Luanda, Angola — Pope Leo XIV departs for Equatorial Guinea on Tuesday for the final leg of his four-nation African tour, arriving in a country that presents perhaps the most diplomatically delicate challenge to the trip and his young papacy.
The former Spanish colony on Africa’s west coast is run by Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, 83, Africa’s longest-serving president. He has been in power since 1979 and is accused of widespread corruption and authoritarianism.
According to the African Development Bank, the discovery of offshore oil in the mid-1990s transformed Equatorial Guinea’s economy almost overnight, with oil now accounting for almost half of its GDP and more than 90% of exports.
Yet more than half of the country’s approximately 2 million people live in poverty. And rights groups including Human Rights Watch – as well as court cases in France and Spain – have documented how revenues have enriched the ruling Obiang family rather than the wider population.
Leo has shown that he will not mince words on this first trip to Africa as Pope, and the Church’s teaching on the crisis of social inequality and corruption is clear. If Leo’s stop in Cameroon was any indication, the Pope’s message in Equatorial Guinea could be just as sharp.
Arriving in Yaoundé, Cameroon, last week, Leo met with President Paul Biya, who at 93 is the world’s oldest leader. Like Obiang, Biya has been in power for decades – since 1982 – and like Obiang, he is accused of presiding over an authoritarian government.
Leo did not back down and gave his induction speech at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, standing next to Bia.
“To maintain peace and justice, the chains of corruption – which distort authority and rob it of credibility – must be broken,” Leo said. “Hearts must be freed from the thirst for idolatry of profit.”
Equatorial Guinea is officially a secular country, but the Catholic Church is at the center of its political and social system.
Tutu Alicante, a US-based activist who runs the Easy Justice rights group, said church leaders are “very much intrinsically linked with the government.” “Part of it is the fear that the government has instilled in everyone, including the church, and part of it is the monetary benefit that the church receives from this government.”
The Rev. Fortunatus Nwachukwu, No. 2 in the Vatican’s missionary propagation office, said the Catholic Church is present in difficult civic spaces and knows how to work in them to fulfill its mission.
“Should the church wage war against the government? Certainly not,” Nwachukwu said. “Should the Church swallow everything as if it were normal? No. The Church must always continue to promote justice in defense of life, human dignity and the common good.”
This is particularly challenging in Equatorial Guinea, one of the most Catholic countries in Africa with a population of approximately 75% Catholic.
But it is also one of the most oppressed. In addition to official corruption, the country’s government also faces widespread allegations of harassment, arrests, and intimidation of political opponents, critics, and journalists.
It is consistently ranked in the bottom 10 countries in Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index, although the government has taken some steps to improve the situation in recent years, said Samuel Kaninda, Transparency International’s regional adviser for Africa.
The government passed an anti-corruption law and is working to fund an anti-corruption commission. But such measures will be effective only if the commission is truly independent to investigate and the judiciary is also independent, he said.
Kaninda said he hoped the Pope’s visit would draw attention to such shortcomings and give hope to the people of Equatorial Guinea. He said, even if the government exploits the visit to signal papal support of its regime, historically even papal visits to authoritarian regimes have ended up as a net positive experience for the people.
“There’s a risk, but at the same time, we see more opportunity to shed more light on what’s going on there,” he said.
At least, the first visit of the Pope since the arrival of St. John Paul II in 1982 is giving seamstress Tumi Karin a lot of business, as she makes clothes with Leo’s image on them.
“The Pope’s visit brought us a lot of customers,” Karin said. “We are really grateful for the Pope to come, so, we are really happy.”
Leo has a busy schedule in Equatorial Guinea. He comes and meets with Obiang and then gives two sets of remarks: a speech to government officials and diplomats, and then another speech at the national university.
In addition to celebrating mass, he will visit a psychiatric hospital and a prison and meet youth and their families. Before leaving on Thursday, he will pray at a memorial to the victims of the 2021 blast at a military barracks in Bata that killed more than 100 people. The blasts were attributed to the careless use of dynamite in a barrack close to residential areas.
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