Joshua McElwee
Bamenda, Cameroon: Pope Leo blasted leaders who spend billions of dollars on wars and said the world was “being ravaged by a handful of tyrants” in unusually forceful remarks made just days after US President Donald Trump attacked him on social media.
Leo, the first US pope, also decried leaders who used religious language to justify wars and urged a “decisive change of course” in a meeting in the biggest city in Cameroon’s anglophone regions, where a simmering conflict going back nearly a decade has left thousands dead.
“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,” the pontiff said on Thursday (Cameroon time).
“They 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.”
Trump’s attacks on Leo, first launched on the eve of the Pope’s ambitious four-country tour of Africa and repeated late Tuesday, have caused dismay in Africa, where more than a fifth of the world’s Catholics live.
Leo, who has kept a relatively low profile for most of his first year as leader of the 1.4-billion-member church, has emerged as an outspoken critic of the war that began with US-Israeli strikes on Iran.
Speaking in Bamenda, the pontiff also sharply criticised leaders who invoked religious themes to justify wars.
“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,” he said.
“It is a world turned upside down, an exploitation of God’s creation that must be denounced and rejected by every honest conscience.”
The Pope made similar remarks last month, saying God rejected prayers from leaders with “hands full of blood”, in comments widely interpreted as aimed at US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who has invoked Christian language to justify the Iran war.
Trump began his criticism of Leo when he called the pope “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” in a post on Truth Social.
The US president attacked Leo again on social media late on Tuesday. On Wednesday Trump posted an image of Jesus embracing Trump, after an earlier image he posted that portrayed him as a Jesus-like figure prompted widespread criticism.
On Thursday Trump said Pope Leo was free to say what he wanted but that it was important for him to understand that Iran could never have a nuclear weapon.
“The Pope has to understand – it’s very simple – Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. The world would be in great danger,” he told reporters at the White House. “The Pope can say what he wants, and I want him to say what he wants, but I can disagree. I think that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”
Meanwhile, Hegseth cited biblical scripture on Thursday to attack the media, comparing reporters to Jewish adversaries of Jesus Christ plotting “how to destroy him”.
The comments sought to counter what he saw as negative coverage of the US-Israeli war with Iran. Hegseth, whose Christianity has become a focus of his tenure as the head of the Pentagon, used his opening remarks at a Pentagon briefing on the Iran war to reflect on a Sunday sermon about how Pharisees sought to undermine Jesus even after watching him perform a miracle.
Their hearts were hardened against Jesus, Hegseth said, and “the Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel against him, how to destroy him”.
“I sat there in church and I thought, our press are just like these Pharisees,” Hegseth said, in front of reporters assembled in the Pentagon briefing room, adding he was not referring to everyone, just “the legacy, Trump-hating press”.
“The Pharisees scrutinised every good act in order to find a violation. Only looking for the negative. The hardened hearts of our press are calibrated only to impugn.”
In recent days Hegseth and Trump have repeatedly turned to Christian language to discuss the war, with both calling the Easter Sunday rescue of a downed US airman in Iran a miracle.
After arriving in the Cameroon capital Yaounde on Wednesday, Leo urged the government of the Central African nation – led by President Paul Biya, at 93 the world’s oldest ruler – to root out corruption and resist “the whims of the rich and powerful”.
During a Mass at the airport in Bamenda on Thursday, attended by about 20,000 people, the Pope criticised foreigners who exploited Africa’s wealth, saying they were contributing to widespread poverty and underdevelopment.
“The time has come, today and not tomorrow, now and not in the future, to restore the mosaic of unity by bringing together the diversity and riches of the country and the continent,” he said.
Leo’s trip to Bamenda has stirred faint hope that steps might be taken to resolve the conflict there, rooted in the country’s complex colonial and postcolonial history. A separatist alliance said it would observe a three-day ceasefire to allow civilians and visitors to move freely during the pope’s visit.
Cameroon, a former German colony, was partitioned by Britain and France after World War I. The French part won independence in 1960 and was joined a year later by the smaller English-speaking British area to the west.
More than 6500 people have been killed and more than half a million displaced in fighting between government forces and anglophone separatist groups, according to the International Crisis Group.
Priests are frequently kidnapped for ransom and some have been killed.
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