'Your pain is my pain': Pope consoles victims of Congolese atrocities

‘Your pain is my pain’: Pope consoles victims of Congolese atrocities as one million people attend his mass in the war-torn African nation

• Pope Francis held a mass for of one million of his Congolese flock on Wednesday
• First-hand accounts of sexual slavery, beheadings and cannibalisms were shared
• The Pope slammed foreign powers and extracting firms profiting from violence 

Pope Francis visited his flock in the Democratic Republic of Congo in an intimate mass that gave the opportunity for victims of war crimes to tell their harrowing stories. 

On Wednesday the Pope heard first-hand accounts of some of the ‘inhuman violence’ suffered by the Congolese, including a former sex slave who was forced into cannibalism, with an audience of one million people.

Other victims included a teen-age girl ‘raped like an animal’ for months and a young man who watched as his father was decapitated.

The Pope travelled to the capital of Kinshasa and sat in silence as victim after victim came forward with their gut-wrenching stories of the foul atrocities suffered at the hands of rebel groups.  

Territory in the mineral-rich region has been sought after through bloodshed and barbaric violence that have forced more than 5 million people to flee their homes. 

The Pope travelled to the capital of Kinshasa and sat in silence as victim after victim came forward with their gut-wrenching stories of the foul atrocities

Victims offered up at the foot of a crucifix a symbol of their pain: the machete used to maim and kill, or the straw bed mat on which they had been raped.

As they knelt in front of him for a blessing, Pope Francis placed his hand on their heads, or on the stumps of the arms that remained. 

‘Your tears are my tears; your pain is my pain,’ Francis told them. 

‘To every family that grieves or is displaced by the burning of villages and other war crimes, to the survivors of sexual violence and to every injured child and adult, I say: I am with you; I want to bring you God’s caress.’ 

Despite being home to one of the largest U.N. peacekeeping operation in the world, eastern Congo has been mired in violence since the early 1990s as rebels and miliitas vie for control of mineral-rich territory. 

Pope Francis has called this the ‘forgotten genocide’ that barely makes the news.

Francis slammed foreign powers and extraction industries exploiting Congo’s east, calling out the ‘hypocrisy’ of flourishing commerce as ‘as people are being raped and killed.’

The Pope had originally planned to visit the eastern province of North Kivu, where rebel groups have intensified attacks in the past year, when his trip was initially scheduled for July. 

Francis slammed foreign powers and extraction industries exploiting Congo’s east, calling out the ‘hypocrisy’ of flourishing commerce as ‘as people are being raped and killed’

But after the trip was rescheduled, the Vatican had to cancel the visit to Goma due to the fighting that has forced some 5.7 million people to flee their homes.

This latest eruption of violence has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in Congo, where already some 26.4 million people face hunger, according to the World Food Program. 

Instead, residents of the east came to Francis, and their testimony was gut-wrenching. 

 Emelda M’karhungulu, from a village near Bukavu in Congo’s South Kivu province, spoke through a translator of having been kept as a sexual slave for three months at age 16 by armed men who invaded her village in 2005. 

She said she was raped daily by five to 10 men who then forced their captives to eat the flesh of the men they had killed, mixed with animal meat and maize paste. 

M’karhungulu said she eventually escaped one day when fetching water. 

While forced cannibalism is not known to be widespread, the United Nations and human rights groups documented how it was used as a weapon of war in the early 2000s in parts of eastern Congo. 

‘Bijoux Makumbi Kamala, 17, told of being kidnapped in 2020 by rebels in Walikale, in North Kivu province as she went to fetch water. 

On Wednesday the Pope heard first-hand accounts of some of the ‘inhuman violence’ suffered by the Congolese with an audience of one million people

Speaking through a translator, she said she was raped daily by the commander ‘like an animal,’ until she escaped after 19 months. 

‘It was useless to scream, because no one could hear me or come to my rescue,’ she said.

The teenager gave birth to twin girls ‘who will never know their father’ and found consolation through services offered by the Catholic Church. 

Ladislas Kambale Kombi, from the Beni area of eastern North Kivu province, told Francis of watching as men in military uniforms decapitated his father, placed his head in a basket and then took off with his mother, whom he never saw again.

 ‘At night, I cannot sleep,’ he said. 

Désiré Dhetsina disappeared after surviving an attack Feb. 1, 2022, on a camp for internally displaced people in Ituri province, on Congo’s northeastern border with Uganda. 

‘I saw savagery: People carved up like meat in a butcher shop; women disemboweled, men decapitated,’ Dhetsina reported. 

As his story was read to Francis, two woman stood up in front of the pope and raised into the air the stumps that remained of their mutilated arms. 

Francis condemned the violence and urged the Congolese victims to use their pain for good, to sow peace and reconciliation. 

It was a message he also delivered earlier in the day at a Mass to the throngs at Kinshasa’s Ndolo airport, where he cited the example of Christ who forgave those who betrayed him. 

Roughly half of Congo’s 105 million people are Catholic, according to the Vatican, which also estimated that 1 million people were on hand for Francis’ Mass, citing local organizers. 

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