KINSHASA: Over a million worshippers turned out for a papal mass in DR Congo’s capital on Wednesday, organisers said, on the second day of Pope Francis’s visit to the conflict-torn country.

Many of the faithful in Kinshasa, a deeply observant megacity of some 15 million people, began to arrive at Ndolo airport on Tuesday night to assure themselves of a spot.

Pope Francis entered the airport grounds aboard his popemobile and was greeted by singing and dancing crowds before the mass began at around 9:30am. Organisers said that over one million people were on the airport tarmac. Adrien Louka, 55, said he had arrived before dawn.

“As our country has many problems, it is reconciliation that we are looking for and the Pope will give a message so that the countries around us leave us in peace,” he added.

The attendees included Kinshasa residents as well as the Democratic Republic of Congo’s president, Felix Tshisekedi, and leading opposition politicians.

Pope Francis wished the crowd peace in Lingala, one of the DRC’s four national languages and the everyday language of Kinshasa.

The pope delivered the rest of his homily in Italian — which was translated into the DRC’s official language French — in which he urged the faithful “not to give in to divisions.” The 86-year-old pontiff had arrived in the DRC on Tuesday, on the first leg of a six-day trip to Africa that will also include troubled South Sudan.

Huge crowds had also thronged the streets for a glimpse of the popemobile as Pope Francis drove past.

A former Belgian colony the size of continental western Europe, the DRC is Africa’s most Catholic country. About 40 per cent of the population of some 100 million people follows the church of Rome, according to estimates.

Another 35pc of the population is Protestant of various denominations, nine per cent is Muslim and 10pc Kimbanguist — a Christian movement born in the Belgian Congo.

Official Vatican statistics put the proportion of Catholics in the DRC at 49pc of the population. During a speech to politicians and dignitaries in Kinshasa’s presidential palace on Tuesday, Pope Francis denounced the “economic colonialism” he suggested had wreaked lasting damage in the DRC.

“This country, massively plundered, has not benefited adequately from its immense resources,” he said, to applause.

Published in Dawn, February 2nd, 2023