Our culture in the west comes from the heritage of the Catholic church. The Vatican is impressive, and why shouldn’t be? It contains the history of Christianity and Europe for almost 2000 years, starting shortly after Jesus death.
They are involved in politics, yes a lot of priest and Jesuits have been assassinated for supporting social justice in Salvador and in other places.
Catholics use contraceptives and nobody bothers them with that. Not sure where that policy originates, but would be interesting to find out who is responsible for it, as they know nobody follows it.
Africa’s problems have nothing to do with Catholicism, in fact there are a lot of missions and npo helping the people there in exchange for nothing.
The church has not burned anyone in a few centuries. Protestants also killed thousands of people in the middle ages. Thankfully things have improved considerably since then.
If anything they are the ones being persecuted now, during the II WW and the Spanish civil war for example very cruelly, or nowadays by being constantly mocked and insulted by people that would do well having only a tenth of the culture and respect for others they have.