Ambongo: A Dialogue That Excludes Those at War Is a Monologue, Not Peace

On October 25, in Assisi, Fridolin Cardinal Ambongo Besungu stood before an international peace gathering organized by the Community of Sant'Egidio and delivered a blunt assessment of his country's stalled search for peace. The Archbishop of Kinshasa said the national dialogue meant to end the war in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is blocked by preconditions and exclusions, and that without an inclusive process there will be no peace.

His central line was simple: a dialogue that excludes those one is at war with is not a dialogue but a monologue. He said efforts to convene talks have stalled amid red lines and disagreements over who may take part, even as fighting continues in the east. Preconditions are set, he said, and it is decided in advance who may sit at the table and who is shut out.

Ambongo recalled how the effort began. Together with the Church of Christ in Congo, the Catholic Church proposed a Social Pact for Peace and Living Well Together, which he described not as a political programme but as a method: sit together, listen to one another's wounds, and rebuild national cohesion around a shared ideal rather than around individuals. In July, he said, the Head of State called for an inclusive national dialogue, and religious leaders accepted the mission entrusted to them. He said he was grateful for that response. Today, he added, the process is blocked, and he asked how Congo can face aggression if its sons and daughters remain divided.

The Capuchin cardinal, who also presides over the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar, did not minimize the grievances. The wounds and mistrust are real, he said, and the blood that has been shed cries out for justice. But he argued that military force alone will not bring peace to Congo, only an inclusive political process. Peace, he said, is made not among friends but among adversaries who agree to recognize one another as brothers. Dialogue is the way of the strong, he said, of those with enough inner strength not to need to crush the other.

As precedent he pointed to Sant'Egidio's own record in Mozambique, where enemies who had fought for sixteen years signed peace in Rome in 1992 after more than two years of patient negotiation.

He described the situation in eastern Congo as a thirty-year tragedy with millions dead. Citing the United Nations, he said more than six million people are internally displaced and more than twenty-six million face acute food insecurity. He noted that Goma fell to the AFC/M23 in January 2025, and that Uvira followed in December, less than a week after the Washington accords were ratified. Agreements are signed in foreign capitals and roadmaps adopted in Doha and elsewhere, he said, while fighting goes on in Masisi, Walikale, Fizi and Uvira.

In his account, the war persists because human beings have lost their value in a country where only minerals and riches count. Coltan, cassiterite and gold, he said, feed the war rather than children. He named a double injustice: internally, wealth concentrated in a small minority while most people live in poverty; externally, foreign interests near and far competing over Congo's resources. He repeated his criticism of what he called the guilty silence of a world that profits from systematic plunder. Yet he said he did not want only to blame others: peace in Africa depends first on Africans, and the ball is in their court.

Widening his lens, Ambongo called the adage "If you want peace, prepare for war" a lie, saying those who prepare for war end up waging it and the poor pay. He noted global military spending has never been higher. He cited Pope Francis in Fratelli Tutti on war as a failure of politics and humanity, and Pope Leo XIV's description of a peace that is disarmed and disarming, humble and persevering. Such peace, he said, begins with disarming hearts and words: ethnic hatred, dehumanizing speech and the manipulation of religion.

He closed with three appeals. To Congolese and Great Lakes leaders: reopen dialogue without exclusions or impossible preconditions. To the international community: move from declarations to action and stop looking away from the trade financing the war. To believers: be artisans of this peace. The force of arms, he said, produces victors and vanquished, widows and orphans; the force of dialogue produces brothers. What to watch is whether the president's July call and the religious leaders' mission yield talks that actually include the armed actors.