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Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin launched Pope Francis’ appeal for “peace and reconciliation” during a visit to a separatist region in Cameroon, an archbishop said on Tuesday.
Parolin addressed a Sunday mass in Bamenda, the capital of the North West region, which along with the neighboring South West region has been the scene of a bloody conflict between government forces and English-speaking separatists.
The activists are calling for the independence of the two regions, where Anglophones predominate in the nation which is also predominantly Francophone.
“The Pope has repeatedly pleaded for dialogue in the English-speaking regions,” Archbishop Samuel Kleda, Archbishop of Douala, Cameroon’s economic capital, told AFP.
“The visit of his emissary was quite significant. He chose to go to Bamenda … to give a message of peace and love.”
He called it a “very strong symbol”.
According to the UN and NGOs, civilians have often been victims of a three-year-old conflict that has killed more than 3,000 people and forced more than 700,000 to flee their homes.
Parolin, the number two of the Vatican, declared Sunday during a mass in Bamenda that “the Pope is perfectly aware of the difficulties which you have encountered in recent years and which you are still undergoing”.
Asking God to comfort the victims and their families, he said Pope Francis had expressed his desire for “peace and reconciliation”.
Monsignor Andrew Nkea Fuanya, Archbishop of Bamenda, welcomed Parolin’s visit, saying he was “the first foreign official” to meet residents of the two regions since the start of the crisis.
The Cameroonian government was represented at mass by Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, secretary general of the presidency.
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