Equatorial Guinea — Pope Leo XIV concluded his 11-day apostolic journey across Africa on Thursday, delivering what many observers called his most pointed critique yet of authoritarian governance and human rights abuses during a visit to Equatorial Guinea’s notorious Bata prison.
The first American-born pontiff in history visited the facility in the country’s largest city, where he addressed approximately 600 inmates — including around 30 women — gathered in the freshly repainted courtyard. Speaking under rainy skies, the 70-year-old pope told detainees that justice must always promote human dignity.
“The administration of justice aims to protect society,” he said. “To be effective, however, it must always promote the dignity of every person.” His comments, while diplomatically phrased, represented a rare public criticism of conditions in a country regularly condemned by international human rights organisations.
Amnesty International has described Bata prison as a place where detainees are effectively “forgotten people,” often jailed after flawed trials and held in conditions described as inhumane. A 2023 US State Department report documented cases of torture, severe overcrowding, and deplorable sanitary conditions in Equatorial Guinea’s prisons.
The pope arrived in Equatorial Guinea after visits to Algeria, Cameroon, and Angola — a tour that saw him deliver increasingly outspoken critiques of inequality, exploitation, and the actions of unnamed “tyrants” ransacking the world. In Cameroon, he sharply condemned conflicts driven by powerful nations and warned that artificial intelligence could fuel further polarisation.
During his tour, he also made a historic visit to a slave trade shrine in Angola, where he recalled the “great suffering” of millions of Africans forcibly transported across the Atlantic. The remarks were understood as a pointed reference to Europe’s colonial past and its lasting legacy on the continent.
In Angola, the pontiff explicitly named corruption as a national challenge, telling citizens that “greater room for freedom” was needed and urging the authorities to be “in the service of law and justice.” The speech was widely noted given Angola’s long history of governance challenges.
Equatorial Guinea, a small coastal nation of two million people where 80% are Catholic, is ruled by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has been in power since 1979 — making him the world’s longest-serving non-monarchical head of state. Oil revenues have made the country relatively wealthy by regional standards, yet a large proportion of the population lives in poverty, according to Human Rights Watch.
The pope celebrated a closing mass in the capital Malabo before returning to Rome. His Africa tour — spanning 18,000 kilometres across four countries — has been one of the longest of his pontificate and was interpreted by Vatican observers as a deliberate statement about the importance of the African continent to global Catholicism.
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*Sources: France 24, Vatican News, AFP*