on killing and devastation, yet the resources needed for healing, education and restoration are nowhere to be found.”
“The masters of war pretend not to know that it takes only a moment to destroy, yet often a lifetime is not enough to rebuild,” he said on Thursday.
The Pope also condemned “an endless cycle of destabilization and death” in a “bloodstained” region of Cameroon that has been gripped by insurgency for nearly a decade.
“Those who rob your land of its resources generally invest much of the profit in weapons, thus perpetuating an endless cycle of destabilization and death,” he told those gathered at a cathedral in the northwestern city of Bamenda – the centre of the violence that has left at least 6,000 people dead and displaced many more.
“Peace is not something we must invent: it is something we must embrace by accepting our neighbour as a brother and as our sister,” the Pope said.
Separatist insurgents in Cameroon’s two Anglophone regions have been fighting the predominantly Francophone government since 2017.
The Catholic leader’s wide-ranging Africa tour will include stops in 11 cities across four countries. It is his second major foreign visit since being elected to the papacy last year.
More than a fifth of the world’s Catholics – some 288 million people – live in Africa, according to figures from 2024.
