Pope Leo heads to Algeria as he starts four-country Africa tour 

Pope Leo XIV has begun an ambitious 11-day tour of four countries in Africa, urging global leaders to address the needs of the continent where more than a fifth of the world’s Catholics live.

The first American pope heads to Algeria for two days on Monday before continuing to Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea in a whirlwind tour of 11 cities and towns, traversing nearly 18,000km (11,185 miles) over 18 flights.

The pope, who has emerged as an outspoken critic of the United States and Israel’s war on Iran, has made only one major overseas trip since being elected last May, visiting Turkiye and Lebanon in November and December. He visited Monaco in March.

Leo, aged 70, relatively young and in good health for a pope, is undertaking one of the most complicated tours arranged for a pontiff in decades.

More than 20 percent of the world’s Catholics live in Africa, according to Vatican statistics. The three sub-Saharan nations the pope is visiting have populations where more than half identify as Catholic.

Algeria, however, is an overwhelmingly Muslim country with fewer than 10,000 Catholics among its population of some 48 million people. This is the first time it will host a Catholic pope.

The trip is aimed at continuing to “build bridges between the Christian and Muslim worlds”, the archbishop of Algiers, Jean-Paul Vesco, told the AFP news agency.

Leo’s tour is the 24th by a pope to Africa since the late 1960s.

He is expected to touch on many topics in 25 planned speeches over 11 days, Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni told journalists on Friday, given that the four nations face diverse issues.

Likely topics include exploitation of natural resources, Catholic-Muslim dialogue, and dangers of political corruption, said Bruni.

Monday’s itinerary includes a visit to the Great Mosque of Algiers – with the world’s highest minaret – and the Basilica of Our Lady of Africa, overlooking the Bay of Algiers.

Leo plans to pray privately in the chapel dedicated to 19 priests and nuns murdered during Algeria’s 1992-2002 civil war. He will not, however, visit the Tibhirine monastery, whose monks were kidnapped and murdered in 1996, an event still shrouded in mystery.

The Vatican said, during his trip, the pope will also speak about corruption in often authoritarian regimes and the role of political leaders. Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea have presidents who have been in power for decades and have been accused of human rights abuses, which they deny.

The biggest event of the itinerary will likely come in Cameroon on Friday, when the Vatican said some 600,000 are expected for a mass in the coastal city of Douala.

Africa as a whole contributed more than half of the 15.8 million new Catholics who were baptised in 2023, or 8.3 million new African Catholics, according to the latest Vatican statistics. The continent also contributes thousands of men to the priesthood and women to religious orders each year, turning a continent that was long on the receiving end of Western missionaries into one that exports its priests and nuns abroad.

According to Vatican statistics, Angola and Cameroon consistently produce some of the largest numbers of seminarians on the continent each year.

Comfortable in several languages, Leo is expected to address audiences in Italian, English, French, Portuguese and Spanish during the trip.