By Fr. Beltus Asanji
The Pope’s visit to Bamenda will be remembered as one of Pope Leo XIV’s most treasured apostolic journeys to Africa. Yet amid the liturgy and the crowds, one moment held the weight of a decade.
In the Metropolitan Cathedral at Big Mankon, during the peace meeting, Archbishop Andrew Nkea rose to address the Holy Father. His voice steadied, but his eyes could not. He held back tears that had been nine years in the gathering.
Those tears were not born in that cathedral. They were born on roads where he buried a priest cut down by the crisis. They were born in the long nights when he negotiated for abducted clergy, when threats arrived by phone and the silence that followed felt like a second death. They were born each time he wrote, preached, and pleaded, only to watch the country turn its ear away.
His iconic memorandum laid the wounds of Cameroon bare. His homilies became appeals. His peaceful prayers became processions of hope. Still, too many chose not to hear. As the saying goes, a prophet finds no honor in his own town. Perhaps they will listen to Peter’s successor.
This is not a commentary on the Pope’s words. This is an attempt to understand the man who spoke them into being. Archbishop Nkea’s tears are the ledger of nearly nine years spent walking beside a people in pain. They are the tears of a shepherd who has anointed graves, answered ransom calls at midnight, and carried the names of the missing in his breviary. They are the tears of one who has been maligned for speaking, and maligned for silence, while the fruits of his labor bear quiet witness in lives saved and reconciliations begun.
The tears of Archbishop Nkea do not belong to him alone. They are the tears of a diocese. They are the tears of mothers who have not stopped waiting. They are the tears of a Church that refuses to abandon its wounded, even when the world looks away.
When a bishop cries, the altar listens. When a shepherd weeps, the flock knows it is not alone.
