Pope making first papal visit to Algeria to launch Africa trip and honor locally born St. Augustine

ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV is embarking Monday on the first-ever papal trip to Algeria, aiming to promote Christian-Muslim coexistence at a time of global conflict and honor the locally born inspiration of his religious spirituality, St. Augustine.

Leo’s two-day stop in Algeria opens an intense 11-day tour of four African nations — Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea — that will bring history’s first U.S.-born pope deep into the growing heart of the Catholic Church.

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune was set to greet Leo upon his arrival at Algiers' international airport before they meet formally at the El Mouradia presidential palace.

Later Monday, Leo was to address Algerian authorities and visit the city’s Great Mosque. He was finishing the day with a gathering at the Our Lady of Africa basilica, and then prayers at a nearby monument for migrants killed in shipwrecks trying to reach Europe.

The gathering at the basilica, a Roman-Byzantine structure built in the late 1800s during France’s colonial rule, will feature testimony from a Catholic nun, a Pentecostal believer and Muslim, as well as remarks by the pope.

The official motto of the Algeria trip is Leo’s opening line wherever he goes — “Peace be with you” — and the Vatican says a general message of peace and Christian-Muslim coexistence will be the major theme.

In Algeria, a tiny Catholic community of around 9,000 people made up mostly of foreigners exists alongside the Sunni Muslim majority of about 47 million, according to Vatican statistics.

The archbishop of Algiers, French Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco, said on any given day, nine out of 10 people who visit the basilica are Muslim.

“It’s wonderful to be able to show that we can be brothers and sisters together, building a society despite our different religions,” Vesco told The Associated Press on the eve of Leo’s arrival. “And that is what our church has been doing since this country gained independence.”

The United States, though, has placed Algeria on its special watch list for “having engaged in or tolerated severe violations of religious freedom.” The Algerian constitution recognizes “religions other than Islam” and allows individuals to practice their faith if they respect public order and rules.

But proselytizing to Muslims by non-Muslims is a crime, and some other Christian denominations have faced persecution from Algerian authorities, who have closed their churches.

“I imagine it’s a good thing that a pope is visiting Algeria,” said Selma Dénane, a student who lives in Annaba down the coast from Algiers. “But what will it change afterward? Will Christians be able to say, ‘I am a Christian’ without fear or stigmatization?’”

A violent past of martyrs

Three decades after declaring independence from France, Algeria fought a brutal civil war in the 1990s that is known locally as the “black decade,” when some 250,000 people were killed as the army fought an Islamist insurgency.

Among those killed were 19 Catholics, including seven Trappist monks from the Tibhirine monastery south of Algiers, who were kidnapped and killed in 1996 by Islamic fighters. Also among the 19 were two nuns from Leo’s Augustinian religious family.

On his first day in Algeria, Leo will pay homage to the 19 martyrs and visit the remaining Augustinian nuns who run a social services project out of the Algiers basilica that helps people of all faiths.

“They gave their lives for God, for Jesus, for the church, for the Algerian people because they didn’t want to leave the country, even in the difficult moments,” said Sister Lourdes Miguelez.

All 19 were beatified in 2018 as martyrs for the faith in what was then the first such beatification ceremony in the Muslim world.

Vesco, the Algiers archbishop, likes to remind audiences that Leo was elected on May 8, the Catholic feast day of the 19 martyrs. Immediately after Leo’s election, Vesco invited him to visit.

Leo has another connection to the Trappist monks: He has made a mantra out of one of the sayings of the martyred prior of the Tibherine monastery, Christian de Chergé, who spoke of an “unarmed and disarming peace.” Leo has cited the line starting from the night of his election.

“Obviously he will speak a lot about peace, it’s urgent and current,” Vesco said.

A personal and pastoral visit

For Leo, the visit to Algeria is pastoral but also deeply personal. His Augustinian religious order was inspired by the teachings of St. Augustine of Hippo, the 5th century theological and philosophical titan of the early Christian church who was born in what is today Algeria and spent all but five years of his life there.

On Tuesday, Leo will visit Annaba, the modern-day Hippo where St. Augustine was bishop for three decades, and will literally walk in the footsteps of the saint.

From his first public words as pope, Leo proclaimed himself a “son of St. Augustine,” and he has made that clear in his first year, repeatedly citing the church father in his speeches and homilies.

“I don’t know if I have seen a statement, a homily, an apostolic letter or exhortation that doesn’t reference Augustine,” said Paul Camacho, associate director of the Augustinian Institute at Villanova University, Leo’s Augustinian-run alma mater outside Philadelphia.

“The shadow that he casts on Western thought, not just the Roman Catholic Church but on Western thought more broadly, is very, very long indeed,” he said.

Ouali and Santalucia reported from Algiers, Algeria.

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