A country-by-country glance at Pope Leo XIV's trip to Africa
Pope Leo XIV’s 11-day tour of four African nations has given the usually reserved American pope a global platform to speak out, in sometimes explosive terms, about Africa's problems while preaching peace and uprightness in a world battered by war.
History’s first American pope is visiting the continent against the backdrop of his calls for peace that have sparked a feud with U.S. President Donald Trump over the war in Iran.
Currently in Cameroon after first visiting Algeria, Leo’s visit to the continent is so dizzying in its complexity it recalls some of the globe-trotting odysseys of St. John Paul II in his early years.
In meeting with leaders and with Africa's young population, which is set to double by 2050, the pope has also focused on themes including Christian-Muslim coexistence, the overexploitation of the region’s natural and human resources, corruption and migration.
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 in Algeria where the fifth-century titan of early Christianity lived, died and wrote some of the most important works in Western thought.
The Algeria stop 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 also 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 Earth 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 the pope's Gospel-mandated message of peace on this trip transcends borders and is meant for all those responsible for the wars and exploitation ravaging Earth.
On Wednesday, his first day in Cameroon, 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 critics and the opposition to remain in power.
Cameroon sits atop significant reserves of oil, natural gas, cobalt, bauxite, iron ore, gold and diamonds. The extractive sector accounts for nearly a third of the country’s exports, according to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. But revenues from extraction 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 that caters to children taken off the streets after suffering abandonment or maltreatment from their parents.
On Friday, he met with students at the Catholic University of Central Africa. And he celebrated a Mass before thousands of people in the economic hub of Douala, where he urged youths to resist temptation of corruption that has stifled their country's development.
In Angola, where around 58% of the population is Catholic, Leo will pray at the Sanctuary of Mama Muxima, a Marian shrine that has become one of the most important Catholic pilgrimage sites in Angola.
The church was first built around the end of the 16th century by the Portuguese after they established a fortress at Muxima. It 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.
Angola today is the fourth largest oil producer in Africa and among the world’s top 20 producers, according to the International Energy Agency. It’s also the world’s third biggest diamond producer and has significant deposits of gold and highly sought after critical minerals.
But despite its varied natural resources, the World Bank estimated in 2023 that more than 30% of the population lived on less than $2.15 a day.
The country of around 38 million gained independence from Portugal in 1975, but still bears the scars of a devastating civil war that began straight after independence and raged on and off for 27 years before finally ending in 2002. More than half a million people are believed to have been killed.
In Angola, Leo will address young people especially to offer a message of hope and healing, the Vatican said.
The discovery of offshore oil in the mid-1990s transformed Equatorial Guinea’s economy virtually overnight, with oil now accounting for almost half of its GDP and more than 90% of exports, according to the African Development Bank.
Yet more than half of the authoritarian petrostate’s population still live in poverty, the World Bank reported last year.
The former Spanish colony is run by Africa’s longest-serving president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has been in power since 1979 and is accused of widespread corruption and authoritarianism.
Several rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, have documented how revenues have enriched the ruling Obiang family rather than the broader population, where at least 70% of the country’s nearly 2 million people live in poverty.
The country’s government also faces rampant accusations of harassment, arrest and intimidation of political opponents, critics and journalists.
In addition to the negative impacts of the extraction industries, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said Leo would raise issues of corruption and the proper role of governing authorities during the trip.
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