By Joshua McElwee
BATA, Equatorial Guinea, April 22 (Reuters) – Pope Leo used the last full day of his four-nation Africa tour on Wednesday to speak out against wealth inequality, urging believers to work to bridge the gap between rich and poor as he traversed oil-rich Equatorial Guinea.
Leo, who has attracted the ire of U.S. President Donald Trump after becoming more outspoken against war and despotism, was also due to visit a high-security prison that human rights groups say holds political prisoners in abusive conditions.
Equatorial Guinea, run since 1979 by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the world’s longest-serving president, has been widely derided as one of the most repressive countries in the region, though it has enjoyed warm ties with the U.S. in part because of its oil riches.
Most recently Obiang’s government struck a deal with the Trump administration to accept deportees from other countries, one in a series of such arrangements in Africa that have drawn criticism from immigration lawyers and advocates.
The 70-year-old pontiff, who was flying about 700 km (435 miles) across Equatorial Guinea on Wednesday to visit three cities, opened his day with an event in Mongomo, on the eastern border with Gabon on the edge of the Congo Basin rainforest.
During a Mass in the largest religious structure in Central Africa, Leo urged Equatorial Guineans “to serve the common good rather than private interests, bridging the gap between the privileged and the disadvantaged.”
The pope, who has debuted a forceful new speaking style during the Africa tour, also decried poor treatment of “prisoners who are often forced to live in troubling hygienic and sanitary conditions”.
VICE PRESIDENT, KNOWN FOR GLAMOROUS LIFESTYLE, AT MASS
In attendance for the event at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception were Obiang and his son, Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, widely known as Teodorin, who has for years documented his glamorous lifestyle on Instagram.
In October 2017, Teodorin was convicted of embezzlement in France during a trial in absentia, and the court ordered the confiscation of more than 100 million euros ($117 million) worth of his assets.
The Vatican said roughly 100,000 people had gathered inside and outside the basilica to see Leo on Wednesday, pressing in around a colonnade modelled after St. Peter’s Square in Rome.
They danced and screamed as his white popemobile arrived. Organizers released gold, white, green and red smoke in the air, nodding to the colours of the Vatican and Equatorial Guinea flags.
Mairano Nve, 70, said he was excited to see Leo. “It is a huge joy to have the pope visiting us,” said Nve. “He just wants to see us and give us a blessing in the name of Jesus.”
POPE TO HEAR FROM PRISONERS
Activists were hoping Leo would draw attention to the deportees sent from the U.S. to Equatorial Guinea.
A group of 70 NGOs published an open letter on Monday calling on Leo to push for “fair, humane and lawful treatment” of the deportees, saying they were being pressured to return to their home countries.
At the facility in Bata that Leo was expected to visit on Wednesday afternoon, detainees are regularly held for years without access to lawyers, Amnesty International says.
The government dismisses criticism of its justice system and says it has an open democracy.
More than 70% of Equatorial Guinea’s population of 1.8 million identify as Catholic.
Leo, who is the first pope to visit since 1982, is at the end of one of the most complicated overseas tours ever arranged for a pontiff. He has traversed nearly 18,000 km (11,185 miles) across 18 flights to 11 cities in four countries.
The pope will also pray in Bata at the site of a series of explosions in 2021 at a military barracks that killed more than 100 people, which the government blamed on poor storage of ordnance.
Human rights activists have called for an independent investigation into the incident, so far in vain.
($1 = 0.8527 euros)
(Reporting by Joshua McElwee; Editing by Robbie Corey-Boulet and Gareth Jones)
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