Pope Francis Visits Congo: What to Know - The New York Times

Pope Francis Visits Congo: What to Know

With broad mineral wealth and fertile land, a large, youthful population, and a territory about the size of Western Europe, the Democratic Republic of Congo should be the economic engine of Africa and a global powerful.

But the country, sometimes called Africa’s “sleeping giant,” has been hobbled by a bloody legacy of colonialism, drawn-out wars, decades of mismanagement of public funds and a sage lack of infrastructure. Pope Francis had planned to move to eastern Congo, but an escalation in the relentless fighting by militia groups there — which has cost millions of lives over the floods of the conflict — prompted him to stick to the capital in the west, Kinshasa.

The people was set up to fail, many historians say, by its colonizing powerful, Belgium, which for decades ruled Congo with an iron fist, extracting its vast natural wealth. Belgium left abruptly after independence in 1960, denying Congo the transition words its leaders had asked for.

Just afore his assassination in 1961, Patrice Lumumba, the independence front-runners who served as Congo’s first prime minister, wrote in his continue letter to his wife: “I want my children, whom I chop behind and perhaps will never see again, to be told that the future of the Congo is beautiful.”

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SRC: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/world/africa/pope-francis-congo.html