With street cleaning and public works already underway, members of the public say they are being asked to contribute to the cost of both preparations and the two-day visit, which takes place from 21 to 23 April, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
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In February, civil servants and members of the armed forces say they saw their wages docked. Sums deducted range from 20,000 to 55,000 CFA francs (€30 to €75), depending on salaries, according to several testimonies gathered by French news agency AFP.
“I had 55,000 CFA francs (€84) taken from my salary of 250,000 (€381),” said a civil servant at the Ministry of Information, speaking on condition of anonymity. The source said that it had been justified as funding for the Pope’s visit.
“I do not know the Pope and I am not Catholic, his visit does not concern me (…) but 50,000 CFA francs (€75) was taken from me in February,” an army officer, also speaking anonymously, told AFP.
Papal merchandise
Students are also under pressure to spend money.
The Pope is due to visit the new campus of the National University of Equatorial Guinea (UNGE) in Basùpù, which has been renamed “Pope Leo XIV University Campus” in his honour.
The university’s management issued a circular urging students and staff to pay 10,000 CFA francs (about €15) to obtain a full outfit bearing the pontiff’s image – including an umbrella, cap, handkerchief, bag and fan – to be worn obligatorily during his visit.
UNGE student Anatolie Edjang, 24, described the move as “deplorable” and said students should not be made to bear the burden of the government’s decision to invite the Pope.
“It is wrong to force students to buy these things,” said Kalaima Nchama, an 18-year-old first-year student.
Widespread poverty
Public criticism of the government is rare in Central African nation, which has been ruled since 1979 by authoritarian president Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
Despite having one of the highest per capita incomes in Africa, largely due to oil revenues, much of the population in Equatorial Guinea remains poor. More than half the population live on less than $8.30/day, according to the latest World Bank figures, and more than 8 percent are unemployed.
On the first day of the Pope’s visit, which begins in the main city of Malabo, he will meet representatives from the cultural sector, staff at a psychiatric hospital and, in private, the country’s bishops.
He then travels to Mongomo, in the east of the country, to visit a training centre named after his predecessor, Pope Francis.
His trip ends in the economic capital of Bata on the Atlantic coast, where he’ll meet prison inmates and pay tribute to more than 100 people killed in explosions in a military barracks on 7 March 2021.
Bata’s local bishop has appealed for “material, logistical or financial” donations from members of the diocese ahead of Leo XIV’s visit.
