The Vatican has released details of Pope Leo XIV’s upcoming four-nation Africa tour, outlining a schedule that mixes interfaith encounters, meetings with Catholic communities and clergy, and visits tied to conflict and mass-casualty remembrance.
The trip is set for April 13-23 and begins in Algeria, a country the Vatican said has never before welcomed a pope. The itinerary starts in Algiers, where the pope is scheduled to meet with government authorities, tour the Great Mosque, and meet with the local Catholic community.
From there, the Vatican said Leo will travel to Annaba, which was formerly known as Hippo and is associated with St. Augustine. The announced program calls for meetings with Augustinian sisters and priests in a location tied to the saint’s legacy, along with a tour of an archaeological site and a Mass in a basilica named after St. Augustine.
Next, the pope’s Africa tour moves to Cameroon, where the Vatican said Leo will preside over a “peace meeting” in northwest Cameroon. The pope is scheduled to visit Yaoundé, the country’s economic hub Douala, and Bamenda, with the Vatican saying the “peace meeting” will take place in Bamenda on April 16, without immediately naming details of potential participants.
The AP account accompanying the Vatican’s itinerary said Cameroon’s western regions have been plagued by fighting since 2017, when English-speaking separatists launched a rebellion aimed at breaking away from the French-speaking majority and establishing an independent English-speaking state. The same reporting said the conflict has killed more than 6,000 people and displaced over 600,000 others, citing the International Crisis Group, and it added that fighting in the north also involves Boko Haram militants.
The Vatican’s announced trip has also prompted concerns in Cameroon about the potential for the visit to be used amid a disputed presidential election. The AP report said Cameroonian Jesuit priest and opposition activist Ludovic Lado warned in an open letter that the pope’s visit could be “interpreted as an implicit form of endorsement of a discredited and illegitimate government.” The AP also said Cameroon’s President Paul Biya, 92, was declared winner of October’s presidential election and is already in power for 42 years, with another seven-year term, while his main challenger, former government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary, continued to maintain that he is the legitimate winner.
In Angola, the Vatican said Pope Leo will visit Luanda, Muxima and Saurimo. In Muxima, the pope is scheduled to see the Sanctuary of Mama Muxima, described as a Marian shrine inside the Church of Our Lady of Muxima, which the AP said has become one of Angola’s most important Catholic pilgrimage sites. The AP report added that the church was first built at the end of the 16th century by the Portuguese after they established a fortress at Muxima and that the site later became connected to the Portuguese trans-Atlantic human trade, including baptisms of enslaved people before they were sent on ships to the Americas.
The tour’s final stop is Equatorial Guinea, where the AP said the pope’s visit will include travel across three of the country’s five dioceses—Malabo, Bata and Mongomo. The Vatican’s details, as described by AP, call for Leo to meet with prison inmates in Bata and to pray at a memorial to victims of a 2021 blast at a military barracks that killed more than 100 people and was blamed on negligence.
Beyond the memorial, the AP report said Catholic Mass has a prominent role in the country’s ceremonies, including Independence Day celebrations, even though Equatorial Guinea is officially described as a secular state. The same reporting said President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has been in power since 1982 and has been accused of running an autocratic regime, and it said poverty remains widespread, with the World Bank cited for a figure of at least 57% of the population living in poverty.