Catholic priests and sisters in Africa expect that Pope Leo XIV’s visit in April will ignite hope and offer comfort and consolation to a region suffering armed conflict, droughts and storm disasters related to climate change and vast humanitarian need. All of the continent’s often interrelated crises have been deeply worsened this year by the withdrawal of development and humanitarian aid by the United States and other donor nations.
Leo will visit Algeria, Angola, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea over 10 days, beginning on April 13. In Algiers, Pope Leo will meet civil authorities and visit the Great Mosque of Algiers, one of the largest mosques in the world, in a gesture aimed at strengthening Christian-Muslim dialogue. The pope is expected to celebrate Mass at the Basilica of Notre-Dame d’Afrique and visit a chapel dedicated to 19 blessed martyrs who were killed during civil war in Algeria during the 1990s.
During his visit, he will celebrate Mass at the Basilica of St. Augustine, which holds a relic of one of St. Augustine’s arm bones.
The pope’s Africa visit comes at a time when the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Cameroon and the Central African Republic—among other African states—have all struggled to manage internal population displacement and armed conflict.
Up to 55 million people in West and Central Africa will likely face a hunger crisis as the summer lean season begins, according to the United Nations’ World Food Program. W.F.P. officials say its nutrition assistance program needs more than $453 million in immediate funding to address the anticipated food insecurity at a time when many donors of international aid have deeply reduced funding or withdrawn it altogether.
On the night of his second inauguration in January 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that began the complete dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Many African states had relied on the agency to address shortcomings in their domestic health care and nutrition sectors.
Local and international nongovernment agencies that had put U.S. funding to work delivering essential humanitarian services have been struggling to raise money to restore or support their missions, said Frankline Kamgeh, the director of Caritas in Bamenda, a city in Cameroon’s conflict-torn northwest.
“The abrupt withdrawal of aid support has forced a drastic reduction in [districts reached by aid] and the premature termination of vital projects in Cameroon,” Father Kamgeh said.
“For beneficiary communities, the implications are even more dire as the gap between increasing needs and available resources keeps widening, exacerbating food insecurity and causing secondary displacements as vulnerable populations migrate in search of basic survival,” Father Kamgeh also said by email.
Of the African nations Leo will visit, Cameroon appears to be enduring the deepest struggle. The Anglophone crisis, pitting a separatist movement in English-speaking Cameroon against the French-speaking central government, has persisted for years, characterized by periodic flare-ups of armed resistance. The struggle, which has roots in the English and French colonial origins of Cameroon, has led to the internal displacement of 648,000 people.
Patrick Etamesor, S.J., speaking from Yaoundé, Cameroon, expects that Leo’s visit to the central African country will spotlight the nation’s instability and continuing forced displacements. The precarious humanitarian condition of the displaced people—including women who are targets in gender-based violence or forced into early marriages—has only worsened because of funding cuts among international donors.
“Challenging the conscience of the world remains an essential ministry of the pope and the church,” said Father Etamesor, director of the Jesuit Refugee Service in the West and Central Africa region. “Without global attention, the conflicts in Cameroon and elsewhere in Africa become forgotten and the affected people will suffer more.”
Complicating Cameroon’s own humanitarian struggles, it is also facing an influx of refugees from the growing political instability in the neighboring Central African Republic.
Pierre Marie Kemmegne, who leads Catholic Relief Services in Cameroon, told America that the papal visit is a “unique opportunity for Pope Leo to put Cameroon back on the global humanitarian map” and help to close the funding gap. He hopes that Leo will seize this opportunity to remind the Trump administration and the United Nations how devastating aid cuts have proven in Africa. He hopes that such a plea could encourage global donors to restore aid to vulnerable communities.
Ludovic Lado, S.J., told America that he had advised the Vatican against Leo’s visit to Cameroon because of the country’s chaotic political situation. He worried that a papal visit could be interpreted as a Vatican endorsement of the legitimacy of Cameroon’s political leadership.
Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya, is 93 years old and has been in power for 43 years. He was returned to office last year in elections that were marred by violence and allegations of electoral fraud. He is mostly absent from Cameroon, living primarily in Switzerland. Cameroon is consistently ranked by Transparency International among countries with the highest public sector corruption.
“Now that the pope has decided to come [to Cameroon] anyway, we pray that his visit will work miracles for peace and justice in a country with nearly 2,000 political prisoners and mired in civil war in the Anglophone regions for almost 10 years,” Father Lado said.
Acknowledging that the pope cannot be expected to solve the sociopolitical problems and poverty afflicting Cameroonians, he hopes that Leo’s speeches during his visit will nevertheless be a prophetic source of hope for Cameroonians.
Leo will also visit the Archdioceses of Luanda and Surimo as well as the Diocese of Viana in Angola. His visit in Angola will be “a blessing for the nation and an encouragement for evangelization,” said Archbishop José Manuel Imbamba, president of the Bishops’ Conference of Angola and Sao Tome and Principe.
Leo’s continental trip will close in Equatorial Guinea, where he will visit Catholics in Malabo, Mongomo and Bata.
Catholic bishops in Equatorial Guinea, a central African country bordering Cameroon and Chad, described the pope’s trip there as “a moment of grace,” with the focus expected to be on renewing missionary identity and emphasizing “youth and families as pillars of church” and society.
Yet it is not just in the four countries Leo will visit that African hopes and expectations are soaring. In Mozambique, Augustinian Sister Aurora Jacinta says ordinary Catholic faithful far afield from the pope’s itinerary are eagerly anticipating the visit.
Sister Jacinta asked a small group of Catholic faithful gathered at the St. Netia Mission in Nampula, Mozambique, what they thought of the pope’s upcoming visit.
“They literally shouted that they expected Leo XIV’s visit to bring consolation, comfort and hope,” Sister Jacinta said in an interview on Feb. 28.
She said that she found the expressions by the parishioners remarkable, “given that these people have been immersed in so much continuous suffering.” They are still managing to find “hope and comfort from hearing that someone who represents Christ on earth” was visiting Africa, she said.
Mozambique has endured devastating cyclones and droughts, impacts of climate change driven by industrial production far from Africa. It has also been plagued by an Islamic State insurgency whose militants often clash with government troops, provoking large displacements and humanitarian crises.
Leo will kick off his Africa visit with his arrival in the North African nation of Algeria. He is expected to “encourage our Church in its mission of fraternal presence in the midst of a people with a Muslim majority,” said the bishops of Algeria in a statement released on Feb. 25.
The pope is expected to promote co-existence among faiths during his visit. Tensions between Christians and Muslims have resulted in deadly clashes in other African countries like Nigeria. Clashes between Muslims and Christians have also rocked the Central Africa Republic, tipping it into instability that Human Rights Watch reports has been the outcome of years of ethnic tensions and chaos. Government coups in C.A.R. have given rise to armed groups that regularly challenge the central government.
Catholic clergy in Nigeria have long been looking for an end to attacks on Christians that “have led to poverty and instability,” according John Ghansah, S.J, the North-West Africa provincial for the Society of Jesus in Lagos.
“The pope can address the escalating political instability stemming from often unfair elections across Africa,” said Father Ghansah. “The constant threat of radical Islamic movements in parts of the Sahel region that displaces people is also another topical area for the pope to address.”
In his apostolic exhortation “Dilexi Te” (“I Have Loved You”), Leo wrote that “love for the poor—whatever the form their poverty may take—is the evangelical hallmark of a church faithful to the heart of God.” Edmond Nyoka, a Catholic priest from the Diocese of Mzuzu in Malawi, expects that strengthening Catholic personal and institutional commitment to address the continent’s material poverty will be a focus of the pope’s visit.
“His visit is significant to strengthening the faith of many Catholics who face challenges of poverty and rising Pentecostalism and terrorism here in Africa,” said Father Nyoka. “The pope’s trip brings energy to face challenges and forge ahead, looking for new avenues, domestic and beyond.”
Pentecostalism has been on the rise in Malawi, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and other African countries, “causing a significant exodus” of Catholic faithful. Pentecostal churches in Africa thrive on miracles, prosperity gospel teaching and public healing spectacles.
Malawi is one of the many African countries that were heavily reliant on donor funding to keep its health and development sector up and running. It is now reeling after the withdrawal of U.S. overseas assistance. The southern African country faces increased migration as its most vulnerable people seek to escape poverty and unemployment, said Father Nyoka.
African neighbors Zimbabwe and Zambia are not on the pope’s itinerary either, but his tour is still expected to have a significant impact. There are high expectations from Catholics in the region that Leo will address tensions between church and state as well as specific instances of political injustice. In Zimbabwe, the Catholic bishops conference, together with heads of other Christian denominations, is resisting President Emerson Mnangagwa’s efforts to change the country’s constitution and extend his rule by two more years.
Francis Mukosa, the secretary general of the Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops, expects Leo to address simmering tensions between the state and the Catholic Church in the southern African country. The “church-state relationship is not presently at its best in Zambia, and the crux of the matter is that it impacts negatively on freedom of religion and the church’s prophetic voice in society,” Father Mukosa said.
In January this year, the Zambia Catholic Bishops Conference said there were “ongoing attacks against the Church’s mission and leadership” after Archbishop Alick Banda of Lusaka was summoned by a government agency investigating money laundering. The conference said the investigation was a part of a state-sponsored persecution campaign against the backdrop of his “his efforts to hold the government” accountable.
“For me the visit of Pope Leo to Africa is a moment of renewal, uplifting and encouragement,” said Father Mukosa.
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts