Pope Leo listens to harrowing tales of Cameroon’s war victims

The warmth of the Pope’s reception in Bamenda, which is the epicenter of Cameroon’s separatist violence, was palpable, even while the underlying trauma of the region was impossible to ignore. Archbishop Andrew Nkea welcomed the Pontiff with biblical imagery, comparing the visit to the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth.

“Today we feel like Elizabeth, when Mary the Mother of Christ went to visit her and she exclaimed, “Who am I to be honored with a visit from the mother of my Lord”.

“People of Bamenda, who are we that the Vicar of Christ will come down to visit us in our lowliness? Nkea asked.

“Today, seeing the Holy Father among us, we feel the words of St. Peter being addressed to us, the people of Bamenda when he said: “You are a chosen race, a royal Priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart to sing the praises of Yahweh who called you out of darkness into his own wonderful light” (1Pet. 2:9)”

Ten years of war and death

The archbishop recounted the horrors of the last ten years: thousands internally displaced, children used as “political bait” and denied education for four years, and priests, religious, and bishops harassed, kidnapped, or killed.

“Many women have been rendered widows, children orphaned, and many people rendered homeless by this crisis,” Archbishop Nkea said.

Ten years of fighting have left at least 6500 people dead and over a million others displaced, with more than 1.8 million people now requiring humanitarian assistance.

It is a crisis due to decades of injustice and marginalization, with Cameroon’s English-speaking people of the Northwest and Southwest regions complaining that they had always been considered by the predominantly French-speaking administration in Yaoundé as second-class citizens.

The pent-up frustration burst into the open in 2016 when teachers and lawyers from the two regions took to the streets in peaceful protests over the use of French in Anglophone schools and courts. The government took a hard line, triggering the growth of a separatist group that took up arms to fight for the independence of the two regions and the formation of a new country called Ambazonia.

Behind the statistics about abductions, kidnappings, and killings, however, are real people whose testimonies Pope Leo patiently listened to as they shared their stories.

Voices of the victims

The real texture of the conflict in the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon emerged through the voices of two witnesses: a nun who had stared into the abyss of the bush to which she was taken, and a father of three who had lost everything but his dignity.

First to the microphone came Sister Carine Tangiri Mangu, a member of the Sisters of Saint Anne.

“Most Holy Father,” she began, her voice steady but strained, “the consecrated women of the ecclesiastical province of Bamenda are delighted to have you among us. This is a great consolation for us who have been working among the poor.”

Sister Carine spoke of their daily mission of working “among the poor and destitute of our communities.”

This work, she said, includes running hospitals and schools, carrying out social works and offering support “to the traumatized.”

She then pivoted to the horror and trauma that religious such as herself face daily while carrying out their duties.

“Since the start of this crisis, we do our work with a lot of fear and great insecurity,” she confessed. She recounted the specific terror of November 14, 2025, a day whose memory remains etched in her mind.

She and a fellow sister, Mediatrix, were traveling from Bamenda back to Elak -Oku where they teach at a Catholic primary school. It was near the village of Babugo that their journey was interrupted.

“We were abducted by some gunmen… carried into the bush where we were held hostage for three days and three nights,” she told the Pope.

The specifics of their captivity painted a grim picture of psychological torment. There was no food, no sleep, and no dignity. Instead, they were endlessly ferried on motorbikes through the dead of night—sometimes as late as 1:00 am—shuttled between hiding spots to escape detection. Their abductors saw only profit in them, demanding contact numbers for ransom and reducing women dedicated to serving the poor to nothing more than tradable goods.

“We went on hunger strike,” Sister Carine recalls, a spark of defiance in her recounting. “We explained to our captors that we were just doing our work for the poor people.”

In those three desperate days, surrounded by armed men, it was not negotiations that kept them alive, but prayer.

 “What kept our hope alive was the rosary, which we prayed continuously for those days,” she said. They were released only after negotiations, but the shadow of the bush remains long after the physical release.

She looked up at Pope Leo, not just as a spiritual leader, but as a father figure.

“Some have undergone more dramatic and more traumatizing experiences,” she acknowledged, thinking of the many other religious women living in this war zone.

 “But we continue to rely on the help of God.”  In a moment of profound vulnerability, the nun added a personal footnote to her public testimony.

“Most Holy Father, may I also ask that you kindly pray for the eternal repose of the soul of my mother, who passed away a few days ago.” It was a reminder that even amidst the narratives of war, individual, private griefs continue to mount.

Following Sister Carine, the microphone was passed on to Mr. Dennis Salo. He stood with his wife and three children, a living portrait of displacement.

“It is said that every dark cloud has a silver lining,” Dennis began, his tone mixing disbelief with gratitude.

 “I could never dream one day that in my life I would speak to the Holy Father.”

Dennis recalled a life he lived before the war turned everything upside down. He comes from Mbiame in the Kumbo diocese, an area considered a hotbed of the separatist conflict. Once a thriving businessman, his world was shattered when violence erupted in 2017.

The violence, he said, was intimate and brutal.

“Five of my neighbors were killed, and one of my close friends was also killed as well,” he recounted.

Caught in the crossfire between separatist fighters and government soldiers—who he said burned down houses—Dennis made the impossible choice to flee.

” I escaped with my family out of Mbiame, abandoning all that I owned.”

He listed the losses like a litany of sorrows: houses, farms, animals. His children were torn from their classrooms.

“My kids had to abandon school,” he said, the pain of a father robbed of his children’s future evident in his voice.

The Salo family’s odyssey of displacement took them first to Douala, the economic capital, where they hoped to find a “lively home.” But the city offered little comfort. Finding nothing better, they returned to Bamenda.

“I now live in a little rented house with my entire family,” Dennis told the Pope. The wholesale businessman is now reduced to working two menial jobs to survive: as a gateman at the Hospital of Maria Soledad, and as a gardener in the Parish of the Immaculate Conception, in Ngomgham.

Mr. Salo spoke to the Pope with the quiet resilience of a man who has endured the storm and found the harbor.

“Thank you, Holy Father, for coming to console us,” he said.

Pope Leo’s message of hope

“Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,” the Pope began, his voice warm and resonant.

 “As a pilgrim of peace and unity, it is a joy for me to visit your region, and above all, to share in your journey, your struggles, and your hopes.”

Speaking to the ugliness of the lived reality of the people of Bamenda, Leo recited the Psalm that states, “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit.”

“Brothers and sisters, there are many situations in life that break our hearts and plunge us into sorrow.”

He cataloged the wounds of the land: the gnawing poverty exacerbated by a food crisis, the “moral, social, and political corruption” that rotted the management of wealth, and the collapse of institutions meant to educate and heal.

“We see also the serious problems affecting the education and healthcare systems, as well as large-scale migration to foreign countries, particularly of young people,” he said.

The Pope’s voice grew sharper, taking on an edge of righteous indignation. He looked beyond the internal struggles to the forces acting upon them from the outside.

“Added to these internal problems … is the damage caused from outside by those who, in the name of profit, continue to lay their hands on the African continent to exploit and plunder it.”

“All of this can make us feel powerless and diminish our confidence,” Pope Leo acknowledged. “Yet this is the moment to change, to transform the story of this country.”

Emphasizing the urgency of the moment, Pope Leo said the time had come “to restore the mosaic of unity by bringing together the diversity and riches of the country and of the continent.”

He warned against the temptation to accept violence and poverty as the “normal course of events.”

 Instead, he pointed them toward the Word of the Lord, which he described as a spark capable of stirring hearts and challenging the status quo.

“God is newness,” he proclaimed. “God creates new things. God makes us courageous people who, by confronting evil, build up the good.”

He urged the population to obey God rather than human authority, explaining that true freedom was found in the “obedience of faith.”

“Obeying God is not an act of submission that oppresses us,” he explained. “On the contrary, obedience to God sets us free because it means entrusting our lives to Him and allowing His Word to inspire our way of thinking and acting.”

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