Pope Leo XIV arrived in Algeria on Monday on the first-ever papal visit and called for peace in all nations to prevail, in a trip overshadowed by the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran and an extraordinary broadside against Leo by President Donald Trump.
Leo’s arrival in Algiers kicked off an intense, 11-day tour of four African nations – Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea – that will bring history’s first U.S.-born pope deep into the growing heart of the Catholic Church.
Leo is coming to Algeria to promote Christian-Muslim coexistence at a time of global conflict and to honor the locally born inspiration of his religious spirituality, St. Augustine.
The trip got underway, however, against the backdrop of a growing feud between the Chicago-born Leo and Trump, over the war.
Trump overnight said he didn’t think Leo was doing a good job as pope and suggested he should “stop catering to the Radical Left.”
Leo responded on the plane en route to Algeria, saying the Vatican’s appeals for peace and reconciliation are rooted in the Gospel, and that he didn’t fear the Trump administration.
In his first remarks in a rainy Algiers, Leo visited the monument to the martyrs of Algeria’s violent struggle for independence from France, obtained in 1962.
Hundreds of thousands died in the revolution, during which French forces tortured detainees, disappeared suspects and devastated villages as part of a counterinsurgency strategy to maintain their grip on power.
Later on Monday, Leo was to address Algerian authorities and visit the city’s Great Mosque.
He was finishing the day with a gathering at the Our Lady of Africa basilica, and then prayers at a nearby monument for migrants killed in shipwrecks trying to reach Europe.
The official motto of the Algeria trip is Leo’s opening line wherever he goes – “Peace be with you” – and the Vatican says a general message of peace and Christian-Muslim coexistence would be the major theme.
In Algeria, a tiny Catholic community of around 9,000 people made up mostly of foreigners exists alongside the Sunni Muslim majority of about 47 million, according to Vatican statistics.
On his first day in Algeria, Leo was paying homage to the 19 martyrs and was visiting the remaining Augustinian nuns who run a social services project out of the Algiers basilica that helps people of all faiths.
All 19 were beatified in 2018 as martyrs for the faith in what was then the first such beatification ceremony in the Muslim world.
Vesco, the Algiers archbishop, likes to remind audiences that Leo was elected on May 8, the Catholic feast day of the 19 martyrs.
Immediately after Leo’s election, Vesco invited him to visit.
For Leo, the visit to Algeria is pastoral but also deeply personal.
His Augustinian religious order was inspired by the teachings of St. Augustine of Hippo, the fifth-century theological and philosophical titan of the early Christian church who was born in what is today Algeria and spent all but five years of his life there.
