APTOPIX Angola Africa Pope

There is a case to be made that Pope Leo XIV found his voice on his epic and ongoing trip through Africa. He has been criticizing the “handful of tyrants” and “chains of corruption” that have held parts of the continent hostage for centuries. But Leo has been preaching this kind of message for a while, including in the context of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. It just took U.S. President Donald Trump’s unprecedented broadside and Vice President JD Vance’s claims of theological superiority for many people to pay attention, especially American Catholics.

Pope Leo XIV has denounced the “colonization” of minerals and the “lust for power” in Equatorial Guinea at the end of his four-nation African trip. The country's repressive leader has been in office since 1979. Crowds in the largely Catholic country lined the road from the airport on Tuesday, cheering the first pope to visit since St. John Paul II in 1982. The former Spanish colony on Africa’s western coast is one of the countries on the continent that's been paid millions of dollars in deals with the Trump administration to receive migrants deported from the U.S.