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Francis in Africa 2019
Pope Francis greets the crowd before celebrating Mass at the Soamandrakizay diocesan field in Antananarivo, Madagascar, Sept. 8, 2019. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
Pope Francis traveled Sept. 4-10, 2019, to Mozambique, Madagascar and Mauritius.
Pope Francis warned Sept. 10 that ideology is "infiltrating" the religious teaching of some quarters of the U.S. Catholic Church, and said that in past centuries such infiltrations have led to schisms.
Pope Francis said Sept. 10 that the United States and the United Kingdom should respect a United Nations resolution calling on them to cede control of an Indian Ocean archipelago that includes the U.S. air base of Diego Garcia.
In an eight-hour visit, Pope Francis pointed to economic growth that he said "does not always profit everyone" and "feels the need to sacrifice human lives on the altar of speculation and profit alone."
Francis in Africa 2019: Concluding a two-day visit to this island nation, where 75% of the population of 23.6 million lives on less that $1.90 a day, the pontiff urged workers not to see their poverty as inescapable but to support each other in solidarity.
In his first remarks during a three-day visit to the country, which is the 9th poorest nation in the world and where some 90 percent of the native animals and plants exist nowhere else on Earth, the pontiff said its continued loss of biodiversity would threaten the entire planet.
Pope Francis lamented the high rate of poverty in Mozambique Sept. 6, suggesting that government officials here had become corrupted in the process of securing needed foreign assistance.
The Catholic Church's ministers – including catechists and bishops – are called to be realistic, to treasure the Christian identity and to never be afraid to move forward and try new ways to bring the Gospel to life, Pope Francis said.
"Make your future not one of conflict, but of the acknowledgement that you are all brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of a single land," Pope Francis exhorted Sept. 5, opening a six-day visit to three Southern African nations with an address at the Mozambican presidential palace.
Aboard his Sept. 4 flight from Rome to Mozambique, the pope was presented with a new book by French journalist Nicolas Senèze that details U.S. conservatives' efforts to influence his decision-making.
Pope Francis is preparing to make only his second visit to sub-Saharan Africa next month, and it appears that it could be one of the most politically delicate among his previous 30 trips abroad.
