Pope Leo XIV’s 11-day tour of four African nations gave the usually reserved pontiff a global platform to speak out, in sometimes explosive terms, about problems on the continent, while preaching peace and uprightness in a world battered by war.
History’s first American pope visited Africa against the backdrop of his calls for peace that have sparked a feud with U.S. President Donald Trump over the war in Iran.
Before returning to Rome on Thursday,
Leo's final stop was in Equatorial Guinea on Africa’s western coast after he first visited Algeria in the north and then Angola in the south and Cameroon in between. His trip was so dizzying in its complexity that it recalls some of the globe-trotting odysseys of St. John Paul II in his early years.
Over the tour, Leo covered more than 17,700 kilometers (about 11,000 miles) on 18 flights, including three on Wednesday alone that saw him crisscross Equatorial Guinea from the west coast to the far east border with Gabon and back again.
In meetings with leaders and with Africa's young population, the pope also focused on themes including Christian-Muslim coexistence, the overexploitation of the region’s natural and human resources, corruption, migration and the legacy of colonialism.
Here’s a country-by-country look at each destination and highlights of the itinerary:
In Algeria, Leo walked in the footsteps of his spiritual father, St. Augustine, making a pilgrimage to the archaeological ruins where the fifth-century titan of early Christianity lived, died and wrote some of the most important works in Western thought.
The stop in the country clearly carried the most personal importance for Leo, given his ties to St. Augustine, the inspiration of his Augustinian religious order.
Migration and Christian-Muslim coexistence were other top themes in Algeria, a former French colony, which is a majority Sunni Muslim nation on North Africa’s Mediterranean coast. Leo also paid homage to migrants killed in shipwrecks trying to reach Europe and visited the Great Mosque in Algiers.
In Annaba, the modern-day Hippo, Leo met with a small community of Augustinians and celebrated Mass at the Basilica of St. Augustine, the 19th-century basilica overlooking the ruins of Hippo, where thousands of pilgrims, including Muslims, visit every year.
A major highlight of Leo's visit to Cameroon were his remarks at a “peace meeting” in the western city of Bamenda, the epicenter of Cameroon's separatist conflict. There, he blasted the “handful of tyrants” who are ravaging the planet with war and exploitation.
Although the remarks were directed at the separatist conflict, considered one of the world’s most neglected crises, Vatican officials have said that the pope's Gospel-mandated message of peace on this trip is meant for all those responsible for wars and exploitation.
Leo met with both religious and political leaders, including Cameroon's 93-year-old president, Paul Biya, the world's oldest leader. He called for an end to the “chains of corruption” and for upright leadership.
Biya has been accused of using corrupt means and the targeting of opponents to remain in power.
Cameroon sits atop significant reserves of oil, natural gas, cobalt, bauxite, iron ore, gold and diamonds. But revenues rarely reach rural and Indigenous communities and mostly benefit only foreign companies and a small national elite, activists say.
The pope also visited an orphanage for children taken off the streets after suffering abandonment or maltreatment from their parents.
He celebrated a Mass before thousands of people in the economic hub of Douala, where he urged young people to resist the temptation of corruption.
As Leo headed for Angola, he again addressed the back-and-forth with Trump, saying that it was "not in my interest at all” to debate the American president over the Iran war, but that he would continue preaching a message of peace.
In Angola, where around 58% of the population is Catholic, Leo prayed at the Sanctuary of Mama Muxima, a Marian shrine that has become one of the most important Catholic pilgrimage sites in Angola.
That church also has deep links to Angola's history of slavery. It was first built around the end of the 16th century by Portuguese colonizers, after they established a fortress at Muxima, and became a key point in the Portuguese' trans-Atlantic human trade as a place where enslaved people were baptized before they were sent on ships to the Americas.
While Leo didn't directly address slavery, his visit to the small town of Muxima drew reflections on his own complex heritage, after research last year showed that the first American pope has both Black and white ancestors who include enslaved people and slave owners.
Angola today is an oil- and mineral-rich country, yet many of its 38 million people live in poverty. Previous leaders have been accused of large-scale corruption, while the country still bears the scars of a 27-year civil war that began straight after independence from Portugal in 1975.
At a meeting with Angolan President Joao Lourenco, Leo challenged current Angolan leaders to break the “cycle of interests” that have exploited Africa and its people for centuries.
Equatorial Guinea, the last stop, presented the pope with perhaps the most delicate diplomatic challenge of his tour.
The overwhelmingly Catholic former Spanish colony has been led for nearly 50 years by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, Africa's longest-serving president, who is accused of widespread corruption and holding on to power through the harassment, arrest and intimidation of political opponents, critics and journalists.
The discovery of offshore oil in the mid-1990s transformed the economy of Equatorial Guinea virtually overnight, with oil now accounting for almost half of its gross domestic product and more than 90% of exports, according to the African Development Bank. Yet, the country battles high levels of poverty and hunger among its citizens.
In what was a busy final stop, Leo met with government authorities, diplomats and students, denouncing the “lust for power” and the “colonization” of Africa’s minerals. He also visited a psychiatric hospital and a notorious prison where he delivered a message of hope and drew attention to prison conditions, human rights abuses and injustices that campaigners have denounced for years.
The stop in Equatorial Guinea Leo took on added significance after it emerged that it was one of 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.
___
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
