Received in Kinshasa by thousands of people, he called for an end to the unbridled exploitation of natural resources in Africa and demanded that foreign interests stop dividing the country. "There is a notion – which comes from the unconscious of so many cultures and people – that Africa must be exploited. This is terrible. Political exploitation has given rise to an 'economic colonialism' and an equally enslaving one", he said before Government officials and members of the body diplomat in the gardens of the National Palace in Kinshasa.
"The poison of greed has stained the country's diamonds with blood. Stop suffocating. Africa is not a mine to be exploited, nor a land to be plundered," he appealed.
In the presidential palace, next to the pope, the country's head of state, Felix Tshisekedi, criticized "the complicit silence" of the international community in the face of attacks perpetrated in the east of the country by terrorist groups "armed by foreign powers".
