Rapturous welcome for pontiff in Nairobi’s Kangemi slum as he condemns inequality and injustice during his first Africa tour

Pope Francis has launched a blistering attack on “new forms of colonialism” that exacerbate the “dreadful injustice of urban exclusion” while speaking to thousands of people in one of Nairobi’s most impoverished slums.



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On his last day in Kenya before travelling to Uganda on Friday, the pontiff criticised wealthy minorities who hoard resources at the expense of the poor and praised the values of solidarity and mutual support in deprived neighbourhoods. Such values, he said, had been forgotten by “an opulent society, anaesthetised by unbridled consumption” and were “not quoted in the stock exchange, are not subject to speculation and have no market price”.



Francis received a rapturous welcome as he arrived in Kangemi, one of 11 slums in Nairobi, where thousands of people live in shacks without sewerage.

Singing and ululating erupted as the popemobile weaved through a sea of tin-roofed homes to the local Catholic church, St Joseph the Worker.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Children cheer and wave during Francis’s visit to the Kangemi slum. Photograph: Andrew Medichini/AP

Some people had been waiting at the Jesuit church since before dawn to see Francis. “This is a special pope,” said Nelson Nzioka, 85. “Normally we just see such people on TV, but the fact that he came to such a place is a great moment and something everyone here will remember.”



John Wesonga, 28, who works in a programme to rehabilitate street children in a neighbouring settlement, said: “Ni mtu wa mtaa [he is one of us]. Sometimes the church can seem cold and wealthy, and far from normal people. Pope Francis has shown us that there is a different way and we, too, belong in the church.”

The pontiff told the packed congregation: “I am here because I want you to know that I am not indifferent to your joys and hopes, your troubles and your sorrows. I realise the difficulties which you experience daily. How can I not denounce the injustices which you suffer?”



Such injustices were the result of “wounds inflicted by minorities who cling to power and wealth, who selfishly squander while a growing majority is forced to flee to abandoned, filthy and rundown peripheries”, the pope said.



He criticised the lack of “infrastructures and basic services”, adding: “By this I mean toilets, sewers, drains, refuse collection, electricity, roads, as well as schools, hospitals, recreational and sport centres, studios and workshops for artists and craftsmen. I refer, in particular, to access to drinking water.”



The pontiff also condemned what he described as the unjust distribution of land, poor housing and criminal gangs preying on children. “These realities … are not a random combination of unrelated problems. They are a consequence of new forms of colonialism which would make African countries ‘parts of a machine, cogs on a gigantic wheel’,” he said, citing a statement from Pope John Paul II in 1995.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest The pontiff greets young Kenyans at the Kasarani sports stadium in Nairobi. Photograph: Jennifer Huxta/AFP/Getty Images

The pope proposed “integrated cities which belong to everyone” as way of alleviating urban poverty and inequality. “We need to go beyond the mere proclamation of rights which are not respected in practice, to implementing concrete and systematic initiatives capable of improving the overall living situation, and planning new urban developments of good quality for housing future generations,” he said.



After visiting Kangemi, the pope capped his three-day visit to Kenya with a plea to the country’s leadership to be more responsive to the needs of the people.

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Addressing tens of thousands of young Kenyans, who had packed into the country’s main stadium to listen to the last major speech of his tour, Francis said: “Corruption takes away our joy, our peace: corrupt people don’t live in peace. Corruption is something that eats inside, like sugar. Sweet, we like it, it’s easy. And then we end up badly.”

Kenya has been one of the poster boys of the “rising Africa” narrative, with a growing middle class, but it remains a deeply unequal society, where conditions in low-income urban settlements are among the worst on the continent.

Many church members such as Mary Owens, an Irish nun who has worked in Kenya for 48 years, said they hoped the legacy of the pontiff’s visit would be to focus attention on the needs of less affluent members of society. “The pope has shown that we must give consideration to the poor,” she said.

Francis was due to fly to neighbouring Uganda and then to Central African Republic on Sunday morning. His 26-hour visit to the latter country’s capital, Bangui, will be his first visit to a war zone.



Vatican security officials are constantly reviewing the situation on the ground before the pope’s visit. Spokesman Federico Lombardi said on Thursday night that the Bangui trip would proceed as planned.

