On the fifth day of his Apostolic Journey across Africa, Pope Leo celebrates Mass for 120,000 people in Douala, and tells university students in Yaoundé to cultivate “holy restlessness”.
On Friday, a day after condemning corruption and calling for peace in the North-western city of Bamenda, Pope Leo addressed another of Cameroon’s pressing problems: hunger.
In his homily at Mass in Douala, the country’s economic hub, the Pope said that Jesus encourages us to “look at all these hungry people, weighed down by fatigue”, and asks each one of us a question: “What will you do?”.
Pope Leo arrives for Mass (@Vatican Media)
‘There is bread for everyone’
Almost 40 percent of Cameroon’s population lives below the poverty line, and the Red Cross said in February that 3.3 million were suffering from hunger.
In his homily, the Pope reflected on the day’s Gospel reading, which narrates the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand.
Faced with the hunger of the crowds, Pope Leo said, Jesus asked his disciples how they would solve the problem – a question he today poses “to each one of us”. In the end, he emphasised, the crowd is fed through a gesture of sharing – a reminder that “there is bread for everyone if it is given to everyone.”
Nobody will go hungry, the Pope told the roughly 120,000 people in attendance, if food “is taken, not with a hand that snatches away, but with a hand that gives.”
Pope Leo celebrates Mass at Japoma stadium in Douala (@Vatican Media)
‘Holy restlessness’
After Mass, the Pope paid a private visit to a Catholic hospital, before returning to Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital city, for a visit to the Catholic University of Central Africa.
There, he delivered an in-depth reflection on the meaning of higher education, saying that in a time of increasing “individualism, superficiality and hypocrisy”, the university stands out as a privileged environment for “friendship, cooperation … interiority and reflection”.
The Pope stressed that part of a university’s mission is “to form consciences that are free”, and to encourage what he called “a holy restlessness”. He also returned to the topic of artificial intelligence, a subject he has often discussed in speeches.
The technology, Pope Leo said, “increasingly shapes and permeates our mentality”. This transformation, he noted, makes the study of the humanities all the more important, in that this form of education helps individuals to understand “the logic behind the economics, embedded biases and forms of power” at work in the AI era.
Pope Leo with the rector of the Catholic University of Central Africa (@Vatican Media)
Meeting with religious superiors
After returning to the Apostolic Nunciature, where he is staying, Pope Leo met with a group of nine religious women and men, representing the more than 250 religious institutes and congregations active in Cameroon.
According to a statement from the Holy See Press Office, the religious superiors described their charitable efforts in the country, especially their work with young people, the displaced, victims of violence and human trafficking.
The Pope then told those present that consecrated life calls for “radical courage”, in order to address the world’s “most complex problems” and bring aid to “those most in need of hope, of the love of God.”
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