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ALGIERS – Pope Leo XIV made history Monday when he became the first pope to visit Algeria, birthplace of Saint Augustine, the great bishop of Hippo in what was then Roman North Africa. Leo landed in Algiers Monday morning, kicking off a whirlwind visit to Algeria at the start of a broader 11-day tour of Africa that will also take him to Cameroon, Angola, and Equatorial Guinea. The Algeria visit is rife with personal significance for the pontiff. On the day of his election, Leo famously declared to the world, “I am an Augustinian, a son of Saint Augustine,” whose rule of monastic life and spirituality inspire the Order of Saint Augustine to which the pope belongs and which he led for a dozen years. Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo and Doctor of the Church, is universally recognized as the greatest of the so-called Latin Fathers, famed for his writings, most prominently The City of God, On Christian Doctrine, and the Confessions, all of which are foundational to Christianity in the West and are still studied today. Leo quoted the great saint on the day of his election, telling the faithful, “With you I am a Christian, and for you I am a bishop,” making Augustine’s words his own. During his brief visit to Algeria this week, he will have the chance to fill both of those roles, encouraging the country’s tiny Christian minority in a Muslim-dominated nation, but also offering guidance as the Bishop of Rome and the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics. As superior general of his Augustinian order from 2001-2013, then-Father Robert Prevost traveled to at least four dozen countries and made two trips to Algeria, visiting Hippo for the first time in 2001 for a conference on Saint Augustine. He went back in 2013 for the reopening of the Basilica of Saint Augustine after the conclusion of restoration work. This, however, will be his first trip to the country as pope, and it will be the first-ever papal visit to Algeria, a country with a rich history of martyrs and efforts to build peace and dialogue following a bitter and violent war just 30 years ago. After his official welcome ceremony, Leo will immediately visit the Maqam Echahid Martyrs’ Monument before paying a courtesy visit to the president of Algeria, Abdelmadjid Tebboune. He will then address diplomats and visit the Great Mosque of Algiers in a sign of interfaith dialogue. He will then make a private visit to the welcome and friendship center of Augustinian missionary sisters in Bab El Oued. The center is located near the former home where two Augustinian sisters resided before being killed in the area during the 1990s Algerian Civil War and functions on fostering community dialogue. The center stands as an example of the church’s efforts to dialogue with Islam in a predominantly Sunni Muslim nation, where over 99 percent of the population adhere to Islam. Algeria’s small Christian community faces tight restrictions and bans on proselytizing. While religious freedom is guaranteed in the constitution, it is limited in practice, especially for Muslims who convert to Christianity. In the 1990s civil war, Christians were targeted by Islamic militants, including the killing of the Tibhirine monks and the two Augustinian nuns. All of them were beatified by Pope Francis in 2018. Between 1994 and 1996, during what is now referred to as Algeria’s “Black Decade,” some 19 Catholic religious men and women were killed, including the Trappist monks of Tibhirine – who were abducted the night between March 26 and 27, 1996, and whose heads were found two months later near Médéa – and Pierre Claverie, the Bishop of Oran, who was killed in a car bombing along with a young Muslim who had also chosen to stay amid the violence. Algerian authorities reportedly denied a Vatican request for Leo to visit Médéa, located some 30 miles south of Algiers, to pray at the Tibhirine monastery, as the government apparently did not want to reopen a dark chapter of history. The drama of the Tibhirine monks’ martyrdom was captured in the Xavier Beauvois’s 2010 film, Of Gods and Men. As a former missionary in Peru in the troubled decades of the 1980s and 1990s, when the country was ravaged by political and social instability, widespread economic crisis and rampant poverty, as well as the continual threats of the terrorist group The Shining Path, the commemoration of the religious men and women killed in Algeria’s war is likely to hold special significance. Leo himself said in a biography of his life, titled Pope Leo XIV: The Biography, which will soon be released in English, that there had been a plan to evacuate the foreign missionaries living in the Augustinian community in Chulucanas during his first year there, in 1985-86, but – like the Tibhirine monks – they chose to stay and help the local population through hardship. On his second and final day in Algeria, Pope Leo will visit the archeological site of Hippo before holding a private meeting with members of the Augustinian order and celebrating Mass in the Basilica of Saint Augustine. In between events he will pay a visit to the nursing home run by the Little Sisters of the Poor in Algiers, and he will hold a private meeting and lunch with members of the Augustinian Order. Two Augustinians – the Order’s representative overseeing Africa and its Prior General, Father Joeseph Farrell – accompanied Pope Leo on his flight from Rome to Algiers. Now known as Annaba, the former Hippo, in Latin Hippo Regius, is a coastal city in northeastern Algeria near its border with Tunisia and is where Saint Augustine served as bishop from 396-430. Given the country’s religious demographics and complex recent history, peace and interreligious dialogue will likely be major themes present throughout the pope’s visit to Algeria. With the strong Augustinian footprint in Algeria, Leo will also likely quote heavily from his Order’s founder, and stress core Augustinian values such as friendship, dialogue, and unity in a culture in which historic divisions can still be felt. Pope Leo will then fly to Yaoundé, Cameroon, the morning of Wednesday, April 15, after a brief farewell ceremony. He will land in Cameroon’s capital city in the afternoon, with several formal public and private events to follow. Follow Elise Ann Allen on X: @eliseannallen

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