Pope Leo XIV has blasted the “handful of tyrants” who are ravaging Earth with war and exploitation, as he preached a message of peace in the epicentre of a separatist conflict considered one of the world’s most neglected crises.

Leo, on a four-country trip to Africa, travelled to the western Cameroon city of Bamenda, where jubilant crowds clogged the roads, blowing horns and dancing to welcome him on Thursday.

They were overjoyed that a pope had come so far to see them and put a global spotlight on the violence that has traumatised this region for nearly a decade.

Leo presided over a peace meeting involving a Mankon traditional chief, a Presbyterian moderator, an imam and a Catholic nun. The aim was to highlight the interfaith movement that has been seeking to end the conflict and care for its many victims.

In his remarks in the St Joseph Cathedral, on land donated by the Mankon, Leo praised the peace movement and warned against allowing religion to enter conflicts.

It is a theme he has been echoing amid the United States-Israeli war in Iran and the religious justifications for it by U.S. officials.

“Blessed are the peacemakers!” he said. “But 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.”

He called for a “decisive change of course” that leads away from conflict and the exploitation of the land and its people for military or economic gain.

“The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants, yet it is held together by a multitude of supportive brothers and sisters!”

The pope’s comments came days after U.S. President Donald Trump attacked him again on social media.

The pope is set to celebrate a mass for the people of Bamenda, located near Cameroon’s western border with Nigeria, later on Thursday before returning to the capital, Yaounde. It was not immediately clear if any of the Cameroonian separatist fighters, who are observing a pause in the fighting, would attend.

The conflict in Cameroon’s two Anglophone regions is rooted in Cameroon’s colonial history, when the country was divided between France and Britain after World War I.

English-speaking regions later joined French Cameroon in a 1961 United Nations-backed vote, but separatists say they have since been politically and economically marginalised.

In 2017, English-speaking separatists launched a rebellion with the stated goal of breaking away from the French-speaking majority and establishing an independent state. The conflict has killed more than 6,000 people and displaced more than 600,000, according to the International Crisis Group.