Pope Leo XIV plans longest trip yet, four-nation Africa tour in 2026

Pope Leo XIV will use his longest trip so far to put Africa at the center of his pontificate’s global agenda. The 11-day journey from April 13 to April 23 will take him to Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea, with six greetings, 10 addresses and eight homilies spread across 11 cities and four languages: English, French, Portuguese and Spanish.

Algeria will open the tour and carry its deepest historical weight. Leo’s stop there will be the first papal visit to the country and, for him, the most personal, because of his Augustinian ties to St. Augustine, who lived and died in North Africa. In Algiers, he will pray at the Maqam Echahit Martyr’s Monument, meet President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, address authorities, civil society and diplomats at the Djamaa el Djazair Conference Center, and visit the Great Mosque of Algiers, which can hold up to 120,000 faithful. He will also stop at the Augustinian Missionary Sisters’ center in Bab El Oued and speak to the Algerian community at the Basilica of Our Lady of Africa. On April 14, he will travel to Annaba, the modern site of ancient Hippo, to visit the archaeological site, a home for the elderly run by the Little Sisters of the Poor, and the Basilica of St. Augustine. The Catholic Church in Algeria remains tiny, with about 9,000 Catholics among 46.794 million people, or 0.02 percent, in a country that is overwhelmingly Muslim.

Cameroon will shift the focus to conflict, youth and coexistence. Vatican officials expect Leo to meet a Mankon traditional chief, a Presbyterian moderator, an imam and a Catholic nun in Bamenda, a city at the center of the Anglophone crisis that began in 2016 and escalated after separatists declared the Republic of Ambazonia in October 2017. The humanitarian toll is stark: more than 700,000 children have been pushed out of school, more than 1.5 million people need aid, at least 334,098 have been displaced and more than 76,493 have fled to Nigeria. Catholic Relief Services says it has worked in Cameroon since 1960, reached 43,379 people in 2024 and has served more than 150,000 internally displaced people in the northwest since 2019.

Angola and Equatorial Guinea will underline why Africa matters to the Vatican’s future. Vatican data for Dec. 31, 2024, lists 8.303 million Catholics in Cameroon, 20.310 million in Angola and 1.248 million in Equatorial Guinea, with Angola and Equatorial Guinea both large Catholic majorities. The same statistics show 3,300 priests in Cameroon, 1,511 in Angola and 265 in Equatorial Guinea. Vatican officials say Leo will focus in Angola on young people, natural and human resources, corruption and colonial history, while Equatorial Guinea will highlight culture, education and the church’s role in peace. For a pope expected to speak about Christian-Muslim coexistence, migration and the over-exploitation of resources, the trip is less a tour of stops than a map of the church’s struggle for influence in a continent that is growing in both Catholic numbers and geopolitical importance.