If the Pope’s Visit Is “Pastoral,” It Cannot Be Neutral: Faith, Justice, and Power in Cameroon

As Cameroon prepares to receive Pope Leo XIV, a careful narrative is being constructed by both state and church voices: the visit, they insist, will be pastoral, not political.

It is a reassuring formulation. This suggests calm, prayer, and spiritual renewal. It suggests a visit removed from the tensions of governance, conflict, and power. But in a country where justice itself is contested, where political legitimacy is disputed, and where citizens remain imprisoned in connection with a long-running crisis, the distinction between the pastoral and the political becomes not only blurred, but deeply problematic.

Because if one returns to the very foundations of Christian teaching, the idea that a pastoral mission can exist outside questions of justice is not easily sustained.

Luke 4:18, A Gospel That Names Prisoners

When Jesus inaugurates his public ministry in the Gospel of Luke, he does not speak in abstractions. He defines his purpose in precise, material terms:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me… He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners… to set the oppressed free.” (Luke 4:18)

This passage is not incidental. It is widely regarded by theologians as the clearest articulation of Christ’s mission. The categories it names such as the poor, the broken, the imprisoned, the oppressed, are not metaphorical placeholders. They are social realities.

To interpret this passage purely spiritually, detached from lived conditions, has long been contested within Christian thought. The Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, often regarded as the father of liberation theology, argued that the Gospel is not merely about interior transformation but “a call to transform unjust social realities.” In that reading, the proclamation of faith is inseparable from the conditions in which people live.

The implication is straightforward, even if uncomfortable given that a pastoral mission that does not engage injustice risks departing from the very model it claims to follow.

An Augustinian Pope in an Augustinian Question

These questions are sharpened by the identity of the man at the centre of the visit. Pope Leo XIV is an Augustinian, formed within a theological tradition shaped by St. Augustine of Hippo, a North African thinker whose reflections on power, law, and justice remain foundational.

Augustine’s position was unambiguous. Authority, he argued, is only legitimate when it is just. Otherwise, it is something else entirely.

“An unjust law is no law at all.” (lex iniusta non est lex) and “Without justice, what are kingdoms but great robberies?”

These are not rhetorical flourishes. They are structural claims about the nature of power itself. For St. Augustine, the state does not derive moral legitimacy simply from control, continuity, or recognition. It must be grounded in justice.

That question resonates sharply in Cameroon today.

Following the October 2025 presidential election, the legitimacy of the presidency remains contested. Opposition figures and segments of civil society have challenged both the process and the outcome. Among the most prominent dissenting voices, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, who claims victory backed by evidence from the polling units, is now in exile.

The aftermath has been marked by violence and repression. At least 65 people have been killed, and more than 2,000 individuals remain in detention, many in connection with protests and political mobilisation.

In such a context, St. Augustine’s question is no longer theoretical. It raises a fundamental question. What is the moral status of power when justice itself is in dispute?

Papal Tradition and the Duty to Confront Injustice

The expectation that the Church must engage such questions is not an invention of modern activism. It is deeply embedded in Catholic teaching.

In Rerum Novarum (1891), Pope Leo XIII laid the foundation for modern Catholic social doctrine, insisting that the Church cannot remain indifferent when human dignity is at stake:

“The poor and badly off have a claim to special consideration.”

More than a century later, Pope Francis would sharpen that position in Evangelii Gaudium:

“No one can demand that religion should be relegated to the inner sanctum of personal life… an authentic faith always involves a deep desire to change the world.”

And more directly still:

“The Church cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice.”

These are not marginal statements. They represent a continuity of thought indicating that faith, if it is to remain authentic, must respond to injustice as it exists, not as it is conveniently framed.

The Illusion of Neutrality

The insistence that the Pope’s visit should remain “non-political” rests on an assumption that neutrality is possible. But both theology and philosophy challenge this idea.

To decline to speak about prisoners, conflict, or contested power is not to stand outside politics. It is to adopt a position within it.

As Martin Luther King Jr. observed: “The Church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but the conscience of the state.”

A conscience that remains silent does not cease to exist. It simply ceases to function.

Theologian James H. Cone pushed this argument further, warning that: “Any theology that is indifferent to the suffering of the oppressed is not Christian theology.”

These positions are not radical departures from tradition. They are developments of the same logic found in Luke 4:18: that faith speaks most clearly where suffering is most visible.

Cameroon’s Prisoners and the Question of Witness

These theological debates are not abstract in Cameroon. They are embodied in individuals.

Among them is journalist Tsi Conrad, detained for more than nine years in Kondengui Central Prison following his arrest in 2016 during the early stages of the Anglophone crisis. From his cell, he has written to the Pope, asking him to speak for those who cannot.

His case sits alongside others such as Amadou Vamoulké, Mancho Bibixy, Thomas Awah Junior and the thousands detained in connection with political events and conflict.

Their presence raises a question that cannot easily be avoided which is, What does it mean to preach freedom in a country where people remain imprisoned for political reasons?

Bamenda: Geography as Theology

The significance of the Pope’s planned visit to Bamenda adds a deeper and more uncomfortable layer to this entire conversation. Bamenda is not simply a stop on an itinerary. It is not a symbolic city chosen at random.

It is one of the epicentres of the Anglophone crisis. This is a place where, for years now, daily life has been shaped by fear, uncertainty, and violence.

In many neighbourhoods, hardly a day passes without reports of killings, sometimes targeted, sometimes indiscriminate. Entire communities have been hollowed out. Families have fled. Businesses have closed. Streets that once carried the noise of ordinary life now fall silent long before night.

Large parts of the city are partially abandoned, not by choice, but by necessity.

Those who remain do so under constant tension, navigating ghost towns, sporadic gunfire, and a reality in which survival has become routine.

This is the Bamenda that exists beyond official briefings. This is the Bamenda that statistics struggle to capture. And it is into this reality that the Pope is expected to arrive.

To visit Bamenda, then, is not merely to enter a geographic space. It is to step into a moral landscape.

It is to encounter a place where questions of life, dignity, justice, and suffering are not theoretical — they are immediate, visible, and lived.

This is where the idea of “geography as theology” becomes unavoidable. Because in Christian thought, place has always mattered.

The Gospels themselves unfold not in abstraction, but in specific locations, among the poor, the sick, the excluded, and the oppressed.

As Gustavo Gutiérrez argued, theology is not developed in isolation but emerges from “the underside of history”, from the lived experience of those who suffer. Bamenda, in that sense, is not just a city. It is a site where theology is tested.

Bamenda Presents a Choice

The visit therefore presents a choice, not necessarily in words, but in posture. Will it be a visit that names suffering as it is, acknowledging the violence, the displacement, and the human cost of a conflict that has endured for nearly a decade?

Or will it be a visit that moves around that suffering, offering comfort without confrontation, presence without recognition?

The distinction is subtle, but profound. Because to stand in Bamenda and speak only in generalities is, in effect, to leave unnamed the very realities that define it.

And yet, the tradition the Pope represents offers a different model. In Luke 4:18, the mission is not announced in neutral terms, but in relation to concrete conditions:
the poor, the prisoners, the oppressed.

Similarly, Pope Francis has repeatedly warned against what he describes as a “globalisation of indifference,” urging the Church to see, name, and respond to suffering as it exists — not as it is sanitised.

In Bamenda, indifference is not an abstract risk. It is a lived experience. It is felt in abandoned homes, in disrupted schooling, in families divided by displacement, and in the quiet normalisation of violence. To enter such a space as a global religious leader is not a neutral act. It carries weight, both moral, symbolic, and historical.

And so the question becomes unavoidable: What does it mean to bring a pastoral message into a place where suffering is so deeply embedded in the fabric of daily life?

Because in Bamenda, more than perhaps anywhere else on this visit, the line between the spiritual and the political does not simply blur. It disappears.

A Visit That Will Be Measured

The Pope’s visit will undoubtedly be framed in spiritual terms. It will include prayers, homilies, and symbolic gestures. But its meaning will not be determined by ceremony alone.

It will be measured quietly, but decisively, against a deeper standard, whether it reflects the tradition it represents.

A tradition that, from Augustine to Leo XIII, from Luke’s Gospel to Pope Francis, has consistently insisted that faith cannot be separated from justice without losing something essential.

The Question That Remains

The debate, ultimately, is not whether the visit is pastoral or political. It is whether those categories can truly be separated in a context like Cameroon.

If Luke 4:18 still defines the mission of the Church, if Augustine’s insistence on justice still holds, if modern papal teaching remains consistent, then the question is no longer abstract. Can a pastoral visit remain silent about prisoners and still be complete?

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