Pope Leo XIV. Photo: Collected

BAMENDA, Cameroon, April 16, 2026 (BSS/AFP) - Pope Leo XIV condemned "an endless cycle of destabilisation and death" on a visit Thursday to a "bloodstained" region of Cameroon that has been gripped by an English-speaking separatist insurgency for nearly a decade.

"Those who rob your land of its resources generally invest much of the profit in weapons, thus perpetuating an endless cycle of destabilisation and death," the US-born pontiff said in a speech in a cathedral in the northwestern city of Bamenda, the centre of the insurgency.