Massive crowds thronged Kinshasa for a glimpse of the pope, cheering and waving flags as the 86-year-old pontiff made his way from the airport to the presidential palace Tuesday.
On his fifth trip to Africa, Pope Francis is bringing a message of peace to the Central African nation and neighboring South Sudan, both hammered by decades of conflict.
In a speech at the presidential palace, the pope was applauded as he touched on the country's "history of foreign domination," saying that "political exploitation gave way to an economic colonialism that was equally enslaving" in the DRC.
"As a result, this country, massively plundered, has not benefited adequately from its immense resources," he told an audience of Congolese politicians and other dignitaries in Italian.
"Hands off the Democratic Republic of the Congo, hands off Africa," he said. "It is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered."
The message will resonate well in the DRC, a country of about 100 million people, which won independence from Belgium in 1960. Despite its vast mineral reserves of minerals, the DR Congo remains one of the poorest countries in the world.
About two-thirds of the population live on less than $2.15 a day, according to the World Bank.
The pontiff's Kinshasa visit is a first since 1985 in a country where about 40% of the population practice Catholicism.
