Pope Leo XIV waves as he departs after the Holy Mass at the Malabo Stadium in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, Thursday. AP-Yonhap
ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE — Pope Leo XIV urged the United States and Iran to return to talks to end the war Thursday and condemned capital punishment, in a wide-ranging press conference en route home from his trip to Africa.
Leo also asserted that countries have the right to control their borders but mustn’t treat migrants worse than “animals,” and lamented that the church’s morality teaching is often reduced to sexual issues.
Leo spoke to reporters aboard his plane. He was leaving after an 11-day, four-nation voyage that took him from Algeria in the north of Africa to Angola in the south and Cameroon in-between.
Pope Leo XIV wrapped up his African odyssey on Thursday with a final Mass in Equatorial Guinea, bringing to an end one of the newsiest papal trips in the history of popes on the road, thanks to his extraordinary back-and-forth with President Donald Trump.
A powerful rainstorm drenched the Malabo sports stadium and the estimated 30,000 people who gathered before dawn for Leo’s farewell liturgy. But the deluge let up before Leo arrived in his covered popemobile for a romp through the deafening crowd.
Leo departed for Rome after a farewell ceremony at the Malabo airport, ending an 11-day, four-nation voyage that took him from Algeria in the north of Africa to Angola in the south and Cameroon in between.
Over that time, Leo covered more than 17,700 kilometers (about 11,000 miles) on 18 flights, including three on Wednesday alone that saw him crisscross Equatorial Guinea from the west coast to the far east border with Gabon and back again.
Leo gets wild welcome nearly everywhere he goes
Nearly everywhere Leo went, history’s first U.S. pope received a raucous welcome, especially in the farther away places that had never had a pope visit.
Source: Korea Times News
