Multiple million Congolese sang, danced and prayed with Pope Francis this morning, Feb. 1, as he presided over a Zaire-style Roman-rite Mass for justice and peace within the Democratic Republic of Congo. In his homily, the pope presented a roadmap to peace.
It was a festive occasion and the one public Mass that Francis will rejoice during his four-day visit here. He looked joyful as he drove amongst them in his popemobile, before presiding at a Mass, which he concelebrated with the bishops from the country’s 48 dioceses in French and Lingala. The celebration was enriched by traditional dancing by young girls and a strong choir of 700 wearing white and yellow robes. Prayers were recited in French, Lingala, Kikongo, Tshiluba and Swahili.
[Explainer: What is the Zaire rite—and why is Pope Francis talking about it now?]
Because the people waited for him to drive amongst them within the popemobile before the Mass, I spoke to a few of them, including Ms. Mutita Clotildi and Ms. Micheline Mpunav, two professors from Lubumbashi, the country’s second-largest city within the southeast. “Pope Francis is a parent who has come to go to his sick children; he involves calm the fear in our cities, to calm the fear within the hearts of our kids,” Ms. Clotildi said. Ms. Mpunav added: “We now have great need of his visit because our country is so divided. We’re convinced that he can contribute to bringing peace because he’s a person of God.”
Multiple million Congolese sang, danced and prayed with Pope Francis as he presided over a Zaire-style Roman-rite Mass for justice and peace within the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“Pope Francis is the bishop of all of the faithful, from Kinshasa to Rome and all world wide,” the Rev. Abbé Mertens Diansuka, a priest from the Archdiocese of Kinshasa, said. “We hope that his visit will help to reconcile all of the people of this land, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, because he has not only come for the Catholics. We hope that his visit will even help other countries to be more peaceful.”
Francis drew warm applause from the gang, which included President Felix Tshisekedi and members of the federal government and parliament, when he began his homily with some words of their native language, “Bandeko, bobóto [Brothers and sisters, peace be with you].” They applauded again when using one other word, “esengo,” meaning joy. He told them, “It’s an ideal joy for me to come across you. I actually have very much looked forward to this moment.… Thanks for being here!”
Speaking in Italian with ongoing translation in French, he commented on the Gospel of the day that recalled the good joy the disciples experienced on the evening of Easter and the way this joy exploded “once they saw the Lord” (Jn 20:20). Francis noted that “on this atmosphere of joy and wonder, the risen Jesus speaks to them…4 easy words: “Peace be with you!” (v. 19).
Francis then proceeded in his homily to give attention to the theme of peace. He recalled that “Jesus comes and proclaims peace, at the same time as his disciples’ hearts were downcast. He publicizes life, at the same time as they felt surrounded by death.”
He applied that Easter message to the situation within the Democratic Republic of Congo and said, “Brothers and sisters, with Jesus, evil never wins, evil never has the last word.”
Francis told the million Congolese gathered before him that Jesus has shown “three sources” from which “to nurture peace”: “forgiveness, community and mission.”
Francis told the million Congolese gathered before him that Jesus has shown “three sources” from which “to nurture peace”: “forgiveness, community and mission.”
First, he said, “we consider that Jesus all the time gives us the potential for being forgiven and starting over, but additionally the strength to forgive ourselves, others and history! That’s what Christ wants. He desires to anoint us together with his forgiveness, to provide us peace and the courage to forgive others in turn, the courage to grant others an ideal amnesty of the center.”
He said that this will be “an excellent time for all of you on this country who call yourselves Christians but engage in violence” because “the Lord is telling you: ‘Lay down your arms; embrace mercy.’” He encouraged them and the oppressed people of the land, “Give Christ the prospect to heal your heart, hand your past over to him, together with all of your fears and troubles.”
Francis said “community” is the second source for nurturing peace. He reminded them, “There is no such thing as a Christianity without community, just as there isn’t a peace without fraternity.” He urged them to construct a community by searching for “what unites” not “what divides” and to “exit into the world not for themselves but for others; not to achieve attention but to supply hope; to not earn approval but to spend their lives joyfully for the Lord and for others.”
Pope Francis: “The Lord is telling you: ‘Lay down your arms; embrace mercy.”
He called on them to “resist the lure of power and money and never give in to divisiveness, to the temptations of careerism that corrode the community.” He called on them “to share with the poor” because “that’s the perfect antidote against the temptations of divisiveness and worldliness.”
Lastly, Pope Francis pointed to “mission” because the third “source of peace.” He told the Congolese Christians: “We’re called to be missionaries of peace, and this can bring us peace.” He said, “We’d like to search out room in our hearts for everybody; to consider that ethnic, regional, social and spiritual differences are secondary and never obstacles; that others are our brothers and sisters, members of the identical human community; and that the peace brought into the world by Jesus is supposed for everybody.”
Pope Francis concluded his homily with words of encouragement to the Congolese: “Peace be with you, Jesus says today to each family, community, ethnic group, neighborhood, and city on this great country.” He urged them to take heed to these words of Jesus and to “decide to be witnesses of forgiveness, builders of community, people charged with a mission of peace in our world.”
•••
After celebrating a joyful Mass, Pope Francis moved to the nunciature, where he listened to the gut-wrenching testimonies of six victims who had suffered great violence and inhumanity within the conflict-torn east of the country.
He heard a young man tell how he had watched his father being cut to pieces and his mother raped. He listened to a young woman recount how on the age of 16 she and others were raped over and over a day by groups of armed men who forced her and them to eat the bodies of individuals they’d killed. He heard how young women were mutilated and saw what remained of their hands.
He listened in silence as they laid the instruments of their torturers on the foot of the cross and said they forgave those that had done such evil to them. He caressed and blessed each of them. He listened with head bowed as they thanked him for coming to console them and listen to their testimonies after which sang the Hail Mary.
Pope Francis experienced great pain as he listened to the gut-wrenching testimonies of six victims who had suffered great violence and inhumanity within the conflict-torn east of the country.
Speaking with emotion, Francis thanked them for his or her testimonies and courage. He said he was shocked at hearing “the inhumane violence that you’ve got seen along with your eyes and personally experienced. We’re left without words; we are able to only weep in silence.” He named the places where they got here from—Bunia, Beni-Butembo, Goma, Masisi, Rutshuru, Bukavu, Uvira—and lamented that the international media “rarely mention” those places where “so a lot of our brothers and sisters…have been held hostage to the whims of the powerful, those with essentially the most potent weapons, weapons that proceed to flow into.”
He told these inhabitants of the eastern D.R.C.:
I’m near you. Your tears are my tears; your pain is my pain. To each family that grieves or is displaced by the burning of villages and other war crimes, to the survivors of sexual violence and to each injured child and adult, I say: I’m with you; I would like to bring you God’s caress. He gazes upon you with tenderness and compassion. While the violent treat you as pawns, our heavenly Father sees your dignity, and to every of you he says: “You’re precious in my sight, and honoured, and I really like you” (Is 43:4).
On his first day here, Francis had denounced the country’s “forgotten genocide.” Today, he spoke with equal force and said, “In God’s name, I condemn the armed violence, the massacres, the rapes, the destruction and occupation of villages, and the looting of fields and cattle that proceed to be perpetrated within the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”
He likewise condemned “the murderous, illegal exploitation of the wealth of this country, and the attempts to fragment the country with the intention to control it” and denounced “the insecurity, violence and war that tragically affect so many persons are disgracefully fueled not only by outside forces but additionally from inside, for the sake of pursuing private interests and advantage.”
He told these victims and the countless other victims within the east, “I humbly bow my head and, with pain in my heart, ask [God] to forgive the violence of man against man.” He asked God to “have mercy on us! Console the victims and those that suffer,” to “convert the hearts of those that perform brutal atrocities” and to “open the eyes of those that refuse to see these abominations or walk away from them.”
Appealing “to all the inner and external organizations that orchestrate war within the Democratic Republic of the Congo with the intention to plunder, scourge and destabilize the country,” he said, “You’re enriching yourselves through the illegal exploitation of this country’s goods and thru the brutal sacrifice of innocent victims.” He called on them to “take heed to the cry of their blood, open your ears to the voice of God, who calls you to conversion, and to the voice of your conscience: Put away your weapons, put an end to war. Enough! Stop getting wealthy at the fee of the poor, stop getting wealthy from resources and money stained with blood!”
