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People walk by the Church of Our Lady of Muxima in Muxima, Angola, Saturday, April 11, 2026, which Pope Leo XIV will visit during his 11-day pastoral visit to Africa.<\/p>\n
AP<\/p>\n
People walk on a stage set by the Church of Our Lady of Muxima in Muxima, Angola, Saturday, April 11, 2026 which Pope Leo XIV will visit during his 11-day pastoral visit to Africa.<\/p>\n
AP<\/p>\n
People walk by the Church of Our Lady of Muxima in Muxima, Angola, Saturday, April 11, 2026 which Pope Leo XIV will visit during his 11-day pastoral visit to Africa.<\/p>\n
AP<\/p>\n
Workers walk by the 16th century fortress in Muxima, Angola, Saturday, April 11, 2026.<\/p>\n
AP<\/p>\n
A man walks past a mural of Pope Leo XIV in Luanda, South Africa, Thursday, April 16, 2026.<\/p>\n
Themba Hadebe\/AP<\/p>\n
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) \u2014 The Church of Our Lady of Muxima was built by Portuguese colonizers in Angola at the end of the 16th century as part of a fortress complex and became a hub in the slave trade. It remains a reminder of the inextricable link hundreds of years ago between Catholicism and the exploitation of the African continent.<\/p>\n
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Pope Leo XIV\u2019s planned visit to the church in the town of Muxima on Sunday as part of his Africa tour is in recognition of it becoming a popular Catholic shrine after believers reported an appearance by the Virgin Mary around 1833.<\/p>\n
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But before that, the white-walled church on the edge of the Kwanza River was a point where enslaved Africans were gathered to be baptized by Portuguese priests before being forced to walk the last 145 kilometers (90 miles) to Angola\u2019s main port of Luanda to be put on ships to the Americas.<\/p>\n
The Portuguese colonizers were emboldened by 15th-century directives from the Vatican that authorized them to enslave non-Christians.<\/p>\n
Angola was at the center of the slave trade<\/p>\n
Ultimately, more than 5 million people left from Angola on the trans-Atlantic slave route, more than any other country and nearly half of the roughly 12.5 million African slaves sent across the ocean.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s unclear if Leo will address slavery on his Africa trip, as St. John Paul II did on papal visits to Cameroon in 1985 and Senegal in 1992. Joe Biden visited Angola in the last months of his presidency in 2024 and spoke about slavery as America\u2019s \u201coriginal sin.\u201d<\/p>\n
But some African Catholics see a highly symbolic moment when the head of the Catholic Church \u2014 who is himself an American \u2014 recites the Rosary on the riverside esplanade next to the fortress and the centuries-old chapel in Muxima, as Leo plans to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, the pope going there to pray the Rosary … he will give that place a new significance,\u201d said Rev. Celestino Epalanga, a priest with the Catholic Bishops\u2019 Conference of Angola. \u201cWe have to give it a new sense. To make this place sacred instead of being a place of evil.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The pope\u2019s complex heritage<\/p>\n
The moment might resonate even more after revelations around Leo\u2019s own heritage.<\/p>\n
Last year, a genealogist in the U.S. discovered that the first American pope \u2014 whose name is Robert Prevost \u2014 has Creole heritage and his maternal great-grandparents were described as people of color in Louisiana census records. The research uncovered that Leo had Black and white ancestors who included both enslaved people and slave owners.<\/p>\n
Some of the first slaves to arrive in Louisiana were sent from Angola, according to historians.<\/p>\n
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Leo has not spoken publicly about his heritage. But Mariana Candido, a professor of history at Emory University in Atlanta, said she sees a fascinating complexity in how a place linked to such an immoral act like Muxima became a pilgrimage site for Angolans and how Leo might be cognizant of that when he goes there to reach out to a new generation of African Catholics.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can see how this is a way of connecting to Catholics in Angola, and making the Church more in sync with how people are practicing Catholicism in Angola and in African countries,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Candido said Leo is well-placed to do that, given his history serving people in his hometown of Chicago, with its large African American population.<\/p>\n
Rev. Stan Chu Ilo, a Nigerian priest and professor at DePaul University in Chicago, said he has seen evidence that the pontiff is developing connections to Africa by elevating African figures in the church, including with the recent promotion of Monsignor Anthony Ekpo of Nigeria to a high-ranking position at the Vatican.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThis pope is actively cultivating African presence within the church and trying to, I think, heal this policy or program of seeing Africa as just making up the numbers,\u201d said Chu Ilo.<\/p>\n
Leo said at the start of his trip that he had decided in May of last year, soon after his election, that Africa would be his first trip as pope. Other trips intervened in the meantime, but he said this particular visit to Africa was \u201cvery special for several reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n
A church that confronts modern-day problems<\/p>\n
Angola bears especially deep scars from slavery and colonialism. It was a Portuguese colony until 1975. Immediately after independence, it slipped into a bloody civil war that pitted Angolans newly freed from colonialism against each other. The conflict lasted on and off for 27 years and killed more than half a million people.<\/p>\n
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African priests Epalanga and Chu Ilo both recognize colonialism\u2019s impact but said it\u2019s also important that Leo invigorates a Catholic Church in Angola \u2014 originally brought by colonial oppressors \u2014 to be an agent for good confronting modern-day problems.<\/p>\n
The Vatican has said that some of the themes Leo will raise in Africa are the exploitation of natural and human resources, corruption and authoritarian regimes.<\/p>\n
That resonates with Olivio Nkilumbo, an opposition lawmaker in Angola\u2019s Parliament who said the country is still not a democracy that delivers for its 37 million people more than a half-century after independence. Nkilumbo cited decades of authoritarian governments and an economic inequality that has left millions in poverty despite Angola\u2019s oil, diamonds and other resources.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe still don\u2019t have democracy, don\u2019t have freedom,\u201d said Nkilumbo, who added he wanted the pope to be a pilgrim for peace and reconciliation but to also bring a forceful message calling for social justice. \u201cIn my view, the pope knows the real situation of Angola.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Nkilumbo said he was not a Catholic but praised the Catholic Church in Angola, the country\u2019s dominant religious denomination, for being at the forefront of that fight for equality.<\/p>\n
Epalanga plays that role. Alongside his work as a priest, he is executive secretary of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Angola, which actively works to promote democracy and ease poverty and inequality, often challenging authorities.<\/p>\n
Epalanga said he was one of many members of the church invited to an audience with Pope Leo in Angola. If he has the chance to speak to the pope, Epalanga said he would \u201cthank him for coming and ask him to tell the bishops they should be more committed to the poor and to social justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
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For more on Africa and development: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/africa-pulse<\/a>\n<\/p>\n The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP\u2019s standards<\/a> for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n