Pope uses Africa visit to call for peace and end to ‘economic colonialism’ 

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 Pope Francis has called on the warring sides in the Democratic Republic of Congo to “lay down” their weapons, as he addressed more than 1mn people at a huge mass in the capital Kinshasa. “For all of you in this country who call yourselves Christians but engage in violence . . . the Lord is telling you: lay down your arms, embrace mercy,” the pontiff told the crowd on Wednesday, the first official stop of a five-day tour of Africa that also takes him to South Sudan. The Pope, 86, also used his latest visit to Africa, his fifth since becoming pontiff almost 10 years ago, to condemn the exploitation of the continent that dates back to colonial times. “Hands off the Democratic Republic of the Congo, hands off Africa . . . It’s not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered,” he said after arriving on Tuesday. The Argentine-born leader of the world’s 1.3bn Catholics expressed support for the Congolese people, recalling the exploitation to which the country, a former Belgian colony, and most of Africa, have been subjected. “Political exploitation gave way to an ‘economic colonialism’ that was equally enslaving,” he said. “This country and this continent deserve to be respected and listened to.” The DRC, the third most populous nation in the sub-Saharan region and home to more than 90mn people, is a deeply Catholic country. About a fifth of the world’s Catholics now live in Africa, according to the Vatican. The country is the resource-rich heart of Africa, with enormous mineral wealth such as copper and cobalt, a key component for the global battery industry. Yet it remains one of the world’s poorest countries, according to the World Bank, in part because of brutal conflicts and the plundering of resources, but also because a corrupt elite and western companies are accused of siphoning off the nation’s natural resources. The papal visit, postponed from last year because of a knee injury suffered by the Pope, comes at a moment of high tension in the conflict-ridden eastern DRC, bordering Rwanda, an area besieged by more than 100 different rebel groups.