Le Pape Léon XIV visitera quatre pays africains en avril
Pope Leo XIV will undertake a tour of four African countries from April 13 to 23: Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea, the Vatican announced Wednesday.
The Pope will visit Algiers and Annaba from April 13 to 15; Yaoundé, Bamenda and Douala from April 15 to 18; Luanda, Muxima and Saurimo from April 18 to 21; and Malabo, Mongomo and Bata from April 21 to 23, the Vatican said in a statement.
This trip, the third foreign visit by the American pope since his election in May 2025, will also be the first visit by a pope to Algeria.
In Angola and Cameroon, which are experiencing major political crises and significant popular protest, the Pope's visit will be an opportunity to call for peace, against the backdrop of a religious landscape undergoing profound transformation.
Islam is the state religion in Algeria, a country of 47 million inhabitants dominated by the Sunni Maliki doctrine, but the Constitution guarantees freedom of worship, subject to approval by the authorities for the place of worship and the preacher.
In December, the American pope confided that he wanted to go to Algeria "to visit the places where Saint Augustine lived but also to continue the dialogue and build links between the Christian and Muslim worlds".
Saint Augustine (354-430), a great thinker of Christianity, was originally from the present-day Algerian region of Souk Ahras and was the bishop of Hippo, present-day Annaba, in northeastern Algeria.
This visit, which should give pride of place to inter-religious dialogue, comes a few days after the 30th anniversary of the assassination of the Cistercian monks of Tibhirine (80 km south of Algiers), who were abducted in March 1996 from their monastery of Notre-Dame de l'Atlas during the civil war.
Their deaths were announced on May 23 by the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), and the exact circumstances of their assassination remain unclear. They were beatified in 2018.
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