Pope Leo XIV began on Monday a landmark visit to Algeria, where he called for forgiveness in a speech paying tribute to victims of the country's war of independence from France. It marked the first visit by a pontiff to the Muslim-majority country, which risked being overshadowed by public criticism from US President Donald Trump over the pope’s stance on the Iran war.

Issued on: 13/04/2026 - 11:01Modified: 13/04/2026 - 20:27

Pope Leo XIV on Monday began a landmark visit to Algeria in the first trip to the Muslim-majority country by a pontiff.

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune greeted Leo upon his arrival at Algiers' international airport before they were to meet formally at the El Mouradia presidential palace.

The US-born pope began his visit with a call for forgiveness in a speech paying tribute to victims of the country's war of independence from France (1954-1962).

"In this place, let us remember that God desires peace for every nation," he said at the Algerian Martyr's Memorial in the capital. "This peace, which allows us to face the future with a reconciled spirit, is possible only through forgiveness."

The remarks, his first since arriving in the North African nation, come at a time of heightened tensions between Algeria and France, and follow his meeting days ago with French President Emmanuel Macron in the Vatican.

Read moreLeo XIV makes history with first-ever papal visit to Algeria

Trump dust-up

However, Leo's arrival was overshadowed by an escalating feud with US President Donald Trump, who lambasted the pope as "terrible" and "weak" in a rare public attack prompted by Leo's stance on the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Speaking to reporters aboard the papal plane, Leo said he had "no intention to debate" with the US president.

"I am not a politician," the pontiff said. "The message is the same: to promote peace."

Leo’s two-day stop in Algeria opens an intense 11-day tour of four African nations – Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea – that will bring history’s first US-born pope deep into the growing heart of the Catholic Church.

On his first stop in Algiers, the pope met with President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and was also set to address diplomats.

Monday's itinerary also included a visit to the Great Mosque of Algiers – home to the world's highest minaret – and the Basilica of Our Lady of Africa, overlooking the Bay of Algiers. The pontiff then held prayers at a nearby monument for migrants killed in shipwrecks trying to reach Europe.

The gathering at the basilica, a Roman-Byzantine structure built in the late 1800s during France’s colonial rule, will feature testimony from a Catholic nun, a Pentecostal believer and Muslim, as well as remarks by the pope.

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 will 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.

The archbishop of Algiers, French Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco, said on any given day, nine out of 10 people who visit the basilica are Muslim.

“It’s wonderful to be able to show that we can be brothers and sisters together, building a society despite our different religions,” Vesco told The Associated Press on the eve of Leo’s arrival. “And that is what our church has been doing since this country gained independence.”

Honouring St. Augustine

Three decades after declaring independence from France, Algeria fought a brutal civil war in the 1990s that is known locally as the “black decade”, when some 250,000 people were killed as the army fought an Islamist insurgency.

Watch moreA war without a name: France's controversial colonial past in Algeria

Among those killed 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 the 19 were two nuns from Leo’s Augustinian religious family.

"I am particularly reminded of the 19 men and women religious who were martyred in Algeria, choosing to stand alongside this people in its joys and sorrows," Leo told congregants at the Catholic Basilica of Our Lady of Africa in Algiers.

The pope also hailed the Christian community's "deep roots" in Algeria.

"You are the heirs of a host of witnesses who gave their lives, motivated by love for God and neighbour," he said.

Leo prayed privately in the chapel dedicated to the 19 martyrs murdered during Algeria’s 1992-2002 civil war and visited the remaining Augustinian nuns who run a social services project out of the Algiers basilica that helps people of all faiths.

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 5th 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 made that clear in his first year, repeatedly citing the church father in his 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,” he said.

The pope will not, however, visit the Tibhirine monastery, whose monks were kidnapped and murdered in 1996 in an event still shrouded in mystery.

Although Algeria's constitution guarantees freedom of worship, subject to conditions, human rights groups say the repression of religious minorities is continuing.

Three human rights groups called on Leo last week to push the issue during his visit.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and AP)

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