YAOUNDE - Pope Leo XIV is to arrive in Cameroon on Wednesday, the second stage of an African tour shadowed by insults from US President Donald Trump and suicide attacks in Algeria on his first day.
The pontiff is to meet Cameroonian President Paul Biya at the start of his four-day visit to the mainly French-speaking country, before heading to a conflict zone where English-speaking separatists have been fighting the army for nearly a decade.
The planned private meeting with 93-year-old Biya, the world's oldest head of state, has split Catholics in the central Africa country, who are estimated to account for around a third of the population.
Clergy members have voiced fears it will enable Biya to burnish his image, six months after protests against his disputed re-election were violently suppressed.
Biya, who has been in power since 1982, is now on his eighth consecutive term.
On Thursday, the 70-year-old pope makes a high-security trip to Bamenda, the epicentre of the separatist insurgency, where he will pray for peace before 20,000 worshippers.
The origins of the Anglophone Crisis date back to the 1970s, when French- and English-speaking parts of Cameroon merged and the Anglophone minority began to fear the loss of its distinctive legal and cultural practices.
A brutal crackdown on protests there in 2016 lead to a full-blown conflict between the army and English-speaking separatists that has yet to be resolved.
The violence had caused more than 6,000 deaths by 2024, according to rights NGOs.
Leo began his historic visit to Africa in Algeria on Monday, where he visited the birthplace of Christian theologian Saint Augustine and celebrated mass at a basilica that draws 18,000 pilgrims each year, including Muslims and Jews.
He urged Algeria's Christians to "bear witness to the Gospel through simple gestures, genuine relationships and a dialogue lived out day by day".
Source: AFP