Pope Leo continued criticizing wars and world leaders in a speech in Cameroon on Thursday, insisting “the world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants,” after a week of attacks from President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, angered by the pope’s criticism of the war in Iran.
Pope Leo XIV speaks at Saint Joseph's Cathedral in Bamenda, Cameroon.
AFP via Getty Images
Leo spoke at a cathedral in Bamenda, an English-speaking city, after Cameroon’s English-speaking separatists declared a three-day ceasefire with the country’s French-speaking government in their ongoing conflict for the papal visit.
The pope quoted scripture, specifically the verse where Jesus Christ states “blessed are the peacemakers,” and called out “those who manipulate religion in the very name of God for their own military, economic or political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth”—which certainly sounds like a reference the Trump administration, particularly Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, though he mentioned no one by name.
The speech took place on Leo’s fourth day of an ongoing 11-day trip through Africa, which is happening as U.S. leaders continue criticizing the Catholic leader for not supporting the war in Iran.
Leo also presided over an interfaith meeting with a nun, an imam, other Christian leaders and a traditional chief, according to Vatican News, and quoted the local leaders in his speech.
In a longer speech addressing the crowd in Bamenda, Pope Leo took a moment to call out world leaders: “The masters of war pretend not to know that it takes only a moment to destroy. Yet often, a lifetime is often not enough to rebuild. They turn a blind eye to the fact that billions of dollars are spent on killing, on devastation. Yet the resources needed for healing, education and restoration are nowhere to be found. Those who rob your land of its resources generally invest much of the profit in weapons, thus perpetuating an endless cycle of destabilization and death.” The pope then called for a “decisive change of course” toward a new path. “The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants. It is being held together by a multitude of supportive brothers and sisters. They are the descendants of Abraham, as numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the seashore. Let us look into each others’ eyes—we are this immense people. Peace is not something we must invent, it is something we must embrace by accepting our neighbor as our brother and as our sister. We do not choose our brothers and sisters, we simply must accept one another. We are one family inhabiting the same home, this wonderful planet that ancient cultures have cared for over a millennia.”
Leo has repeatedly called for an end to hostilities after the U.S. and Israel launched a weeks-long campaign of air strikes against Iran on Feb. 28, a conflict that also saw the Iran launch retaliatory strikes against U.S. bases and allies in the region. On Sunday in a post on Truth Social, Trump lambasted Leo, the first American-born leader of the Catholic Church in its history, calling the pontifex “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.” The president has refused to back down from his attacks on the Catholic leader, insisting that the war in Iran was justified due to Iran’s actions against protesters and its ongoing nuclear program. Vance, a practicing Catholic, also weighed in later in the week, seemingly taking the side of the president, insisting “there are certainly things the pope has said I disagree with.”
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