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On the third day of his Angolan visit, Leo travelled more than 800 kilometres east of Luanda to Saurimo, the capital of Lunda-Sul province — an isolated, historically marginalised region bordering the country's diamond-producing north-east. He toured the city of roughly 220,000 residents by popemobile to large crowds and visited a facility housing around sixty elderly people who had been abandoned by their families or subjected to violence, where residents greeted him in colourful dress, waving white scarves and singing. During the visit, he called on Angolans to resist what he described as the "scourge of corruption."
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Leo made the planned helicopter journey to the Sanctuary of Mama Muxima on Sunday, where he prayed the Rosary at the simple whitewashed church with blue trim that Portuguese colonisers built in the late 16th century as part of a fortress complex. Speaking in Portuguese, he acknowledged the site as a place "where, for centuries, many men and women have prayed in times of joy and also in moments of sorrow and great suffering in the history of this country." The sanctuary, set among baobab trees on the edge of the Kwanza River, became a major Marian pilgrimage site after believers reported an apparition of the Virgin Mary around 1833. The visit carried personal resonance for Leo, whose own family history includes both enslaved people and slave owners.
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The open-air Mass in Kilamba drew an estimated 100,000 worshippers, a figure that underscores the scale of Leo's reception in the country. In his homily, the pope specifically denounced the exploitation of Angola's mineral wealth, connecting the country's resource extraction to broader patterns of historical injustice he has raised throughout the African tour.
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Tens of thousands of faithful gathered in Kilamba, a town on the outskirts of Luanda, on Sunday for an open-air Mass at which Leo urged Angolans to overcome the "divisions" and "corruption" rooted in the country's civil war-scarred past, which he said had brought "enmity and division, squandered resources and poverty." "Today, there is a need to look to the future with hope and to build that hope. Do not be afraid to do so," he told the crowd. Angola's stop is the third leg of a tour that began in Algeria and Cameroon and will conclude in Equatorial Guinea. Despite the country's status as one of Africa's top producers of crude oil and diamonds, around a third of its population of 36.6 million lives in poverty — a contradiction that Leo's remarks directly addressed and that many in the congregation said drew them to seek his message.
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At the presidential palace meeting, Leo used the specific term
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Pope Leo XIV arrived at Luanda's 4 de Fevereiro International Airport at approximately 2:45 p.m. local time, where he was formally received by President João Lourenço alongside the country's religious authorities. He departed the airport roughly 45 minutes later, travelling through the city's main arteries toward the presidential palace, where his meeting with Lourenço took place. Crowds who had waited for hours under intense heat lined the route to greet the motorcade.
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Trump's attack on Leo on Monday came in response to the pope's recent criticism of the US-Israeli military operation in Iran, with the US president branding him
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Speaking directly to Angolan President João Lourenço and gathered dignitaries, Leo challenged the country's leaders to break what he called a "cycle of interests" that has plundered Africa for centuries. He also addressed reporters aboard his flight from Cameroon, expressing regret that his remarks — including a speech in Cameroon denouncing "tyrants" ransacking the world — had been widely read as a direct rebuke of Donald Trump, insisting he had no desire to engage in a public dispute with the US president. On Sunday, Leo is scheduled to travel by helicopter to the village of Muxima, roughly 130 kilometres south-east of Luanda, to visit a 16th-century Portuguese-built church that served as a site where enslaved people were baptised before being shipped to the Americas and remains one of Africa's most significant Marian pilgrimage sites.
Pope Leo XIV touched down in Luanda, the Angolan capital, on Saturday afternoon as part of an 11-day, four-nation African tour that has placed the pontiff at the centre of global debate over war, corruption, and the exploitation of the continent's resources. He is only the third pope to visit Angola, following John Paul II in 1992 and Benedict XVI in 2009, and his arrival was met with widespread anticipation in a country where roughly 44 percent of the population identifies as Catholic. Billboards bearing his image have been erected across Luanda, and residents describe the visit as carrying deep symbolic weight. "His visit to our country is very important… it shows Angola is a blessed nation," said Luanda resident Sonia Sophia.
Angola's history lends particular resonance to Leo's calls for peace. The country endured a brutal 27-year civil war that erupted following independence from Portugal in 1975 and ended only in 2002. Despite vast reserves of oil and diamonds, one-third of the population continues to live below the poverty line, and the country is recovering from devastating floods in recent weeks that have left dozens dead. Leo is scheduled to celebrate an open-air Mass in Kilamba, a developing district on the outskirts of Luanda, before travelling by helicopter to Muxima, home to a 16th-century Marian shrine that remains a major pilgrimage site where the faithful pray for continued peace. He will then visit Saurimo, a city in the diamond-rich east of Angola — a journey laden with symbolism given the stark contrast between the region's mineral wealth and the poverty of its residents.
The visit arrives at a politically sensitive moment for Angola, with elections approaching and President João Lourenço constitutionally barred from standing again. Leo is also expected to support Angola's role as a regional mediator, particularly in ongoing peace efforts in central Africa. His broader African tour has already seen him urge Cameroon's leaders to confront corruption and denounce "those who, in the name of profit, continue to seize the African continent to exploit and plunder it."
The tour has unfolded alongside a sharp public dispute with United States President Donald Trump, who has called the 70-year-old pope "weak on crime" and "terrible for foreign policy" after Leo appealed for peace in the Middle East. Trump also shared an AI-generated image depicting himself in a Jesus-like pose, drawing rebukes from religious leaders across denominations. Leo responded by saying he was unafraid of Trump and would continue to speak against war, telling reporters the world was "being ravaged by a handful of tyrants." Trump, for his part, said he reserved the right to disagree with the pontiff, while US Vice President JD Vance urged the Vatican to "stick to matters of morality."
After his Angolan engagements, Leo will fly to Equatorial Guinea, the final stop of a tour spanning roughly 18,000 kilometres. For many Angolans, the visit represents not only a moment of spiritual communion but a rare spotlight on a nation still navigating the long aftermath of conflict and the challenges of turning resource wealth into broad-based prosperity.
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