Pope Leo XIV in Algeria to walk in footsteps of his spiritual father, St. Augustine

Pope Leo XIV is following in the footsteps of his spiritual father, St. Augustine, making a pilgrimage to the archaeological ruins of eastern Algeria where the fifth century titan of early Christianity lived, died and wrote some of the most important works in Western thought. Leo’s visit to Annaba, the modern-day Hippo, is a spiritual homecoming for the American pope on his second full day in Algeria.

He arrived Monday on the first-ever papal visit, against the bac kdrop of the U.S.-Israel war in Iran and his calls for peace that have sparked a feud with U.S. President Donald Trump. Leo proclaimed himself a “son of St.

Augustine” on the night of his election and has cited Augustine prolifically in his first year, making clear he is the guiding inspiration of Leo’s pontificate. For this trip, where he is aiming to press a message of peace and Christian-Muslim coexistence, he is focusing on Augustine as a bridge-builder. But the visit is also drawing attention to the North African origins of Augustine, who only spent five years in Italy but is often considered through a Eurocentric lens as one of the greatest Western thinkers of Christianity for his writings on truth, evil, creation and grace.

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Leo’s Augustinian religious order was founded in Italy in the 13th century, inspired by the saint. Augustine was born in 354 to a Berber mother and Roman father in Thagaste, today the Algerian city of Souk Ahras near the border with Tunisia. At the time, the swath of North Africa was part of the Roman Empire, including Carthage in today’s Tunisia, where Augustine was educated and taught rhetoric.

He left North Africa for Rome in 383 and then Milan, where he converted to Christianity. He returned to his homeland soon thereafter, founded a monastery at Hippo, became a bishop and there wrote some of the most important works in the Western canon, including “Confessions” and “The City of God.” A new book, “Augustine the African,” by Catherine Conybeare, an Augustine scholar at Bryn Mawr college in Pennsylvania, explores Augustine from his perspective: As a North African, looking to Rome as the center of his universe but feeling insecure there about his Punic-accented Latin. “One of the most important thinkers in the Western intellectual tradition actually came from Africa, spent almost his whole life in Africa,” Conybeare told The Associated Press.

“How does that change things?” “Of course, because his successors — the people who carried on his heritage — were in Europe, they got to tell the story,” she said. And Europe got his body: After dying in Hippo, Augustine’s body was taken eventually to Pavia, Italy, though a forearm remains in the basilica in Annaba.

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