Pope Leo has criticised the treatment of prisoners in Equatorial Guinea during a Mass that drew some 100,000 people, including the country’s long-serving president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.
The oil-rich but deeply unequal Central African nation is the Pope’s final stop on a four-nation tour of Africa, which also included Algeria, Cameroon, and Angola.
Speaking candidly before a massive congregation, the Pope declared that his thoughts go to “the poorest, to families experiencing difficulty and to prisoners who are often forced to live in troubling hygienic and sanitary conditions,” adding pointedly: “May there be greater room for freedom and may the dignity of the human person always be safeguarded.”
Pope Leo XIV, the 70-year-old US-born pontiff, subsequently made a tightly controlled visit to the notorious Bata Prison in the country’s biggest city, where he addressed around 600 detainees, including about 30 women.
Prisoners lined up in the freshly repainted courtyard, and the red carpet, Vatican flags, and festive music reflected the authorities’ efforts to present the best possible image of the facility, despite longstanding condemnation of the conditions inside.
Amnesty International has previously stated that inmates at Bata prison are reportedly routinely beaten as punishment, while a 2023 US State Department report documented cases of torture, extreme overcrowding, and deplorable sanitary conditions in Equatorial Guinea’s prisons.
Pope Leo told the rain-drenched inmates: “You are not alone. Your families love you and are waiting for you. Many people outside these walls are praying for you”.
The pope upon addressing thousands more at a packed Bata stadium. President Obiang, who seized power in 1979 and has ruled for over four decades, held a private meeting with the Pope on Tuesday.
Leo’s comments, though delivered diplomatically, represent an open critique rarely heard in a country accused of stifling freedom of expression, and they cap a tour on which the pontiff has pulled no punches blasting “tyrants” for spending billions on wars and condemning the “colonisation” of Africa’s mineral resources.
