Pope Ends Tour With Prayer of Hope for Africa

Chastened by the deprivation and desolation that marked his passage through five of the poorest nations on Earth, Pope John Paul II left sub-Saharan Africa on Thursday with a simple prayer.

“I pray that God gives to all the peoples of Africa the strength of hope,” he said.

Ending an exhausting 8,600-mile, eight-day journey through Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad, John Paul again demanded greater international support for African development efforts.

“The great transformations under way in East Europe must not divert attention from the South and from Africa in particular,” the Pope said in a tough speech to the diplomatic corps accredited to a nation of 5.5 million that is enjoying an instant of peace after a generation of wars.

From the outset, the leitmotif of the Pope’s sixth African visit was that rich countries of the North, currently so preoccupied with East-West flux, must do a better job of aiding the have-not South. Morality, social justice and, ultimately, hopes for global peace, demand it, the Pope insists.

Noting the violence and misery that spark Africa, John Paul lamented: “They seem sources of suffering that never seems to end. I think of Ethiopia, of Sudan, of other people stricken by racial discrimination and still others afflicted by endemic ethnic rivalries that lead to violence.”

Northern nations, and African countries themselves, the Pope said, must more effectively address continental issues like violence, hunger, debt, environmental damage and the wrenching shortfalls of adequate health care and education.

In the countries that John Paul visited before his return to Rome, most people are ill-nourished subsistence farmers; $25 per month is a good city salary; infant mortality rates are among the highest in the world, and only about one-quarter of the children who survive ever get to a school.

After touring mostly Christian southern Chad on Wednesday, John Paul devoted his last day here to a Mass and speeches in N’Djamena, a poor, vibrant Muslim city of 500,000 with great texture, where vaulted arcades and gray-white pocked concrete walls bear testimony to 25 years of civil strife.

Sternly warning diplomats and politicians that Africa deserves better than it is getting, the Pope said it is time to “help reduce the distance between words and deeds” in implementing development and respect for human rights.

By all accounts this African journey proved an emotional one for the Pope.

Speaking with local bishops at dinner in Burkina Faso earlier in the week, the Pope recalled how he had come 10 years ago to appeal for international help for Africa.

“God has allowed me the chance to renew the appeal. If I had not done so, I couldn’t die in peace,” John Paul told the bishops, according to aides who were present.