Pope Leo challenges Angola's leaders to break 'extractivism'

Pope Leo XIV challenged Angola’s leaders to break the "extractivism” that has plundered and exploited Africa for centuries, as he arrived in the southern African country on Saturday with a message of encouragement for its long-suffering people.

“How much suffering, how many deaths, how many social and environmental disasters are brought about by this logic of extractivism,” the pontiff said.

Leo's arrival in Angola, the oil-and-mineral rich former Portuguese colony, marked the third leg of his four-nation African voyage.

En route from Cameroon, he spoke again of the ongoing back-and-forth with United States President Donald Trump over the Iran war.

Leo, history’s first US-born pope, said that it was “not in my interest at all” to debate Trump, but that he would continue preaching the Gospel message of peace, justice and brotherhood in Africa.

In Angola, Leo met with President João Lourenço and delivered his first speech to Angolan government authorities, in which he referred repeatedly to Angola’s tortured history of colonial plunder and civil war.

“I desire to meet you in the spirit born of peace and to affirm that your people possess treasures that cannot be bought or stolen,” he said. "There dwells within you a joy that not even the most adverse circumstances have been able to extinguish.”

Angola, which has a population of around 38 million, gained independence from Portugal in 1975.

It still bears the scars of a devastating civil war that began straight after independence and raged on and off for 27 years before finally ending in 2002. More than a half-million people are believed to have been killed.

For years, the civil war was a Cold War proxy conflict, with the United States and apartheid South Africa backing one side and the Soviet Union and Cuba backing the other.

Angola is now the fourth-largest oil producer in Africa and among the world’s top 20 producers, according to the International Energy Agency.

The country is also the world’s No. 3 diamond producer and has significant deposits of gold and highly sought after critical minerals.

But despite its varied natural resources, the World Bank estimated in 2023 that more than 30% of the population lived on less than $2.15 a day.

“You know well that all too often people have looked — and continue to look — to your lands in order to give, or, more commonly, in order to take,” Leo told the Angolan authorities.