Pope Leo ends Africa visit with open air mass

MALABO, Equatorial Guinea (AFP) — Pope Leo XIV will hold an open air Mass in Equatorial Guinea on Thursday to end a landmark 11-day trip across Africa that has been the United States pontiff’s first big international trip.

The tour mixing political and pastoral messages, took Leo to four countries, traveling 18,000 kilometers and involved eight masses.

Whilst embroiled in a diplomatic battle with US President Donald Trump, Leo has repeatedly called for social justice, peace and respect for human dignity, while denouncing inequality, corruption and the unjust exploitation of natural resources by “tyrants,”

On Wednesday, the pope went to Equatorial Guinea’s notorious Bata prison where he was greeted by hundreds of shaven-headed inmates and made comments criticising living conditions.

On Thursday, the head of the Catholic Church will celebrate a mass at 10:00 a.m. at a stadium in Malabo, the former capital of the former Spanish colony of two million inhabitants.

He will then depart for Rome and will hold a traditional press conference on the plane for the journalists accompanying him, which will be closely watched given Trump’s harsh criticism against him.

Leo has denied that some of his pointed comments in Africa about war, human dignity, and economic injustice were aimed at Trump, saying they had been written before Trump called him “weak” and “incompetent in foreign policy” — remarks that overshadowed the beginning of his trip.