Pope Leo XIV visits Augustine’s Algeria hometown on peace pilgrimage

A pilgrimage to the ruins of Hippo Regius was meant to anchor Pope Leo XIV’s identity as a son of St. Augustine, but the trip was quickly overtaken by a fight with Donald Trump that turned a religious homecoming into a geopolitical flashpoint.

Leo’s stop in Algeria was part of an 11-day apostolic journey that also included Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea, and it marked the first visit to Algeria by a sitting pope. The first American pontiff, who belongs to the Order of St. Augustine, had described himself as a “son of St. Augustine” after his election in May 2025. He said the trip was supposed to have been his first papal journey, but other travel intervened.

Annaba, on Algeria’s northeastern coast, is the modern site of ancient Hippo, where St. Augustine lived and preached. Leo visited the ruins with a message built around peace, interreligious dialogue and Christian-Muslim coexistence in a country that is overwhelmingly Muslim. Algeria’s Catholic population numbers about 9,000 in a nation of roughly 47 million, and the archbishop of Algiers has said many visitors to the Basilica of Our Lady of Africa are Muslim.

At Hippo, Leo prayed in a tent overlooking the old theater, market and basilica, laid a wreath and planted a sapling with local participants. He also used the journey to connect Augustine’s legacy to today’s conflicts, saying the saint offers a “very important bridge in interreligious dialogue.” In Algeria, he tied that message to the country’s independence struggle and warned against “neocolonial tendencies” and “violations of international law.”

The spiritual symbolism was sharpened by the political fight back in Washington. Trump attacked Leo on social media and said the pope should “stop catering to the Radical Left.” Leo replied that he is “not a politician,” does not want a debate with Trump and will continue speaking against war, for peace, dialogue and multilateralism.

The response from Catholic leaders underscored how unusual the clash had become. Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said he was “disheartened” by Trump’s disparaging words and stressed that the pope is not Trump’s rival but the Vicar of Christ. Cardinal Robert McElroy went further, calling the Iran war “morally illegitimate” and invoking just-war teaching that St. Augustine helped define.

What was meant to be a quiet pilgrimage to a saint’s hometown became a test of papal authority in a polarized age, with Leo’s first African journey now remembered as much for its prayer in Annaba as for its clash with an American president.