Star Metro - Jubilant crowds throng giant papal mass in Cameroon

More than 120,000 people attended the celebration, the Vatican said based on local authority figures, with some travelling far or arriving the previous night for a chance to see the leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics.

Waving "branches of peace" and Vatican flags, to lively choral music punctuated by percussion, the joyful crowd chanted "Long live the pope!" as Leo arrived in a popemobile at the esplanade outside the Japoma Stadium.

"It's the achievement of a Christian lifetime. When I was little, I thought you couldn't see the pope with your own two eyes," Marguerite Tedga, 72, said after waiting all night with friends from her parish.

The pope's landmark 11-day tour of Africa has seen him abandon his previous restraint to deliver impassioned pleas for world peace -- and tussle with fellow American Trump, after the US president lashed out at him for calling for an end to the war in the Middle East.

"The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants," Leo said Thursday in a solemn speech in the city of Bamenda in northwestern Cameroon, the epicentre of a nearly decade-long separatist insurgency that has killed thousands of people.

Trump later said the pope could say what he liked, but needed to understand the realities of a "nasty world".

Far from the Trump broadsides, Leo has been greeted by adoring, singing-and-dancing crowds wherever he goes in Cameroon.

"Having seen the Pope gives me a feeling of deliverance. I was deeply moved by his message, and what I remember most is his call for sharing," Edith Fifi, a 25-year-old beautician, said.

But some Cameroonian Catholics had feared that Leo's visit could help President Paul Biya, who has ruled with an iron fist since 1982, burnish his image.

Douala, one of central Africa's largest ports, was among the cities to see a violent crackdown on demonstrations against the re-election in October of a man who at the age of 93 is already the world's oldest head of state.

Witnesses have reported that the security forces fired live rounds into the crowds. The authorities have acknowledged dozens of deaths, without giving a precise toll.

- No to 'plunder' -

In his homily in Doula delivered in French -- the country is mostly French-speaking -- the pope urged Cameroonians to be "protagonists of the future" and to "reject every form of abuse or violence".

Afterwards he was to visit Saint Paul's Catholic hospital in the city before returning to the capital Yaounde to address university students and teachers.

He wraps up his Cameroon tour with a mass early Saturday.

Without mentioning Trump or Biya by name, Leo has delivered unusually pointed speeches across his African tour -- ignoring Catholic US Vice President JD Vance's call to "stick to matters of morality".

"Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth," Leo said in Bamenda.

In a mass Thursday, he also criticised "those who, in the name of profit, continue to lay their hands on the African continent to exploit and plunder it".

Cameroon is rich in natural resources such as oil, timber, cocoa, coffee and minerals, which have attracted both foreign firms and local elites for decades.

After arriving in the country Wednesday, the pope urged Cameroon's leaders to root out corruption and abuses carried out in the name of order -- within Biya's earshot.

"Security is a priority, but it must always be exercised with respect for human rights," the pope told officials in Yaounde.

Archbishop of Douala Samuel Kleda -- one of the foremost critics of Biya within the Cameroonian clergy -- has voiced hope that the pontiff's visit would help resolve the country's issues.

"Our country has gone through many crises; some crises are still ongoing. The fruit we must draw from this visit is to commit ourselves as architects of peace," Kleda said.

The Catholic Church plays an important social role in Cameroon, where more than a third of the population of 30 million people are Catholic.

He heads on to Angola before wrapping up his whirlwind 18,000-kilometre (11,200-mile) tour in Equatorial Guinea.

F.Leblanc--SMC