YAOUNDE, Cameroon — Pope Benedict XVI told Muslim leaders today that true religion rejects violence, and he held up peaceful coexistence between Christianity and Islam in Cameroon as “a beacon to other African nations.”
In Cameroon’s capital, a clapping, swaying crowd of 40,000 faithful from Africa’s expanding, vibrant Catholic flock later welcomed him to a football stadium where he celebrated Mass. There, he delivered a message of encouragement for Africa and expressed compassion for the children being forced by paramilitaries to fight in some countries.
To these children he said: “God loves you, he has not forgotten you.”
Child soldiers, often kidnapped, have been used by rebels in eastern Congo and by Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army. An estimated 3,500 children are still with armed groups in Congo alone.
The open-air Mass was Benedict’s first occasion as pope to be among a great crowd of faithful on the continent that is witnessing the church’s biggest growth.
In the morning meeting with 22 representatives of Cameroon’s sizable Muslim minority, Benedict said religion is the basis of human civilization and he returned to one of the key themes of his papacy, saying there is no incompatibility between faith and reason.
“Genuine religion … stands at the base of any authentically human culture,” he said. “It rejects all forms of violence and totalitarianism: not only on principles of faith but also of right reason.”
The pope said that “religion and reason mutually reinforce one another” and urged Catholics and Muslims to work together “to build a civilization of love.”
Unlike in neighboring Nigeria, where religious strife has often broken into violence, Christians and Muslims largely coexist without problems in Cameroon, a situation that drew Benedict’s praise.
“May the enthusiastic cooperation of Muslims, Catholics and other Christians in Cameroon be a beacon to other African nations of the enormous potential of an inter-religious commitment to peace, justice and the common good,” he said.
Today’s meeting with Muslim representatives at the Apostolic Nunciature, where Benedict has been lodging on his first African pilgrimage as pope, was closed to the press.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the atmosphere was “cordial and friendly” and that the Muslims issued a “warm greeting to the pope.” Lombardi, who was at the meeting, said several of the Muslims leaders told Benedict “you are not alone.”
After meeting with the Muslims, the pope went on to Yaounde’s Amadou Ahidjo stadium to celebrate Mass.
He arrived in a bulletproof, glass-topped “pope mobile” and was driven all around the running track, bringing the huge crowd to its feet. While thousands more remained outside the full stadium, inside the crowd clapped and swayed to traditional music and songs, and many wore flowing robes with writing in French that celebrated the pope’s visit.
Meanwhile, the Vatican released a document suggesting that Christians on the continent can be agents of change to cure an array of ills, ranging from corruption to “the thirst for power.”
The document also said that “outside forces” in complicity with Africans fuel wars to sell arms and exploit natural resources.
“Globalization, an accepted fact of this century, is tending to marginalize Africa,” it says. The document, prepared by the Vatican and African bishops, was drawn up as a working paper for a meeting of the continent’s bishops in Rome in October.
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