“Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo died in France”, the title of the website states Radio OkapiArchbishop Emeritus of Kinshasa died on Sunday, July 11, at the age of 81. The Catholic prelate was seriously ill and his health deteriorated in Kinshasa. He was evacuated last Monday to France to receive appropriate care, says Radio Okapi.
“The Congolese church is in mourning,” he wrote Vatican news. You can read the interview and tribute to Laurent Monsengwo’s successor, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo. He greets the commitment of a “man of God who believed in man, in the value of man” and who led his whole life in “a struggle for a more just world, a more brotherly world”.
A churchman, but also a voice heard on the political stage
It is a “church prince who disappears”, the newspaper estimatesAfrican issues. But “under the cash register we can read, no doubt the suit of a real politician hid”. For African Stakes, Laurent Monsengwo had “the advantage of being a counter-force, a voice that carries”, and “he never had his tongue in his pocket”. “Did he not treat the Kabbalists as mediocre?” Reminds me of the newspaper and, more recently, “did he not mock the current president for having ‘made an agreement’ with his predecessor, to the detriment of the interests of the people?” For African stakes it is certain: “His faithful waited for his believers but the power seized them.” The late cardinal “will be missed by both,” the article concludes.
In Mali, memorials and a desire for justice
“M5-RFP Strategic Committee Remember!”, Poster MaliWeb. “On 10, 11, 12, 2020, a year ago, the website explains, the whole world was surprised to see the bloody repression” against the pacifist protesters in Bamako. It had caused “several deaths and many injuries” and “these people gave their blood for change”, MaliWeb wrote, referring to the “duty to remember” mentioned by the M5-RFP, the movement that helped push Ibrahim Boubacar Keita against Exit.
Malijet returns for his part at the exit of the influential Imam Mahmoud Dico. He called for justice for the victims on Sunday, during a speech in front of his mosque in the Badalabougou district of Bamako, where police intervened against a gathering of believers. Justice that will be necessary, MaliWeb analysis. The website also welcomes the start of the prosecution against the alleged perpetrators and accomplices of the murders during these demonstrations, and for him there is no doubt: “To lay the groundwork for the restoration of the Malian state, governments will indeed have to send a strong signal by working for to end impunity. “
Sahel and the security situation in the French press
“The dangerous reorganization of Operation Barkhane”, an analysis to read in the newspaperThe world, while “President Emmanuel Macron presented on Friday the lines of the plan for the partial withdrawal of about 5,100 French soldiers”. Partial withdrawals that should start “in the next few weeks” andThe worldgives us this Monday a report in Burkina Faso. On the spot “entire municipalities are surrounded by jihadists who threaten the inhabitants and shield the population of the rest of the country”, as in Madjoari, in the east, in the heart of Arly Park, 400 kilometers from the capital Ouagadougou. Hundreds of people are just trying to survive there. “The despair of the population, the broken army, apathetic rule: it’s an explosive cocktail,” a political scientist tells us. And this is what makes this reorganization of Barkhane for Le Monde dangerous today.
In neighboring Mali, still in Le Monde, we learn – or find confirmation – that the refusal to negotiate with the jihadists averts Bamako’s power and local public opinion. “If we Malians want to negotiate, it is our choice,” testified a resident of the Koro district. In any case, the solutions exist elsewhere than on the sole military basis, and it is none other than General Didier Castres who confirmed this on Monday inRelease.He who was commander of the French army’s operations during the first years of Serval since Barkhane, he is categorical: Completely alone on the ground, “the soldiers solve nothing”.
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