Almost a year after his election, Pope Leo XIV made his first visit to Africa, the longest international trip of his tenure so far. The visit is heavy with symbolism at a time of global unsettlement, one during which the stature and importance of the pope extends far beyond the church. I spoke with Father Ambroise Tine, formerly secretary general of Caritas Senegal, and currently of the diocese of Thiès in Senegal, about the significance of the papal visit.

An Africa – and her diaspora – growing in importance

While the number of Catholics has been increasing globally in recent years, the concentration of growth has been in Africa and the Americas. More than half of the increase in 2022-23 was in Africa, according to the latest figures from Agenzia Fides, the information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies. This is part of a longer trend that started in 1970 with a shift towards the global south.

The result is a region that is not only home to an increasing number of Catholics, making it the demographic future of the faith but, according to Father Ambroise, the intellectual and spiritual engine of global faith. “The growing centrality of Africa and its Black diaspora for pastoral practice,” he told me, “should be viewed in terms of a potential to influence the evangelisation of the world.” There is a striking irony in the fact that, in some western countries, preserving Christianity is tied to far-right messaging about race and immigration, but church attendance and affiliation are propped up by Black diaspora worshippers from Africa and the Caribbean.

A subtle but frank visit

Pope Leo’s visit touched on themes that recognise the limitations of the continent’s untapped potential. On his visit to Cameroon, in a pointed reference to the leadership of 93-year-old president Paul Biya, who has been president since 1982, the pope denounced “the chains of corruption, which disfigure authority and strip it of its credibility” and which “must be broken”.

The state TV coverage of his speech was interrupted at times, as the pope went on to say that “hearts must be set free from an idolatrous thirst for profit”, a condemnation that Father Ambroise said called out the “breaches of integrity and corruption that push youth to migrate, facing the dangers of oceans, deserts”.

The pope also acknowledged that Africa falls under a double burden – corruption at home and exploitation of its rich resources from abroad, as outsiders “continue to lay their hands on the African continent to exploit and plunder it”. “This is a great scandal,” Father Ambroise said, “that calls out to both African leaders and those from other continents who pursue their interests without shame at the expense of the populations. An industrialist once said, ‘In Africa, I am interested in what is beneath the ground, not in what is on the surface.”’

Less direct was the pope’s approach to the continent’s history of enslavement. In Angola, he visited the Church of Our Lady of Muxima, a hub of the 16th-century transatlantic chattel slave trade. He said that people had prayed there “in times of joy and also in moments of sorrow and great suffering in the history of this country”, but did not address enslavement or its transatlantic diasporic legacies directly. A particularly interesting demurring considering that Pope Leo is descended from Creole people of colour, with his maternal grandparents identified as “Black” or “mulatto” in historical records.

A focus on smaller countries and minorities

For his first visit, the pope made a deliberate decision not to visit the larger Catholic countries in Africa, such as Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania, travelling instead to Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Angola and Algeria. In doing so, he made the broader point about countries subject to exploitation and corruption, and another about the historic significance of the continent. In his trip to Muslim-majority Algeria, he visited a mosque and urged interfaith dialogue. But there was also a homecoming element at play.

Pope Leo is an Augustinian, following the teachings of Saint Augustine, who was bishop in the Algerian town of Hippo, now a historical site, around AD395. The cornerstone of Saint Augustine’s teachings is that the church should have friendly relations with secular authorities, but not shy away when Christian values, such as protecting the weak, are assailed.

The pope “seized this opportunity”, Father Ambroise told me, “to raise awareness about Africa’s contribution to the development of theological and pastoral thought in the universal church.” In doing so, he added, it should urge the church to “reincarnate that influence on thought in the contemporary world”.

A pope thrust into politics

It is in that contemporary world that Pope Leo’s visit, and his position in general, has come into sharp relief. The Vatican stated that the pope, who is American, will not visit the US this year. And he has been involved in a fierce row with Donald Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance. When the war on Iran started, Pope Leo said that Jesus rejects the prayers of those who wage war; quoting scripture: “even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood”. In his Easter message, he said: “Let those who have weapons lay them down! Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue! Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them.”

The White House issued a severe rebuke. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that the pope was “WEAK on Crime and terrible for Foreign Policy”. He went on to accuse the pope of being a “very liberal person” who is “catering to the Radical Left”. Vance, a Catholic convert, told the pope to “stick to matters of morality”. In Cameroon, the pope did not hold back, appearing to stick to his position in the face of such criticism, saying that the world is being “ravaged by a handful of tyrants who spend billions on war”.

In doing so, Pope Leo drew himself into global politics in the way his predecessor, Pope Francis did, when he condemned the assault on Gaza in the strongest of terms and made nightly video calls to the Catholic parish in Gaza City. The pope’s visit to Africa, and the themes he touched on, can be seen as an anchor of this wider role that the church has moved into in a time of moral collapse and need for guidance. It is a role, Father Ambroise said, that is “particularly significant in a world now characterised by the complexity of crises, conflicts and wars”. Religious leaders are now, he said, the “shepherds, bearers of values, and influencers of policies” in the service of “dignity and human rights, gifts from God, intended for all”.