Pope Leo has obsessively blamed all the problems in the world on capitalism and colonialism. Even when they’re very obviously the work of Marxists or Islam.
The next leg of his tour, to Equatorial Guinea, was more of the same.
On the final stop of his trip through Africa, Pope Leo XIV addressed officials in Equatorial Guinea on Wednesday, calling on people to work against inequality and exclusion and to safeguard natural resources.
Speaking in Melabo, the nation’s capital, to an audience including government officials and diplomats, the pontiff condemned economies that seek profit at all costs, Euro News reported.
“Such an economy kills,” he said. “In fact, it is even more evident today than in previous years that the outbreak of armed conflicts is often driven by the colonization of oil and mineral resources, without respect for international law or the self-determination of peoples.”
Pope Leo spoke after a welcome by Equatorial Guinea’s president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has faced many accusations of corruption and authoritarianism in his 47 years in power. More than half of the country’s people live in poverty despite rich offshore oil resources.
Mbasogo has been in power for a good chunk of his life. It’s a one-party state in which the only legal party is the Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea. He took power by overthrowing his uncle, Francisco Macías Nguema (above), the country’s first president, a ‘Marxist’ who admired Hitler and was backed by the USSR (think of an even more insane version of Graham Platner), whose National Workers’ Party, used to be the country’s one party state.
Nguema ingested copious amounts of hallucinogens, which drove him insane. He abandoned the country’s capital to live in his native village, taking the entire national treasury with him, and burying the gold reserves under his bed. When the Central Bank’s director objected, he was murdered. Nguema also accumulated a huge collection of human skulls outside his house, and beat people with them. He also held regular meetings with “ghosts”. The capital’s main power station was closed, as Nguema declared he could meet the energy needs using magic.
Clearly a problem of ‘inequality’ and ‘colonialism.’
Along the way he managed to kill some 10% to 40% of his people while claiming to possess magical powers and changed the country’s motto to, “There is no other God than Macias Nguema”.
Mbasogo, the current dictator, whom Pope Leo met with, also claims to be a ‘god’.
In a programme called Bidze-Nduan (Bury the fire) which deals with “peace, tranquillity and the order reigning in the country” the radio declared that President Teodoro Obiang Nguema was “in permanent contact with the Almighty”.
It said that the president was “like god in heaven” who has “all power over men and things”.
“He can decide to kill without anyone calling him to account and without going to hell because it is god himself, with whom he is in permanent contact, and who gives him this strength,” a presidential aide announced on the show.
This seems like the kind of thing that Pope Leo should be condemning instead of ‘colonialism’.
Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. Daniel became CEO of the David Horowitz Freedom Center in 2025.
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