In January 2020, Francis met Mr. Tshisekedi to discuss improved relations between the Holy See and Congo. Another election is set to take place this December.
Catholics have remained politically engaged. After celebrating Mass on some Sundays, congregations across the country have marched straight from church in large-scale demonstrations, making it more difficult for the authorities to crack down on them. Protesters have demanded fresh elections and an end to the war in the east.
But that remains only an aspiration. Esperance Lwabo Nyende, 30, took her three young daughters and fled for safety when Rwandan, Congolese and Ugandan rebels of the M23 insurgency recently attacked her village in Rutshuru.
“I was very tired because of being pregnant,” she said, outside her family’s new home, assembled from twigs and a sheet of tarpaulin, in a makeshift camp. “This is a miserable life. There’s diarrhea, famine, cold,” she added, wishing that decision makers had “the courage to talk like men so we can go home.”
The east of Congo has been in episodic turmoil since 1994, when the genocide across the border in Rwanda sent millions of refugees — including perpetrators of the massacres — over the border and into huge camps. But there has been a recent escalation in the long-running conflict driven by the re-emergence of M23, or the March 23 Movement, which refers to a failed peace agreement signed on that date in 2009.
There are also more than 120 other armed groups and self-defense militias fighting for land and power in the North and South Kivu, Ituri, and Tanganyika provinces.
“We’re in a situation of total insecurity,” said Dady Saleh, a professor in Goma. “For more than 90 percent of people, it’s extreme poverty, extreme insecurity.”
