**Pope Leo XIV Brings Global Spotlight to Cameroon's Forgotten War — But the People Need More Than Prayers**

More than 6,000 people are dead. Over 600,000 have been driven from their homes. Hundreds of thousands of children were locked out of school for years. And until Pope Leo XIV touched down in Bamenda on April 16, most of the world did not know — or did not care — about the separatist war tearing through Cameroon's English-speaking northwest. The International Crisis Group calls it one of the most neglected crises on the planet. That is not an accident.

Pope Leo celebrated an open-air Mass before an estimated 20,000 people at Bamenda's airfield, calling for a "decisive change of course" toward peace. He blasted the "handful of tyrants" ravaging the Earth through war and exploitation, and pointed directly at the "moral, social and political corruption" strangling Cameroon's development. He went further than most world leaders ever have on this conflict, naming the cycle plainly: those who steal African resources pour the profits into weapons, "perpetuating an endless cycle of destabilization and death."

The conflict traces back to colonialism. After World War I, the territory that is now Cameroon was carved up between France and Britain. In 1961, British-controlled Southern Cameroons voted in a U.N.-backed referendum to join French Cameroon. English-speaking communities have reported systematic political and economic marginalization ever since. By 2017, peaceful protests over these grievances were met with force by the Francophone-dominated central government, and an armed separatist movement fighting for an independent state called Ambazonia was born.

At the center of the government's response — or lack of one — sits President Paul Biya, 93 years old, who extended his grip on power to an eighth term through a widely disputed election. His government has been accused of shunning dialogue with separatists. Peace talks with international mediators have stalled, with both sides accusing each other of bad faith. The Bamenda archbishop, Andrew Nkea Fuanya, told the pope directly that his people had suffered from "a situation they did not create," and that the ground beneath his feet "has drunk the blood of many of our children."

The pope also called out foreign exploitation of the continent. Cameroon sits on massive reserves of oil, natural gas, cobalt, bauxite, iron ore, gold, and diamonds. French, English, and increasingly Chinese companies have dominated resource extraction for decades. Pope Leo echoed the same cry his predecessor Pope Francis made in Congo in 2023 — hands off Africa. The wealth being pulled from African soil is not building African communities. It is funding the very instability that keeps those communities broken.

For Black communities watching from the diaspora, this story carries deep resonance. The pattern is the same one that runs through every formerly colonized nation on the continent: European powers drew the borders, extracted the wealth, installed or backed compliant leaders, and left the people to fight over the scraps. Cameroon's Anglophone crisis is a textbook case of what happens when colonial divisions are never resolved and the international community looks away. The separatist movement itself has diaspora roots — a U.S. federal jury convicted two individuals in December for funneling funds and equipment to separatist fighters, and Belgian authorities arrested four suspected separatist leaders in March.

On the eve of Pope Leo's arrival, the English-speaking separatists announced a three-day pause in fighting to allow safe travel for his visit. That temporary silence says something about the power of the moment. But Morine Ngum, a 30-year-old widow whose husband was shot dead by Cameroonian soldiers in 2022, was blunt about her expectations: "Nothing is going to change. This conflict has turned my children into orphans and me into a widow. Many families have been rendered homeless." Prayers and speeches carry weight. But the people of Bamenda need political will, accountability, and real negotiation — not just a papal visit and a three-day ceasefire.