Crux

ALGIERS, Algeria — Pope Leo XIV arrived in Algeria on Monday on a first-ever papal visit, calling for peace and the end of “neocolonial tendencies” in world affairs, while facing an extraordinary broadside by President Donald Trump over his criticism of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

Leo’s arrival in Algiers kicked off an 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.

Leo is in Algeria to promote Christian-Muslim coexistence in the majority Muslim nation at a time of global conflict and to honor the locally born inspiration of his religious spirituality, St. Augustine.

The trip began, however, against the backdrop of a growing feud between the Chicago-born Leo and Trump over the war. Trump overnight said he didn’t think Leo was doing a good job as pope and suggested he should “stop catering to the Radical Left.”

Leo responded en route to Algeria, saying the Vatican’s appeals for peace and reconciliation are rooted in the Gospel, and that he didn’t fear the Trump administration.

In his first remarks in Algiers, Leo tied his current appeal for peace to Algeria’s struggle for independence from France, obtained in 1962. Hundreds of thousands died in the revolution during which French forces tortured detainees, disappeared suspects and devastated villages as part of a strategy to maintain their grip on power.

“God desires peace for every nation, a peace that is not merely an absence of conflict but one that is an expression of justice and dignity,” he told several thousand people at the monument to Algeria’s martyrs.

Later, meeting with President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and other government authorities, Leo praised Algerians for their solidarity and respect for one another, which he said provided an important perspective “on the global balance of power.”

“Today, this is more urgent than ever in the face of continuous violations of international law and neocolonial tendencies,” he said. Leo didn’t name examples but has previously spoken about Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Iran war and Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon.

A message of peace in Algeria

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 Our Lady of Africa 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. “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 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 them 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 them were two nuns from Leo’s Augustinian religious family.

On his first day in Algeria, Leo was paying homage to the 19 martyrs and visiting 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.

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 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.

A personal and pastoral visit

The visit to Algeria is pastoral but also deeply personal. Leo’s Augustinian religious order was inspired by the teachings of St. Augustine of Hippo, the fifth-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 repeatedly cited the church father in 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 Catholic Church but on Western thought more broadly, is very, very long indeed,” he said.

Aomar Ouali contributed to this report.