![[PHOTOS] Crowd As Pope Brings Africa Tour To Angola](https://nggossips.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Pope-Leo-XIV-C-waves-from-the-Popemobile-to-the-crowd-as-he-arrives-to-lead-a-Holy-Mass-at-the-Yao.j.jpeg)
Crowds filled the streets to welcome Pope Leo XIV on Saturday as he arrived in Angola, the third leg of a landmark African tour marked by a war of words with US President Donald Trump over the Middle East conflict.
Leo is set to become the third pontiff to visit the fossil fuel-rich country, where around 44 per cent of the population identifies as Catholic, after John Paul II in 1992 and Benedict XVI in 2009.
Before his expected arrival at 1400 GMT in the capital, Luanda, where billboards bearing his beaming likeness have been put up to welcome him, Leo will wrap up his three-day trip to Cameroon with an open-air Mass at Yaounde airport.
The first pope from the United States will then meet Angola’s President Joao Lourenco and deliver a speech, the latest on a trip which has seen him sharpen his rhetoric after being targeted by Trump.
As in Cameroon, tens of thousands of worshippers are expected to flock to catch a glimpse of the head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics before his departure on Tuesday morning.
“It’s as if God were very close to us,” 40-year-old human resources manager Helena Maria Miguel said of the pope’s visit.
Leo’s increasingly vigorous calls for world peace are likely to resonate in Angola, which emerged in 2002 from a 27-year civil war that erupted in the wake of independence from Portugal in 1975.
Throughout his 11-day four-nation Africa visit, the pope has delivered pointed warnings against corruption, the plunder of the continent’s resources, and the dangers of artificial intelligence, as his tussle with Trump drags on.
Without mentioning his fellow American by name, Leo has in recent days abandoned his previous restraint to adopt a more forceful tone.
After Trump’s Catholic Vice President JD Vance urged the Vatican to “stick to matters of morality”, Leo on Thursday said the world was “being ravaged by a handful of tyrants” and piled on more criticism of those who use religion to justify war.
During his stop in Cameroon, Leo demanded the country’s leaders tackle corruption and condemned “those who, in the name of profit, continue to seize the African continent to exploit and plunder it”.
Like his calls for peace, Leo’s warnings against graft and exploitation are likely to strike a chord in Angola, where a third of the population lives below the poverty line despite its vast fossil fuel reserves.
The country’s economy is heavily dependent on oil, leaving it exposed to price fluctuations, while rampant corruption has even spread to the family of former president Jose Eduardo dos Santos.
