Pope Leo XIV Begins Historic Visit to Algeria
History will be made Monday when Pope Leo XIV lands in Algiers for the first papal visit to Algeria in any pontificate’s recorded history — a two-day journey that Vatican officials describe as a milestone for interfaith dialogue and a deeply personal pilgrimage for a pope who follows the Rule of Saint Augustine.
From April 13 to 15, the 68-year-old pope will tour the Great Mosque of Algiers, meet the country’s small Catholic community at the Basilica of Our Lady of Africa, and travel to Annaba, formerly Hippo Regius, where Augustine of Hippo served as bishop in the late fourth and early fifth centuries.
The invitation came from Algiers Archbishop Jean-Paul Vesco, who extended it on the day Leo XIV was elected — May 8, the feast day of Algeria’s 19 martyrs, priests and nuns killed during the country’s civil war in the 1990s.
The visit holds particular weight given the history between Algeria and the Catholic Church. Unlike Morocco, which hosted John Paul II in 1985 and Francis in 2019, Algeria never extended a papal invitation during the post-independence era. Analysts trace this to the ideological legacy of the independence war, which cast the Catholic Church — as a French institution — as part of the colonial apparatus.
“The ideological bedrock of the FLN was bound up with a struggle against France, its ideology and its church,” said Mehdi Ghouirgate, a professor of Arabic studies at the University of Bordeaux Montaigne. “There is a form of visceral hostility towards Christianity that runs deep.”
That history was further complicated during the Black Decade (1992–2002), when 19 priests and nuns were killed. Their beatification in Oran in 2018 began a process of reconciliation that culminates this week.
Algiers has welcomed the visit eagerly, framing it as an opportunity to burnish its international image at a time when it has grown diplomatically isolated — particularly over the Western Sahara dispute, where Morocco has outmaneuvered Algeria on multiple fronts.
For the Vatican, the visit is also a subtle exercise in distinguishing between Catholic and Protestant communities. Open Doors ranks Algeria 20th on its World Watch List for Christian persecution.