Overview
- In Saurimo on Monday, the pope celebrated an open-air Mass estimated at about 40,000 people and visited an elderly care home in a province shaped by diamond mining near the Catoca site.
- He told worshippers that oppression, exploitation and dishonesty betray the Christian message, reflecting a new, blunter tone that has drawn public pushback from President Donald Trump.
- The visit followed Sunday’s Kilamba liturgy near Luanda that drew about 100,000 people, where he urged Angolans to build hope, overcome divisions and fight corruption.
- Later Sunday he prayed the Rosary at the Mamã Muxima shrine, a pilgrimage site tied to the transatlantic slave trade, adding moral weight to calls for justice and reconciliation.
- Angola’s oil and diamond wealth contrasts with deep poverty, with about one-third of its 36.6 million people below the World Bank line, and developments like Chinese-built Kilamba highlighting that gap as the tour heads to Equatorial Guinea on Tuesday.