The 10-day visit will take Leo nearly 18,000 km across 11 cities in Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea, involving 18 flights in what Vatican officials described as a demanding itinerary.

Cardinal Michael Czerny, a senior Vatican official, said the trip was intended “to help turn the world’s attention to Africa,” emphasizing the pope’s priority to ensure the continent is not overlooked amid global crises.

Leo, the first U.S.-born pope and successor to Pope Francis, has made limited foreign visits since his election last May, including trips to Turkey and Lebanon late last year, and Monaco in March.

Africa accounts for more than 20% of the world’s Catholics, according to Vatican data, and is the fastest-growing region for the Church. In several of the countries on Leo’s itinerary, Catholics make up a majority of the population, while Algeria remains predominantly Muslim with a small Catholic minority.

During the visit, Leo is expected to promote interfaith dialogue, including a visit to the Great Mosque of Algiers, and travel to Annaba to see the ancient ruins of Hippo, associated with St. Augustine of Hippo, a central figure for the Augustinian order to which the pope belongs.

In Cameroon, Leo is scheduled to hold a peace meeting in Bamenda, a region affected by conflict between government forces and separatist groups since 2017.

The pope will also visit Bata, where he is expected to pray at the site of a 2021 explosion at a military barracks that killed more than 100 people.

Church officials and analysts say the tour reflects the Vatican’s strategic and pastoral focus on Africa, highlighting both the continent’s challenges and its role as a center of growth and vitality within global Catholicism.

At his weekly blessing, Francis referred to a statement about an incident on Saturday by the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Catholic authority in the Holy Land.

The Patriarchate said an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) “sniper” killed the two women, whom the pope named as Nahida Khalil Anton and her daughter Samar, as they walked to a convent of nuns in the compound of the Holy Family Parish.

The Patriarchate statement said seven other people were shot and wounded as they tried to protect others.

“I continue to receive very grave and painful news from Gaza,” Francis said. “Unarmed civilians are the objects of bombings and shootings. And this happened even inside the Holy Family parish complex, where there are no terrorists, but families, children, people who are sick or disabled, nuns.”

Francis said they were killed by “snipers” and also referred to the Patriarchate’s statement that a convent of nuns of the order founded by Mother Teresa was damaged by Israeli tank fire.

“Some would say ‘It is war. It is terrorism.’ Yes, it is war. It is terrorism,” he said.

An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the incident was still under review and had no immediate comment on the pope’s words.

It was the second time in less than a month that the pope used the word “terrorism” while speaking of events in Gaza.

On Nov. 22, after meeting separately with Israeli relatives of hostages held by Hamas and Palestinians with family in Gaza, he said: “This is what wars do. But here we have gone beyond wars. This is not war. This is terrorism.”

Later that day, a messy dispute broke out over whether he used the word “genocide” to describe events in Gaza, with Palestinians who met him insisting that he did and the Vatican saying he did not.

Jewish groups criticised the pope for last month’s “terrorism” comments.

Israel stepped up its bombardment of Gaza overnight and into Sunday, killing at least 40 people, Palestinians said, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argued that the only way to secure the release of hostages was intense military pressure on Hamas.

A seven-day pause in the fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants, which had allowed the exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, collapsed on Friday. On Sunday, Israel stepped up its bombing campaign.

More than 15,400 Palestinians have been killed as of Sunday, according to Palestinian officials, in the conflict that broke out after a Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and more than 200 taken hostage.

“It is painful that the truce has been broken. This means death, destruction and misery,” Francis said – his words read out by an aide because of the pope’s frail health – during his Sunday Angelus message and prayers.

“Many hostages have been freed but many are still in Gaza. We think of them, of their families, who had seen a light, a hope of embracing their loved ones again.”

“In Gaza there is a lot of suffering, there is a lack of basic necessities,” Francis said. “I hope that all those involved can reach a new agreement for a ceasefire as soon as possible,” he added, and find “solutions other than weapons”.

The pope is limiting his public speaking and his appearances because he is recovering from a lung inflammation that forced him, among other things, to cancel a trip to Dubai this weekend for the COP28 U.N. climate summit.

“Dear brothers and sisters, good morning. Today as well I will not be able to read everything. I am getting better, but my voice is still (not good),” Francis said at the start of the Angelus.

Screens were placed in St Peter’s Square so that the faithful, who normally listen to the pope speaking from a window overlooking the square, could follow his message.

At the end, they greeted him with chants of “Viva il papa!” (Long live the pope).

“Who can be upset?” Said an official in Najaf. “Qom seminary.”

The visit of Pope Francis, the world’s Catholic leader, to Iraq is a political and historical event. An event that matters more than just a visit by a religious leader. The political significance of the Pope’s visit to Iraq and his meeting with Ayatollah Sistani can be viewed as recognizing Ayatollah Sistani is the main figure in Shiite Islam.

Pope’s visit of Ali Sistani in Najaf is a serious blow to Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, who calls himself, the leader of the world’s Muslims. The meeting also confirms that Najaf is “the heart of Shiism and its capital” and not Qom (central Iran), which is the symbol of the reactionary organization and Islamic fundamentalism and religious dictatorship and its policies in Iran. “Who can be upset?” Said an official in Najaf. “Qom seminary.”

The meeting comes as Ibrahim Raessi, the head of Iran’s judiciary, one of the leaders of the death squad in the 1988 massacre of political prisoners in Iran, failed to meet with Sistani during his recent visit to Iraq. The pope has not met with any of the world’s other religious leaders in their private homes!

Rahman Ameri, Iraq’s ambassador to the Vatican, announced that a memorandum of solidarity and unity between followers of different religions would be signed during Pope Francis’ meeting with Ayatollah Sistani.

Prime Minister Mostafa Al-Kazemi also considers the pope’s visit as a sign of consolidation of his government in the current situation. His government is facing the biggest challenge from the Iranian regime’s proxy forces such as Kata’ib Hezbollah and Hash Al Shaabi in Iraq’s affairs.

This trip is valued by many leaders in the region, of course, but it is very painful for the Iranian regime and Khamenei himself and affirms Khamenei’s place in a deadly deadlock and in isolation because Khamenei has called himself the leader of the world’s Muslims for many years.

On the other hand, while Khamenei is trying to maintain his regime by relying on concentration of power and maintaining the hegemony resulting from the idea of Velayat-e-Faqih, religious fascism, political contraction, and closing all the gaps, this is a political blow to his hegemony in the current situation that he desperately needs it. For the past 42 years, mullahs’ dictatorship has been based on an opportunistic idea that to maintain power and monopoly employed its 62 organs of repression and destroyed any other person who did not go along with them and thought differently.

Khamenei promoted and expanded this idea to the society and a wider uniform organization of so-called religious leaders and has turned this system of thought into a system of government. Humans and groups affiliated with this idea are oppressive, ruthless, and devoid of any mercy.

A prominent example of this is IRGC and its terrorist Quds force that by deploying its proxy forces in the region, such as Hash Al-Shaabi Kata’ib Hezbollah, etc., have turned the lives of people of Iraq and the region into a living hell.Pope Francis implicitly referred to this,  in a letter to Iraqi people before his visit he wrote: “We will certainly not allow the terrible suffering that you endured and that hurt me so much to prevail. We will not give up in the face of evil …” That is why mullahs’ regime proxy forces in Iraq not only do not welcome the Pope’s visit but also strongly oppose it.

Abu Ali Askari from Kata’ib Hezbollah said: We should not be too optimistic about the Pope’s visit. It is better to reform his country first and then reform others. We have no dialogue with the occupiers and the killers, and we warn of what is going to be woven in Ur. We congratulate the operation against the evil base of Ain Al-Assad and recommend that it continue. 

Hassan Mahmoudi is a Europe-based social analyst, researcher, independent observer, and commentator of Middle Eastern and Iranian Politics. He tweets under @hassan_mahmou1. 

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.