Hands off Africa, Pope Francis tells rich world

Pope Francis has said the rich world needs to realise that people are more precious than the minerals in the earth beneath them.

Tens of thousands of people cheered as the Pope travelled from the airport into the capital Kinshasa in his popemobile, with some breaking away to chase it while others chanted and waved flags.

But the joyous mood, one of the most vibrant welcomes of his foreign trips, turned sombre when the 86-year-old pope spoke to dignitaries at the presidential palace.

He condemned “terrible forms of exploitation, unworthy of humanity” in Congo, where vast mineral wealth has fuelled war, displacement and hunger.”

“Hands off the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Hands off Africa. Stop choking Africa: it is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered,” Francis said.

Congo has some of the world’s richest deposits of diamonds, gold, copper, cobalt, tin, tantalum, and lithium, but those have stoked conflict between militias, government troops, and foreign invaders.

Mining has also been linked to the inhumane exploitation of workers, including children and environmental degradation.

“It is a tragedy that these lands, and more generally the whole African continent, continue to endure various forms of exploitation,” the pope said, reading his speech in Italian while seated.

“The poison of greed has smeared its diamonds with blood,” he said, referring to Congo specifically.

Compounding the country’s problems, eastern Congo has been plagued by violence connected to the long and complex fallout from the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda.

Congo accuses Rwanda of backing the M23 rebel group fighting government troops in the east. Rwanda denies this.