Pope Leo XIV’s Africa trip ended with a final leg in Equatorial Guinea after an itinerary that took him from North Africa to the continent’s west coast and on through Central and Southern Africa. The usually reserved pontiff used the 11-day visit to speak publicly about the continent’s challenges while preaching peace and uprightness amid a world battered by war, the Associated Press reported.
Over the course of the tour, Leo covered more than 17,700 kilometers (about 11,000 miles) on 18 flights, including three flights on Wednesday alone that took him across Equatorial Guinea from the west coast to the far east border with Gabon and back again. Vatican officials also linked parts of his message to a broader audience, describing it as aimed at leaders behind violence and exploitation rather than limited to one regional dispute.
In Algeria, April 13-15, the pope made a pilgrimage in the footsteps of his spiritual father, St. Augustine, traveling to archaeological ruins tied to Augustine’s life and writings. The AP described the stop as carrying personal weight because of Leo’s ties to the Augustinian religious order that draws inspiration from Augustine. Alongside themes of migration and Christian-Muslim coexistence in a majority Sunni Muslim country, Leo paid homage to migrants killed in shipwrecks trying to reach Europe and visited the Great Mosque in Algiers.
In Annaba, the modern-day Hippo, Pope Leo met with a community of Augustinians and celebrated Mass at the Basilica of St. Augustine, overlooking the ruins of Hippo and drawing pilgrims, including Muslims, each year, according to the Associated Press. The visit also reflected the pope’s emphasis on coexistence and the movement of people seeking safety across the Mediterranean.
In Cameroon, April 15-18, one highlight came during remarks at a “peace meeting” in Bamenda, in the western city described by the AP as the epicenter of the country’s separatist conflict. There, Leo blasted the “handful of tyrants” ravaging the planet with war and exploitation, and Vatican officials said the Gospel-mandated message of peace on the trip was meant for all those responsible for wars and exploitation.
The pope also met with Cameroon’s political and religious leadership, including President Paul Biya, whom the AP described as the world’s oldest leader at 93 years old. Leo called for an end to the “chains of corruption” and for upright leadership, according to the AP, which also noted that Biya has been accused of using corrupt means and targeting opponents to remain in power. The trip included visits connected to social concerns as well: Leo visited an orphanage for children taken off the streets after suffering abandonment or maltreatment from their parents, and he celebrated Mass in Douala, urging young people there to resist the temptation of corruption.
Angola was next, April 18-21, with the AP describing the pope’s diplomacy as interlaced with the ongoing dispute between him and Donald Trump over the war in Iran. As Leo headed to Angola, he again addressed the back-and-forth, telling reporters it was “not in my interest at all” to debate Trump over the Iran war but that he would continue preaching a message of peace.
In Angola, where the AP said about 58% of the population is Catholic, Leo prayed at the Sanctuary of Mama Muxima, a Marian shrine that the story says is one of Angola’s most important Catholic pilgrimage sites. The AP also linked the sanctuary to Angola’s history of slavery, describing how Portuguese colonizers built a fortress at Muxima around the end of the 16th century and that the site became a point in the Portuguese trans-Atlantic slave trade, including baptizing enslaved people before ships carried them to the Americas.
The pope’s stop at Muxima also drew reflections on Leo’s family heritage after research last year indicated that the first American pope has both Black and white ancestors, including enslaved people and slave owners, the AP reported. Angola today, the AP said, is oil- and mineral-rich yet many of its 38 million people live in poverty, with past leaders accused of large-scale corruption and with the country still marked by a 27-year civil war that began after independence from Portugal in 1975. In a meeting with President Joao Lourenco, Leo challenged current leaders to break the “cycle of interests” that, the AP reported, has exploited Africa and its people for centuries.
Equatorial Guinea, April 21-23, was described by the AP as presenting the pope with his most delicate diplomatic challenge. The story said the country, a former Spanish colony that the AP described as overwhelmingly Catholic, has been led for nearly 50 years by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, whom the AP described as Africa’s longest-serving president and who is accused of widespread corruption and maintaining power through harassment, arrest and intimidation of political opponents, critics and journalists.
The AP said offshore oil discovered in the mid-1990s transformed Equatorial Guinea’s economy quickly, with oil accounting for almost half of the country’s gross domestic product and more than 90% of its exports, citing the African Development Bank. Yet the country still faces poverty and hunger among its citizens, the AP reported. In meetings with government authorities, diplomats and students, Leo denounced the “lust for power” and the “colonization” of Africa’s minerals, and he visited both a psychiatric hospital and a notorious prison, where he delivered a message of hope and drew attention to prison conditions and human rights abuses and injustices that campaigners have criticized for years.
The AP also said that the Equatorial Guinea stop gained added significance after it emerged that the country was among several African nations that have been paid millions of dollars in contentious deals with the Trump administration to receive migrants deported from the U.S. to countries other than their own. The trip’s itinerary, while spanning four countries in under two weeks, repeatedly returned to the same themes—peace, corruption, migration and the costs borne by ordinary people—carried through Vatican visits to religious sites, government offices and institutions serving vulnerable communities.