Pope Leo XIV’s Africa itinerary highlights interfaith diplomacy and pastoral visits
Pope Leo XIV’s upcoming four-nation Africa odyssey will take him to Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea, the Vatican said, with Vatican planning centered on interfaith engagement, outreach to Catholics in former European colonies and attention to communities affected by violence. The trip is scheduled to run April 13-23 and will include meetings with government leaders, sessions with local bishops and Masses for the faithful, along with additional stops described by Vatican officials.
The tour begins in Algeria, which has never before hosted a pope, with the first day in Algiers set to include government meetings, touring the Great Mosque and meeting members of the local Catholic community. Pope Leo XIV is also expected to travel to Annaba in eastern Algeria, formerly known as Hippo, where St. Augustine lived and died in 430. There, Vatican planning calls for meetings with Augustinian sisters and priests and a visit to an archaeological site, as well as a Mass in the capital’s basilica named after St. Augustine.
From there, the pope will move to Cameroon, where Vatican officials said he will visit Yaoundé, Douala and Bamenda. The Vatican itinerary places special focus on a “peace meeting” in Bamenda on April 16, with no details on participants immediately announced. The Vatican’s planning came as Cameroon continues to face fighting, including conflict linked to English-speaking separatists that began in 2017 and has killed more than 6,000 people and displaced more than 600,000 others, according to the International Crisis Group.
The tour’s Cameroon stop also reflects the security challenges in the north, where Boko Haram militants have been active and the insurgency in neighboring Nigeria has spilled over into Cameroon. Vatican planning also acknowledged concerns raised by some Cameroonians that the visit could be used by the country’s leadership following a disputed presidential election. Cameroonian Jesuit priest and opposition activist Ludovic Lado said in an open letter that the trip could be “interpreted as an implicit form of endorsement of a discredited and illegitimate government.”
Vatican planning for Cameroon described the electoral backdrop: President Paul Biya, 92, who has been in power for 42 years, was declared the winner of October’s presidential election and was set to take another seven-year term. His main challenger, former government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary, has continued to maintain that he is the legitimate winner. The pope is scheduled to meet local bishops and hold additional pastoral encounters alongside his planned peace-focused activities.
In Angola, Vatican officials said the pope will visit Luanda, the town of Muxima and the city of Saurimo. The planning also tied the stop to the country’s religious landscape: Catholicism is described as the largest faith group in the Portuguese-speaking nation of about 38 million people. The pope’s Angola route includes a visit to the Sanctuary of Mama Muxima, a Marian shrine inside the Church of Our Lady of Muxima, which Vatican planning said has become one of the country’s most important Catholic pilgrimage sites.
The Vatican planning described the shrine’s history as well, noting that the church was first built around the end of the 16th century by the Portuguese after they established a fortress at Muxima. It also said the site became a key point in the Portuguese trans-Atlantic human trade as a place where enslaved people were baptized before being sent on ships to the Americas. The itinerary in Angola, Vatican officials said, will also include meetings with the faithful and Masses.
The final leg of the tour is Equatorial Guinea, where Vatican planning said the Catholic Church remains influential despite the country officially being secular. Officials described the country as having a large Catholic population, roughly 70% of its 1.9 million citizens Catholic, and said the pope’s visit will be its second after Pope St. John Paul II’s 1982 trip. The Vatican said the pope will traverse three dioceses—Malabo, Bata and Mongomo—and will include private talks with the country’s leader.
In Bata, Vatican planning said Pope Leo XIV will meet prison inmates and pray at a memorial for victims of a 2021 blast at a military barracks that killed more than 100 people. The Vatican said the explosions were blamed on the negligent handling of dynamite stored near residential areas. In Malabo and Mongomo, Vatican officials said the pope will also meet with bishops and hold additional pastoral activities and prayers.
The Vatican itinerary placed the memorial and prison visit within a broader description of the country’s political setting and religious history. It said Equatorial Guinea has been ruled for decades by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has been in power since 1982 and has been accused of running an autocratic regime, and it noted Catholics experienced intense persecution under former President Francisco Macías Nguema, including the closure of churches in 1975 and an official ban on the Catholic Church in 1978. Vatican planning said that decree was repealed after Teodoro came to power in a coup.
Vatican officials also said that, despite the economy’s oil and gas wealth, at least 57% of Equatorial Guinea’s population lives in poverty, citing the World Bank.