African Catholic bishops mark Pope Leo XIV’s first anniversary, citing his landmark Africa visit and tireless peace appeals as defining his historic first year.
Newsroom (08/05/2026 Gaudium Press ) Exactly one year after taking the name Leo XIV, the first Pope from the United States and a member of the Order of St. Augustine, the Bishop of Rome has received a resounding assessment from Catholic Church leaders across Africa: his has been a pontificate defined by pastoral closeness, missionary courage, and an unflinching commitment to those living at the margins of the world.
In separate reflections shared with ACI Africa on the occasion of the first anniversary of Pope Leo XIV’s election on May 8, bishops from South Sudan to Algeria, from Cameroon to Ivory Coast, pointed repeatedly to the same touchstones — the Holy Father’s maiden Apostolic Journey to Africa and his insistent, prophetic appeals for peace — as the defining features of his young papacy.
A Continental Church Speaks With One Voice
The Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), the continent’s foremost episcopal body, issued a formal anniversary message signed by its President, Fridolin Cardinal Ambongo of the Archdiocese of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The statement praised the Pope’s tireless appeals for “peace, reconciliation, justice, and human fraternity,” crediting them with touching “hearts across nations and renewing confidence in the Gospel of Christ, especially among those who suffer from war, poverty, displacement, and social injustice.”
The message described Pope Leo XIV’s first year as one in which his words and gestures have “renewed missionary zeal, encouraged reconciliation where wounds and divisions persist, deepened solidarity among ecclesial communities, and strengthened the Church’s commitment to justice, peace, and integral human development.” SECAM entrusted his continued ministry to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church and Our Lady of Pompeii.
A Journey That Rewrote the Map
No single event from the Pope’s first year drew more commentary from African prelates than his maiden intercontinental Apostolic Journey — a sweeping four-nation visit to Algeria (April 13–15), Cameroon (April 15–18), Angola, and Equatorial Guinea. For many bishops, the very choice of destinations communicated something that words alone could not.
“Going to Algeria, Cameroon, Angola, and Equatorial Guinea means declaring through actions that the Gospel does not follow the maps of power, but crosses them and overturns them,” said Bishop Christian Carlassare of the Diocese of Bentiu in South Sudan, who also serves as Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Rumbek. The Italian-born Comboni missionary said the journey “reversed the perspective” in a world that assigns value to peoples according to economic weight: “The so-called ‘margins’ become the center.”
For SECAM, the visit was “not merely a pastoral journey, but also a powerful sign of communion, closeness, and encouragement.” The continental bishops’ conference affirmed that the Pope “came to Africa as a true Apostle of Christ and Messenger of Peace, strengthening the faith of the people, comforting the afflicted, inspiring the youth, and reaffirming the dignity of every human person.”
Bishop Charles Sampa Kasonde, Chairman of the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa (AMECEA) and head of Zambia’s Diocese of Solwezi, described a Pope who is “bringing us together to realize the gift of love in our ministry and our mission as a Church.” He also pointed to the symbolic resonance of the Algeria stop for Leo XIV personally: as an Augustinian, the Pope was visiting the birthplace of St. Augustine of Hippo, the Order’s patron. “He connects with his root,” Bishop Kasonde said. “He gives honor to this great son of Africa.”
“Unarmed and Disarming Peace”
If the Africa journey was the defining act of the pontificate’s first year, a single phrase has emerged as its defining utterance. Bishop José Luís Gerardo Ponce de León of the Diocese of Manzini in Eswatini recalled the Pope’s very first address following his election on May 8, 2025 — a message wishing the Peace of the Risen Christ upon the world and calling for “an unarmed and disarming peace, humble and persevering.”
“These have not been just words,” said the Argentine Consolata missionary. “We have seen them leading him daily in the last year — and a call to each one of us to be peacemakers with and like him.”
Bishop Joseph Kacou Aka of the Diocese of Yamoussoukro in Ivory Coast echoed the sentiment, noting that Pope Leo XIV has “ceaselessly called upon humanity to peace, fraternity, and reconciliation in a world marked by violence, armed conflicts, social injustices, and the many forms of the dominion of evil.” The bishop described the papal phrase on unarmed and disarming peace as “a prophetic word addressed to our time” and prayed that the Holy Father would continue to be “a tireless artisan of peace among peoples.”
A Prophetic Voice on Conflict and Exploitation
For bishops ministering in some of the continent’s most conflict-scarred territories, the Pope’s peace message was received not as diplomatic abstraction but as prophetic challenge grounded in lived reality.
Bishop Carlassare, whose diocese in South Sudan has borne witness to catastrophic violence, recounted visiting a community in Bentiu that was forced to bury 214 bodies in a mass grave following an armed attack by a group still unidentified. Against this backdrop, he found deep resonance in the Pope’s language. Leo XIV’s addresses on peace were “not a generic discourse,” the bishop said, “but a precise denunciation: peace is often obstructed by economic interests, power dynamics, and international complicity.”
Bishop Carlassare also highlighted the Pope’s frank engagement with economic exploitation during the Africa visit, recalling that Leo XIV spoke of plundered natural resources, economic dependence, and the cycle of humanitarian dependency caused by poor governance and the absence of peace. He drew a thread of continuity to the late Pope Francis’ January 2023 appeal in the DRC, urging the world to stop treating Africa as a reservoir to be drained or a land to be plundered.
“In a global system that tends to make entire peoples invisible,” Bishop Carlassare concluded, “the Church is called to do the opposite: to see, to recognize, to give voice.”
Leadership, Service, and the Beatitudes
Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala of the Diocese of Tombura-Yambio in South Sudan, who chairs the Commission for the Promotion of Integral Human Development of the Sudan and South Sudan Catholic Bishops’ Conference, anchored the Pope’s message in the structural realities of the African continent.
“Africa today is rich in faith, youthful in spirit, and alive with hope,” the bishop acknowledged, “yet burdened by conflict, poverty, corruption, and fragile social structures.” Into this reality, he said, “Pope Leo XIV speaks directly.” The bishop outlined what he identified as the Pope’s core calls: to place God at the center of society, to rebuild trust among divided communities, to promote justice, mercy, and reconciliation, and to build peace through dialogue, encounter, and truth.
His assessment of the Africa visit was unequivocal: it was “not merely ceremonial. It was pastoral, prophetic, and deeply evangelical.” And drawing on the Sermon on the Mount, Bishop Hiiboro offered a summation of the pontificate’s moral vision: “The Beatitudes are not weakness; they are the highest form of moral courage.”
Algeria: A First Papal Visit and a Bridge Between Faiths
The stop in Algeria carried particular historical weight. Pope Leo XIV became the first Roman Pontiff ever to visit the North African nation, and the significance was not lost on those who received him. Bishop Diego Ramón Sarrió Cucarella of the Diocese of Laghouat-Ghardaïa — a Spanish-born member of the Missionaries of Africa, the White Fathers — described the visit’s impact on a numerically small but spiritually vibrant local Church.
The visit was experienced, Bishop Diego said, as “a moment of fraternity, peace and spiritual encouragement” that extended well beyond the Catholic community. The Pope’s words on dialogue, reconciliation, and the dignity of every human person resonated broadly, and his insistence that believers are called to be artisans of peace in a wounded world was, the bishop noted, “particularly meaningful.”
AMECEA’s Bishop Kasonde also underscored the visit’s implications for interreligious relations, praising the Pope’s engagement with Christian-Muslim dialogue. “He goes for them,” the bishop said. “And this opens up also the interaction with our brothers and sisters, the Muslims, in appreciating what religion stands for.”
Cameroon: Closeness to the Wounded and the Young
In Cameroon, the scene of a four-day apostolic visit from April 15 to 18, Bishop Michael Miabesue Bibi of the Diocese of Buea said the papal presence left a lasting spiritual impression across the country. Two messages stood out for the faithful: the Pope’s call not to lose hope despite present hardships, and his reminder that the Church must remain a sign of peace, reconciliation, and hope in society.
Bishop Bibi further noted that the Pope’s personal closeness — to young people, to displaced persons, to families facing hardship — “left a lasting spiritual impact on many across the country,” a quality of pastoral nearness that several bishops across the continent highlighted as central to the character of this pontificate.
Mission as a Circular Movement
Running through many of the anniversary reflections was a quiet but insistent theological reframing: what it means for the Church to engage in mission. Bishop Carlassare, drawing on his years in South Sudan, described the Africa journey as a revelation that mission is “increasingly a circular movement of mutual giving and receiving.” He added: “And in this movement, one realizes that it is often the ‘small ones’ who evangelize the ‘great.'”
SECAM affirmed this same insight in institutional terms, insisting that the people of God in Africa are “not communities ‘to be assisted,’ but living subjects of mission” — a framing that many African bishops see as capturing a new mutuality in the Church’s global self-understanding under Leo XIV.
Looking Ahead: Fragile Peace, Enduring Faith
As the first anniversary closes, Africa’s Catholic leaders look ahead with both realism and resolve. Bishop Hiiboro of South Sudan spoke plainly: “Our peace remains fragile, yet our faith remains strong.” Bishop Carlassare, recalling the mass grave in Bentiu and the impossible question of where survivors begin again, pointed toward the arduous daily work the Church must undertake — not merely in words but in community: places where people “learn to forgive, but also to tell the truth, rebuild relationships, and resist the logic of violence and revenge.”
And SECAM, in its message addressed to Leo XIV directly, offered both gratitude and intercession — entrusting the Holy Father to the loving protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, praying that she “may continue to intercede for him and sustain him with grace and strength in his universal mission.”
After one year, the verdict of the African Church is clear and cohesive: this is a papacy that has chosen the peripheries not as a gesture, but as a governing principle — and that has found in the continent not an object of missionary charity, but a living, indispensable partner in the work of the Gospel.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from ACI Africa
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