Pope starts Africa tour in Algeria and calls for peace against Iran
war's backdrop
[April 14, 2026]
By NICOLE WINFIELD, AOMAR OUALI and PAOLO SANTALUCIA
ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — Pope Leo XIV called for peace and the end of
“neocolonial tendencies” in world affairs on Monday during the first
papal visit to Algeria, all while facing an extraordinary broadside by
President Donald Trump over his criticism of the U.S.-Israeli war with
Iran.
Leo’s arrival in Algiers marks the start of an 11-day tour of four
African nations — Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea — that
will bring the first U.S.-born pope deep into the growing heart of the
Catholic Church.
Leo is in Algeria to promote Christian-Muslim coexistence in the
majority Muslim nation at a time of global conflict, and to honor the
locally born inspiration of his religious spirituality, St. Augustine.
The trip began, however, against the backdrop of a growing feud between
the Leo and Trump over the Iran 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 by saying his appeals for peace and reconciliation are
rooted in the Gospel, and that he didn’t fear the Trump administration.
‘Neocolonial tendencies’
In his first remarks in Algiers, Leo tied his current appeal for peace
to the country's struggle for independence from France, obtained in
1962. Hundreds of thousands of people died in the revolution during
which French forces tortured detainees, disappeared suspects and
devastated villages as part of a strategy to maintain a grip on power.
“God desires peace for every nation, a peace that is not merely an
absence of conflict but one that is an expression of justice and
dignity,” Leo told a crowd of several thousand people at the monument to
Algeria’s martyrs.
At a later meeting with President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and other
government authorities, Leo praised Algerians for their solidarity and
respect for one another, which he said provided an important perspective
today “on the global balance of power.”
“Today, this is more urgent than ever in the face of continuous
violations of international law and neocolonial tendencies,” he said
without elaborating, though he has previously spoken about Russia's war
in Ukraine, the Iran war and Israel's invasion of southern Lebanon.
Great Mosque visit
Leo's visit dominated news headlines in Algeria, where a tiny Catholic
community of around 9,000 people made up mostly of foreigners exists
alongside the Sunni Muslim majority of about 47 million.
El Moudjahid, a state-run daily newspaper, declared that “the planet is
staring at Algeria,” while Arabic-language daily Echorouk wrote that
“the land of peace and coexistence speaks to the world.”
Leo visited the country's Great Mosque and stood silently with his hands
clasped in front of him, as if in prayer. He thanked the mosque rector
for receiving him in this “divine space, space of God” that is also a
study center.
“Through this place of prayer, through the search for truth, including
through study and through the ability to recognize the dignity of every
human being, we know — and today’s gathering is proof of this — that we
can learn to respect one another, live in harmony, and build a world of
peace,” Leo said in Italian in a rare, off-the-cuff comment.
Tebboune hailed the historic nature of Leo's visit and the pride
Algerians felt over St. Augustine, “a cherished son of this land.”
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Pope Leo XIV arrives at Algiers' Houari Boumédične International
Airport on Monday, April 13, 2026, at the start of an 11-day
apostolic journey to Africa. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
But others downplayed the significance of the visit.
“God’s religion is Islam, which has illuminated this land for 14
centuries,” said Lamia Sellimi, a literature teacher at a high
school near the Basilica of Our Lady of Africa. “Algerians are
deeply attached to their religion, which is one of the foundations
of our identity. As such, this visit is merely a circumstantial
event.”
A violent past of martyrs
Algeria fought a civil war in the 1990s that is known locally as the
“black decade,” when around 250,000 people were killed as the army
fought an Islamist insurgency. Among them were 19 Catholics,
including seven Trappist monks from the Tibhirine monastery south of
Algiers, who were kidnapped and killed in 1996 by Islamic fighters.
Also among them were two nuns from Leo’s Augustinian religious
family.
All 19 were beatified in 2018 as martyrs for the faith in what was
then the first such beatification ceremony in the Muslim world.
Leo paid homage to the 19 martyrs and visited the remaining
Augustinian nuns who run a social services project out of the
Algiers basilica that helps people of all faiths.
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.
Leo has also made a mantra out of one of the sayings of the martyred
prior of the Tibherine monastery, Christian de Chergé, who spoke of
an “unarmed and disarming peace.” Leo has cited the line starting
from the night of his election.
Personal and pastoral visit
Leo's 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.
On Tuesday, Leo will visit Annaba, the modern-day Hippo where St.
Augustine was bishop for three decades, and will literally walk in
the footsteps of the saint.
From his first public words as pope, Leo proclaimed himself a “son
of St. Augustine,” and he has repeatedly cited the church father in
speeches and homilies.
“I don’t know if I have seen a statement, a homily, an apostolic
letter or exhortation that doesn’t reference Augustine,” said Paul
Camacho, associate director of the Augustinian Institute at
Villanova University, Leo’s Augustinian-run alma mater outside
Philadelphia. “The shadow that he casts on Western thought, not just
the Roman Catholic Church but on Western thought more broadly, is
very, very long indeed.”
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