Pope preaches peace, cooperation, resilience to a Congo ‘gasping for breath’

CINDY WOODEN Catholic News Service

KINSHASA, Congo (CNS) -- The people of Congo are more precious than any of the gems or minerals found in the earth beneath their feet, yet they have been slaughtered by warmongers and exploited by prospectors, Pope Francis said.

“This country, so immense and full of life, this diaphragm of Africa, struck by violence like a blow to the stomach, has seemed for some time to be gasping for breath,” the pope said Jan. 31 at a meeting with Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi and other government leaders.

Poverty, internal displacement, crime and violence plague the Congolese people. The United Nations and human rights organizations say more than 100 armed groups are operating in the country, sowing terror particularly in the east.

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Francis said. Speaking to a crowd gathered in St. Peter’s Square for his weekly Angelus prayer Jan. 29, the pope said he was “greatly pained” to learn of the death of 10 Palestinians killed during an Israeli anti-terrorism raid Jan. 26 and a shooting outside of a Jerusalem synagogue that killed seven Israelis Jan. 27.

Pope Francis noted that “dozens of Palestinians have been killed in firefights with the Israeli army” since the start of the year, and he called on the Israeli and Palestinian governments to “immediately” find a way to end the violence with “dialogue and the sincere search for peace.”

“Diamonds are usually rare,” he said, “yet here they are abundant. If that is true of the material wealth hidden in the soil, it is even more true of the spiritual wealth present within your hearts,” he said.

“For it is from hearts that peace and development are born, because, with God’s help, men and women are capable of justice and of forgiveness, of concord and reconciliation, of commitment and perseverance in putting to good use the many talents they have received.”

“May violence and hatred no longer find room in the heart or on the lips of anyone, since these are inhuman and un-Christian sentiments that arrest development and bring us back to a gloomy past,” he said. Referencing both the loss of life and the term for diamonds mined to finance conflict, the pope said that “the poison of greed has smeared (Congo’s) diamonds