The Missing Stop in Pope Leo’s Algeria Tour

On Monday, Pope Leo XIV stood before a soggy crowd gathered at the Maqam Echahid Martyrs’ Monument in Algiers and declared: “The future belongs to men and women of peace.” An anodyne enough intonation from the outside, but it is the latest in a series of darts hurled toward the leaders of his native United States, as a war of words unfolds between the pontiff and President Donald Trump and his proxies alongside the growing conflict in the Middle East. Trump insists the pope is soft on crime; Leo assures us that God does not hear the prayers of those who wage war. 

Leo’s presence in Algeria was scheduled long before the U.S. and Israel began their strikes on Iran — as an Augstinian, the pontiff had long dreamed of a pilgrimage to Annaba, the site of the ancient city of Hippo, where St. Augustine was born — but his presence there has amplified a message he has been pressing repeatedly since the conflict began: one of peace and interreligious tolerance. He spoke of the harmony between faiths as he met with the nation’s president, visited a mosque and laid a wreath for those killed in the war of independence.

But conspicuously absent was one stop that could have hammered home the pope’s message more firmly than any other: Leo did not choose to visit the Tibhirine monastery, where seven Trappist monks were kidnapped and held for weeks before being killed during Algeria’s civil war in 1996. 

The monks had chosen to stay in Algeria during the war to continue their work of building dialogue and understanding between Muslims and Christians, an effort that had been undertaken at the monastery for decades. They spoke Arabic and studied the Quran, but more than anything, the strong relationship they built with the community around them was “the outcome of a long ‘living together’ and of shared concerns, ones that are at times very concrete,” Father Christian De Chergé, the leader of the monks, recalled. It wasn’t monumental acts of tolerating difference that built bridges; it was the work of mutually keeping the community running. 

As Leo preaches a message of “blessed are the peacemakers,” a visit to the monastery could have been the chance to remind his flock — and the world — that it is, perhaps, easier to love thy neighbor than to make peace with a neighbor who has become an enemy.