Pope Leo urged Angolans on Sunday to overcome divisions after decades of war, first at a Mass in a field ‌outside Luanda and then in a prayer at a site that was once a hub for transatlantic slavery, events that jointly drew roughly 130 000 people.

The first United States (US) born Pope, who has become outspoken on war and inequality and angered US President Donald Trump, celebrated Mass outside in Kilamba, a sprawling housing development, before travelling by helicopter to the Catholic shrine in ​Muxima.

During the Mass, he called Angola, which experienced a 27-year civil conflict from 1975 to 2002, a “beautiful yet wounded country”.

He urged Angolans to “build together ​a country where old divisions are overcome once and for all, where hatred and violence disappear.”

At the shrine, about ⁠130 kilometres southeast of the capital on the edge of the Kwanza River, throngs of people danced and sang in hot, humid ​weather as the Pope was driven through the crowd in a white golf cart.

The shrine, now a popular religious site, was built as part of ​a 16th-century Portuguese fortress at the heart of the trade that historians estimate captured some six million people from what Angola is now to enslave and send to the Americas.

Pope did not refer to the site’s history in his remarks but called on Angolans to build a peaceful, more just world.

“It is love that must triumph, ​not war!” he said

At the end of the Mass in Kilamba, the Pope decried a recent ramp-up in the Ukraine war, calling “for ​the weapons to fall silent and for the path of dialogue to be followed”.

He also praised the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, to end fighting between Israeli forces ‌and Iran-backed ⁠Hezbollah, as a “reason for hope”.

–Reuters–