The surprising story of how St. Augustine became an Algerian icon

In a few days, Pope Leo XIV will become the first pontiff to visit Algeria. On a personal level, however, this will be his third trip to the country. As an Augustinian religious, Father Robert Francis Prevost actually traveled to Algeria twice before. In 2013, he visited as the prior general for the reopening of Annaba's basilica following its restoration. Twelve years prior, while serving as the Augustinian provincial for the American Midwest, he attended an academic conference titled "St. Augustine: Africanity and Universality."

"In 2001, he came to attend a conference on the figure of St. Augustine. President Bouteflika and Archbishop Henri Teissier [the former Archbishop of Algiers, Ed.] organized the initiative. It was an ambitious event on the part of the Algerian presidency, which wanted to highlight the universal figure of Augustine," Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco, the Archbishop of Algiers, stated in an interview with iMedia last summer.

This assembly, held in Algiers and Annaba exactly 25 years ago — from March 31 to April 7, 2001 — marked a turning point. It was the moment Algerian authorities began publicly promoting the character of St. Augustine. The president at the time, Abdelaziz Bouteflika (1937–2021), wanted to restore the saint’s local appreciation. Previously, Augustine was mostly associated with colonization. Instead, Bouteflika aimed to make him a figure marking Algeria's return to the international stage.

At the time, Bouteflika had just been elected to the Algerian presidency on a platform of national reconciliation following the massacres of the "Black Decade," the Algerian Civil War. He had already surprised participants at an August 1999 meeting organized by the Communion and Liberation movement in Rimini, a city in northeastern Italy. During the event, he delivered an enthusiastic speech about St. Augustine. Personally, Bouteflika was a fervent reader and admirer of the saint.

"This conference was a personal initiative of President Bouteflika, who entrusted its organization to the High Islamic Council of Algeria, which is quite unusual," recalled Father Michel Kubler. "The global elite of Augustinian studies were there, alongside Algerian historians and philosophers," he said.

The conference proceedings, published two years later by the University of Fribourg, do not mention Robert Francis Prevost. Therefore, he attended as a simple listener rather than a speaker. Among the most well-known figures present was André Mandouze. This French historian was tasked in the 1960s with building the university system for the newly independent Algeria under President Ahmed Ben Bella's authority. He later had to leave the country following Houari Boumédiène's coup d'état.

After several decades of patience, the Sorbonne professor finally saw his efforts rewarded. "It's Augustine's Algeria that had the last word," said the 85-year-old Mandouze during the conference.

"This conference marked Augustine's reappearance in the public sphere and in Algeria's official discourse. He had completely disappeared since independence," Father Kubler recalled.

He pointed out that Algerian authorities had previously equated the saint of Hippo with "a product of colonization" due to ancient history.

"His mother, Monica, was Berber, but his father, Patricius, was a Roman who served as an imperial official in North Africa. So, he was considered the son of a colonist," the priest explained. Later, in the 19th and 20th centuries, the French emphasis on the bishop of Hippo led Algerians to view him as an instrument of colonial power.

President Bouteflika's initiative was therefore "an intellectual and political revolution," Father Kubler explained. "Bouteflika's operation essentially consisted of saying, 'Augustine is African, he's ours! He’s a man who had a universal influence on global thought, but he's one of our own, and we’re proud of that,'" he said.

Church leaders in Algeria received this new political discourse on St. Augustine as a divine surprise. The civil war had deeply weakened the local Church, resulting in 19 martyrs within its ranks. This included two Augustinian sisters to whom Pope Leo XIV will pay tribute on April 13 when he visits Bab El Oued, a neighborhood in Algiers, where they lived and were assassinated in 1994.

However, in 2001, the focus was on rebuilding trust. "Honoring Augustine as a man of culture and promoting him as a source of Algerian pride made Algerians realize that their history didn't begin with Islam. The bishops of Algeria were very sensitive to this shift in the historical narrative," Father Kubler noted.

The conference had an even greater impact, because it didn't just target scholars. It also reached out to the Algerian population as a whole. "My Assumptionist confrere, Father Goulven Madec, delivered a lecture titled 'Augustine in the Family.' He spoke in the theater of Souk Ahras, the ancient city of Thagaste where Augustine was born," Father Kubler remembered.

"The town's residents were there, and Father Madec delivered an unforgettable line: 'I have come to give Augustine back to you. He was taken from you, but he is a child of your people. I have come to return him to you.' He wept with emotion as he said it."

In light of this memory, Pope Leo's trip to Algeria — the first stop on a long African tour — can be seen as a new opportunity to "give Augustine back” to Algeria and to Africa.

One of the main goals of this trip will be to support the development of a Catholic Church that is truly African and Algerian, separating itself from the ties and wounds of colonization. Nearly 1,600 years after his death, St. Augustine's thought might find unexpected fruitfulness there.