YAOUNDE, Cameroon (AP) — Pope Leo XIV was marking the halfway point in his four-nation tour of Africa Friday with a day focused on encouraging Cameroon’s young people, first with the big Mass and then a visit to the country’s Catholic university.

Leo was travelling Friday to Douala, Cameroon’s main port city, to celebrate Mass and visit a hospital. The Vatican predicted some 600,000 people would turn out for the liturgy, the biggest crowd Leo is expected to draw on his 11-day odyssey, the first to Africa by history's first American pope.

Later Friday, Leo has an appointment back in the capital Youande with students, professors and administrators at the Catholic University of Central Africa. Popes have often used such encounters, especially in the developing world, to rally young people to persevere in the face of poverty, corruption and other challenges.

Catholics represent about 29% of Cameroon's 29 million people. It is an overwhelmingly young country, where the median age is 18.

Attention to young people

Leo has already offered words of encouragement to Cameroon’s youth, including in his opening speech to President Paul Biya, at 93 the world’s oldest leader. In the speech, Leo demanded the “chains of corruption” in Cameroon be broken and said Cameroon’s youth represent the future and hope of the country.

But with Biya in power since 1982, Cameroon perhaps represents the most dramatic example of the tension between Africa’s youth and the continent’s many aging leaders.

Despite being an oil-producing country experiencing modest economic growth, young people say the benefits have not trickled down beyond the elites.

“Of course, when unemployment and social exclusion persist, frustration can lead to violence," Leo warned in his opening address to Biya and government authorities earlier this week. "Investing in the education, training, and entrepreneurship of young people is, therefore, a strategic choice for peace. It is the only way to curb the outflow of wonderful talent to other parts of the world.”

According to World Bank data, the unemployment rate in Cameroon stands at 3.5%, but 57% of the labor force aged 18 to 35 works in informal employment.

The dire economic outlook in Cameroon has led to significant brain drain and has strained an already understaffed health sector, as many doctors and nurses are leaving the country for more lucrative jobs in Europe and North America.

In 2023, about a third of doctors who graduated from medical school in Cameroon left the country, according to the Ministry of Higher Education.

Growing frustration over Biya’s record and long-term rule intensified during last October’s tense presidential election, in which Biya secured an eighth consecutive term.

When Cameroon’s main opposition candidate, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, contested the result of the poll, deadly protests erupted throughout the country.

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Mark Banchereau contributed from Dakar, Senegal.

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