Pope criticises 'tyrants' who spend billions on wars, days after Trump spat

Pope Leo has criticised leaders who spend billions on wars and said the world is "being ravaged by a handful of tyrants," in unusually forceful comments during his visit to Cameroon.

Speaking during a tour of a region ravaged by a deadly insurgency, the Pontiff blasted those he said manipulated "the very name of God" for their own gain.

The remarks come just days after a high profile spat with US President Donald Trump who posted a lengthy attack on the Pope, a vocal critic of the US and Israeli military operation in Iran.

The Pope had voiced his concern about Trump's threat that "a whole civilisation will die" if Iran did not agree to US demands to end the war and open the Strait of Hormuz.

Leo, who last year became the first US-born pope, has previously also questioned the Trump administration's approach to immigration.

"Leo should get his act together as Pope," Trump wrote in a TruthSocial post at the time.

Speaking in Cameroon, the Pope criticised leaders who "turn a blind eye to the fact that billions of dollars are spent on killing and devastation, yet the resources needed for healing, education and restoration are nowhere to ​be found."

"The masters of war pretend not to know that it takes only a moment to destroy, yet often a lifetime is not enough to rebuild," he said.

Speaking to crowds on Thursday, the Pope condemned "an endless cycle of destabilisation and death" in a "bloodstained" region of Cameroon that has been gripped by 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," he told those gathered at a cathedral in the northwestern city of Bamenda.

Pope Leo's wide-ranging Africa tour will include stops in 11 cities across four countries. It is his second major foreign visit since being elected to the papacy last year, and reflects the importance of Catholicism in Africa.

More than a fifth of the world's Catholics are in Africa, some 288 million people, according to figures from 2024.