The government "has lost its moral legitimacy" and new polls are needed, the South African Council of Churches said.

Hunger is so severe in drought-ridden southern Madagascar that many people in remote villages have eaten almost nothing but cactus fruit for up to four years.

"Since genuine attempts to dialogue and find a resolution to the crisis seem to have ended, Trinity is regrettably no longer available as a venue for meeting," the Jesuits said.

"We stayed because we are committed to the ordinary people who are suffering so much."

People in Cape Verde who live in densely populated areas without decent water and sanitation are at greatest risk of infection.

Church leaders are alarmed by the "political, social and economic meltdown, which has caused untold suffering..."

Zimbabwe is "undergoing a very difficult patch, economically, socially, politically and spiritually," church leaders said.

Alarming levels of hunger, caused by the worst drought in about half a century, has left about 10 percent of all Ethiopians—some 10 million in all—in need of food aid.

South Africans need to "acknowledge the link between race, power and privilege" and redress the economic inequalities brought about by past discriminatory laws and practices, the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference said in a March 7 pastoral letter.

Violence and fear-mongering seem "rampant in both church and society" in the northeast African country, said Bishop Edward Hiiboro Kussala of Tombura-Yambio. Five armed men, believed to be allied to South Sudan's main rebel group, assaulted and threatened religious sisters at the Solidarity Teacher Training College in Yambio, the capital of the country's Western Equatoria state, on Dec. 28.