By Claudia Torres
Pope Leo XIV will be a “messenger of peace” for the Cameroonian faithful he will visit from Apr 15-18. Helping bring that message to life are the countless humanitarian organizations on the ground that, for decades, have prioritised the needs of the most vulnerable.
Amongst these is Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic Bishops in the United States, which has been active in the West African country since 1960, providing emergency assistance to people in need. In 2024, it reached 43,379 people with life-changing services in all ten regions of Cameroon.
Helping people displaced by violence
Speaking with L’Osservatore Romano, Caroline Agalheir, CRS Deputy Regional Director for Program Quality, Central & West Africa Regional Office (CWARO), and Mabel Chenjoh, Communication Officer for CRS in Cameroon, Chad, and Central African Republic, pointed to the Anglophone Crisis in the northwest region as one of their organization’s main challenges. The violent conflict has been raging between separatist English-speaking forces and the government since 2017, often making it difficult for humanitarian workers to reach affected people. “There are areas where the Church” and its “health clinics or schools might be some of the only institutions that are still running”, providing valuable resources and relief, explained Agalheir.
CRS has been implementing an emergency response project in the northwest region of Cameroon since 2019. “We have been able to serve more than 150,000 internally displaced people there”, explained Chenjoh, many of whom have lost their homes and belongings. The initiative provides electronic vouchers which families can use to buy food and other essential items, such as pots, buckets, mattresses, and plates. “We give them these things to help them to be able to settle down in the communities where they find themselves”, said Chenjoh.
Another aspect of the project is training participants so they can start their own small businesses and support themselves long-term. For example, CRS trained participants in poultry farming. “We even gave them chicks and poultry equipment”, which they could use to start businesses, said Chenjoh. Some of the participants are still “doing exceptionally well for themselves”, she added.
Another major challenge is the influx of refugees from neighboring countries, including Central African Republic to the East – though less so now – and Nigeria to the North, where violence perpetrated by Boko Haram in the Lake Chad region has acted as a powerful push factor, not to mention food insecurity and climate-related emergencies. In response, CRS implemented an early recovery project that “was really effective in starting to help families recover their livelihoods”, said Agalheir. “In communities that had seen an influx of new arrivals, we supported with some infrastructure”, including health facilities and classrooms, she explained.
Training young people on social cohesion
Another aspect of that project was “training on social cohesion”, said Agalheir, to meet the needs of both receiving communities and new arrivals, be they Nigerian refugees, Cameroonian returnees who had spent a long time in Nigeria, or internal displacements from nearby villages. “It’s never easy for a village to suddenly double in size and have all these new people there”.
As for cultural, linguistic, and religious differences, CRS helped train “youth ambassadors” and others, teaching them “to resolve conflicts and build up that social cohesion in their communities to have a peaceful coexistence and diffuse those tensions at the village level and better manage their conflicts”, she said. Although that project ended a few years ago, the people they trained “have continued to play a mediator role in their communities”, helping “facilitate dialogue between different groups that otherwise could have had more difficulty understanding each other”, she noted.
This long-term resilience is essential given the aid cuts the organization has faced since early 2025, when the US administration shut down USAID, a key donor for many CRS projects in Cameroon. Chenjoh explained that diversifying their sources of funding and strengthening “the capacity of other local partners so that they can be at the forefront of emergency responses” are some of the ways they are trying to mitigate the effects of the cuts. “We are here just implementing the will of the bishops of the United States to support the people living in vulnerable conditions, the people who are suffering. That’s why we’re here. And we will continue to do that. We will always be present in the communities where they need us most”.
Pope Leo XIV, a messenger of hope
Against this backdrop of ongoing need and limited resources, the papal visit carries particular significance. Chenjoh also described an atmosphere of excitement among locals as they prepare to welcome the Holy Father, who will visit the cities of Yaoundé, Douala, and Bamenda in the English-speaking Northwest.
“The Pope is the messenger of hope. I think just the fact that the highest authority of the Catholic Church is coming to Cameroon, and not just Cameroon, but going specifically to Bamenda, where he is going to meet the people who have been suffering for close to a decade now, I think it’s going to give the people some reassurance… It’s going to be a glimmer of hope and solace for the people in that part of the country” to know that “the Pope is sympathizing with them, the Pope is supporting them, and that he’s praying for them”, she said.
Chenjoh hopes the Holy Father’s presence will bring more attention to the hospitality, resilience, and determination of the people of Cameroon. “I would want them to see Cameroon as a country that is doing its best, the people and the leaders, all together”.
Agalheir, who is from the United States but worked with CRS Cameroon from 2020 to 2024, and before that, with the Peace Corps from 2006 to 2009, said sometimes people call Cameroon ‘Africa in miniature’, because “it has a bit of everything: there’s the Sahel in the north, there’s grasslands in the southwest, there’s the Congo rainforest to the east, there’s really a bit of everything in terms of what type of geography you’re looking at”. Not to mention the more than 300 ethnic tribes, each with their own cultural and linguistic characteristics. “Cameroonians are just such great, interesting, vibrant, friendly people. I really have enjoyed working with them over the years, and I feel like the collaboration, the sense of wanting to see a better tomorrow is really exciting for them and for me working with them”. – Vatican News
