Archbishop Andrew Nkea, President of the Episcopal Conference of Cameroon, speaks to Vatican News about Pope Leo XIV’s Apostolic Journey to the country.
By Joseph Tulloch – Yaoundé Pope Leo XIV has now departed from Cameroon, the second leg of his four-country Apostolic Journey across Africa. During his visit, the Pope made a number of powerful appeals: for peace in the country’s troubled Anglophone regions, for a renewed commitment to tackling corruption, for giving a future to the country’s young people. What effect will those words have? Vatican News posed that question to Andrew Nkea, Archbishop of Bamenda and President of the Episcopal Conference of Cameroon. “The Pope has given speeches and messages,” the Archbishop said. “We have all clapped. We are all happy. What next? That question is very important for all of us.” There are reasons for hope, Archbishop Nkea suggested, including in the troubled Anglophone regions, where the Pope’s visit brought life back to the streets, and had the government and separatist groups “speaking the same language” for the first time in a decade. “The Pope’s visit was a tremendous blessing,” he said, “and we have already started seeing the signs of peace.” The following is a lightly edited transcript of our interview with Archbishop Andrew Nkea. Pope Leo has just left Cameroon. How did his visit go? It was a wonderful opportunity for us, and Cameroonians were very happy to receive the Holy Father. He came here with a very strong message for Cameroon and for Cameroonians, and you could see from his speeches that he came here determined to give us part of the social teaching of the church. We heard it. We are very, very happy that the visit has gone the way it has gone, and that everywhere populations came out in their numbers, and yet no incident was recorded. Above all, we discovered that in all three places there was no rain. The weather was beautiful, so it was a sign to us that God Himself blessed the visit with the success that we are claiming now. One of the places the Pope visited was Bamenda, where you’re the Archbishop. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of that visit from the Pope, and the message he left behind? It’s a very important message for us, because no one can adequately understand what we have gone through in Bamenda except those who live there. People read things on social media, people hear stories, but those of us who live there are living permanently in trauma. For about eight years, Bamenda had been more or less abandoned. Our airport was not working, roads were broken, water was not flowing. So to get the Pope coming, and all these things start happening again, is a very big thing for us. You could see for yourself how joyful the population was. We have not seen that for a long time. Another key part of the Pope's message regarded young people - he encouraged them not to give up on their country, to have hope in the future. One of the biggest problems we have with our youth is unemployment. Many of the youths come out with very good degrees, but they don't have work. And secondly, there is also the problem of immigration. Since they don’t have work, they only think of going abroad, using all kinds of methods, trying to trek through the Sahara Desert, trying to hide inside the wheel compartment of planes. The message of the Holy Father was very timely, both to the youth and to the authorities of the state: try to invest in the youth as the hope of the future of every country. The Pope also appealed to those in positions of power, and told them not to forget about their responsibility towards the less fortunate. You see, one of the big problems many developing countries have is how to distribute the ‘national cake’. The common good is something which is of capital importance to every developing nation. If a small group of people begin to eat the ‘national cake’ alone, then they are brewing trouble for the whole country. Therefore, social work that the Church does, and creating employment for our young people, is something very, very important. Above all, we must take the common good into consideration as our basic line of action. We must ask what is good for all Cameroonians - not what is good for my tribe or for my friends. We’ve all heard the very strong words of the Pope. What do you think needs to happen so that those words bear fruit, so that the message is put into action? When the Pope comes to a place, it is an event. But really that event is not as important as the aftermath of the event. The Pope has given speeches and messages. We have all clapped. We are all happy. What next? That question is very important for all of us. I think that in the whole country, we have to sit down to digest all those messages. And secondly, we have to see what it takes to be able to implement them. I'll give you an example. In Bamenda, he was talking about the time for peace being now, not tomorrow. And you discover that we as Bamenda people have to start reflecting concretely on this message. If the time of peace is now, how do we make that now happen? We have to really set up committees to study how to implement these words of the pope and see how we can make this peace a reality. How do we dialogue with the separatists in the bush, and how do we get the separatists in the bush to be able to dialogue with the government? So these are things that we, members of civil society and Church, have to do to be able to make sure that the words of the Pope don't get wasted. I was talking the other day to one of the priests of Bamenda, and I was saying that we have to create a Pope Leo ‘catechism of peace’ for the people there. We have to get our Office of Catechetics to sit down and work on this message of the Holy Father and make it into a catechism, so that everyone can see what the Pope said to us, and what line of action we can take. Do you have hope that that the visit can bring fruit? It is not hope that I have. It is faith that the visit has already started bearing fruit, and that the fruit will continue. For eight years, the airport of Bamenda has been closed. I flew in the Pope's plane to Bamenda, the first time I’ve flown there in a plane. Suddenly the airport is open. The sophisticated equipment is functioning again. That is a miracle! If the Pope did not come, I can guarantee you it would never have happened. We have been dealing with very bad and broken roads, and suddenly Bamenda’s roads start getting tarred. They are fixing up the roads, putting up street lights. This is a miracle! We have not seen this for ten years. So, we are not waiting for the visit to bear fruit. The visit started bearing fruit before the Pope came. This is the very first time in ten years that the government and the separatists are speaking the same language. Before, if the government said yes, the separatists said no, and if the government said ‘everybody come out’, the separatists would say nobody should come out. It was like a game. But with the coming of the Pope, both the government and the separatists were saying ‘Everybody come out. Everybody welcome the Pope.’ This is another big miracle. We have not seen this for ten years. The Pope's person comes through to us as the strongest unifying factor of those who are in conflict, because both sides respect him. Both sides are coming out to receive him, and both sides are ready to listen to his message. This is a miracle. And, although you could not identify them, the crowd in Bamenda was too big not to have separatists in there - which means that they were also on the road cheering the Pope passing. So while we are hoping that we can get a durable and lasting peace, I think that the Pope's coming already has brought us a tremendous blessing, and we have already started seeing the signs of peace.