Pope Francis on Wednesday urged people in the Democratic Republic of Congo to grant each other a “great amnesty of the heart” and called on Christians engaged in the battle to lay down their arms.

Decades of armed conflicts in DR Congo have led to the killing of millions.

Mr Francis said God wanted the people to find “the courage to grant others a great amnesty of the heart,” adding “what great good it does us to cleanse our hearts of anger and remorse, of every trace of resentment and hostility!”

On the first full day of his trip – his third to sub-Saharan Africa as pope – Mr Francis presided at an open-air mass for a crowd local authorities estimated at more than a million people on the grounds of a secondary airport in the capital Kinshasa.

At the sprawling site on Wednesday, his popemobile moved slowly on the runway, with hundreds of thousands of people singing and dancing on either side before he began a mass from a large altar platform.

Many women wore dresses with his picture emblazoned on them, as is customary in many African countries to honour dignitaries. Children climbed on a disused plane for a better view.

The Congolese, the pope said in his homily, were suffering from “wounds that ache, continually infected by hatred and violence, while the medicine of justice and the balm of hope never seem to arrive.”

Armed conflict has left 5.7 million people internally displaced and 26 million facing severe hunger, according to the United Nations.

Eastern Congo has been plagued by violence connected to the long and complex fallout from the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda. Congo accuses Rwanda of backing the M23 rebel group fighting government troops in the east. Rwanda denies this.

About half of Congo’s population of 90 million are Roman Catholics, and in his homily, Mr Francis addressed them as well as other Christians involved in the fighting.

“May it be a good time 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 pope said.

Thousands of people had spent the night praying at the airport in the build-up to the service.

“The country is not well. There are divisions, hatred, and lots of massacres, especially in the east. After the pope’s homily, I hope peace will return,” said Patrick Mukaba, a 35-year-old lawyer, who was there with his wife, Laetitia.

Congo has some of the world’s richest deposits of diamonds, gold and other precious metals, but its wealth has stoked conflict between government troops, militias and foreign invaders, as well as driving exploitation and abuses.

The pope will meet victims of violence from the eastern part of Congo later on Wednesday.

Thursday will be his last full day in Congo before he departs on Friday for neighbouring South Sudan, another country grappling with conflict and hunger, on Friday morning.

For the South Sudan visit, he will be with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of Scotland Moderator, an unprecedented joint foreign trip by the three Christian leaders. 

(Reuters/NAN)