Pope Leo XIV Calls for Justice in Angola Mass for 100,000 Outside Luanda

Pope Leo XIV opened a day of his African odyssey in Angola by calling on Angolans to fight the “scourge of corruption” with a culture of justice as he began Mass outside Luanda for an estimated 100,000 people.

“People walk by the Church of Our Lady of Muxima in Muxima, Angola, Saturday, April 11, 2026, which Pope Leo XIV will visit during his 11-day pastoral visit to Africa”

Crux

The AP report said Leo denounced “the exploitation of their mineral-rich land and people,” noting that Angolans “still bear the scars of a brutal, post-independence civil war.”

Crux

Speaking in Kilamba, a Chinese-built development about 25 kilometers (15 miles) outside the capital, Leo said, “We wish to build a country where old divisions are overcome once and for all, where hatred and violence disappear, and where the scourge of corruption is healed by a new culture of justice and sharing,” according to the AP account.

The Inquirer similarly described Leo’s Mass for an estimated 100,000 people in Kilamba and repeated the same call to fight corruption with justice.

The Devdiscourse report framed the trip as a call for justice and reflection on the slave trade, saying Leo urged Angolans to combat corruption with justice during his visit.

In the same AP account, Leo also praised a cease-fire in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah as a “sign of hope” that he prayed would bring peace permanently to the Middle East.

Later Sunday, the AP said Leo would celebrate the Rosary prayer at the Sanctuary of Mama Muxima, described as an important Catholic shrine on the edge of the Kwanza River about 110 kilometers (70 miles) south of Luanda.

The pilgrimage’s focal point is the Sanctuary of Mama Muxima and the Church of Our Lady of Muxima, which the AP and Inquirer described as a hub in the slave trade where enslaved Africans were gathered to be baptized by Portuguese priests before being forced to walk to the port of Luanda to be put on ships to the Americas.

The AP said the church was “built by Portuguese colonizers at the end of the 16th century as part of a fortress complex,” and it added that the shrine remains Angola’s most popular Catholic shrine today while its history is “emblematic of the Catholic Church’s role in the slave trade.”

Devdiscourse

The Inquirer repeated that the Church of Our Lady of Muxima became “a hub in the slave trade” and described the same sequence of baptism and forced walking to Luanda.

Crux added further detail, saying the church was built at the end of the 16th century as part of a fortress complex and “became a hub in the slave trade,” while also noting that it is “on the edge of the Kwanza River.”

Crux also said the Portuguese colonizers were emboldened by “15th-century directives from the Vatican that authorized them to enslave non-Christians,” and it described the last leg of the journey as “the last 145 kilometers (90 miles) to Angola’s main port of Luanda.”

The AP and Inquirer both tied the visit to the Creole ancestors of the first U.S.-born pope, saying genealogical research connects those ancestors to enslaved people and slave owners.

The AP quoted Anthea Butler, a senior fellow at the Koch Center, Oxford University, saying, “For Black Catholics, Pope Leo’s visit to the Muxima shrine is an important moment of healing,” and it also linked that healing to slavery and the “Code Noir.”

The sources place the Muxima visit within a longer argument about papal authorization for slavery and colonial seizure of land.

“Pope Leo XIV heads to Catholic shrine in Angola that was a center of African slave trade The Muxima visit is particularly significant because the Creole ancestors of the first U”

Inquirer

The AP and Inquirer both described how Angola’s Portuguese colonizers were “emboldened by 15th-century directives from the Vatican that authorized them to enslave non-Christians,” and they cited Pope Nicholas V’s 1452 bull Dum Diversas.

In the AP account, Rev. Christopher J. Kellerman, a Jesuit priest and author of “All Oppression Shall Cease: A History of Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Catholic Church,” said the bull gave the Portuguese king and his successors the right “to invade, conquer, fight and subjugate” and take possessions, including land, of “Saracens, and pagans, and other infidels, and enemies of the name of Christ.”

The AP also quoted the bull’s permission “to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery,” and it said Dum Diversas and another bull issued three years later, Romanus Pontifex, formed the basis of the Doctrine of Discovery.

The AP added that the Vatican in 2023 “formally repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery,” but it “never formally rescinded, abrogated or rejected the bulls themselves.”

The AP said the Vatican insists that a later bull, Sublimis Deus in 1537, reaffirmed that Indigenous peoples “shouldn’t be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, and were not to be enslaved.”

Kellerman also told the AP that “most of the 12.5 million Africans who were direct victims of the trans-Atlantic slave trade were sold into slavery by other Africans and were not captured by Europeans,” while also saying that at the time of building Muxima, “the Portuguese were doing both — buying enslaved people and colonizing/slave raiding.”

Beyond the historical record, the sources include voices from Black Catholic scholarship, African clergy, and academics about what the Rosary at Muxima could mean.

The AP quoted Anthea Butler saying, “For Black Catholics, Pope Leo’s visit to the Muxima shrine is an important moment of healing,” and it connected that healing to the “Code Noir,” which Butler said required slaves purchased by Catholic owners to be baptized in the church.

The Killeen Daily Herald

Crux quoted Father Celestino Epalanga, a priest with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Angola, saying, “For me, the pope going there to pray the Rosary … he will give that place a new significance,” and he added, “We have to give it a new sense. To make this place sacred instead of being a place of evil.”

Crux also quoted Mariana Candido, a professor of history at Emory University in Atlanta, describing the symbolic complexity of turning a place linked to “such an immoral act like Muxima” into a pilgrimage site, and she said, “I can see how this is a way of connecting to Catholics in Angola, and making the Church more in sync with how people are practicing Catholicism in Angola and in African countries.”

Another voice in Crux is Rev. Stan Chu Ilo, a Nigerian priest and professor at DePaul University in Chicago, who said he has seen evidence that the pontiff is developing connections to Africa by elevating African figures in the church, including the promotion of Monsignor Anthony Ekpo of Nigeria to a high-ranking position at the Vatican.

Chu Ilo said, “This pope is actively cultivating African presence within the church and trying to, I think, heal this policy or program of seeing Africa as just making up the numbers,” according to Crux.

The AP also described how the visit is “particularly significant” because genealogical research links the Creole ancestors of the first U.S.-born pope to enslaved people and slave owners, and it quoted Butler again about Black Catholics being Catholic because of slavery and the “Code Noir.”

The sources frame Leo’s Angola visit as both a political and religious moment with consequences for how the Catholic Church confronts its past and how Angolans interpret the symbolism of the Rosary at Muxima.

“LUANDA, Angola (AP) — Pope Leo XIV called Sunday for Angolans to fight the “scourge of corruption” with a culture of justice as he opened a poignant day in his African odyssey that will take the American pope to an epicenter of the African slave trade”

The Killeen Daily Herald

The AP said Leo’s visit is “particularly significant” because the Creole ancestors of the first U.S.-born pope include enslaved people and slave owners, and it described the shrine’s history as emblematic of the Catholic Church’s role in the slave trade and forced baptisms.

Crux

The AP also reported that the Church of Our Lady of Muxima became a hub where enslaved Africans were baptized by Portuguese priests before being forced to walk to the port of Luanda to be put on ships to the Americas, making the Rosary at the riverside esplanade next to the fortress and chapel a direct engagement with that legacy.

Crux added that the planned visit is in recognition of the shrine becoming a popular Catholic shrine after believers reported an appearance by the Virgin Mary around 1833, and it described the uncertainty around whether Leo will address slavery directly.

Crux also connected the visit to Angola’s “especially deep scars from slavery and colonialism,” saying Angola was a Portuguese colony until 1975 and that immediately after independence it “slipped into a bloody civil war” that lasted on and off for 27 years and killed more than half a million people.

The AP and Inquirer both described Leo’s call for justice and sharing as he opened his day, and the AP said he denounced exploitation and encouraged Angolans while praising the cease-fire in Lebanon as a “sign of hope.”

Devdiscourse summarized the trip as urging the Vatican to reconsider its past actions and said the visit challenges the Vatican to address its historical involvement in slavery.