VaticanNews portal reports on the upcoming apostolic visit of the antipope Leo XIV to Algeria, scheduled for April 13, 2026. The article features an interview with Fr. Vincent Kyererezi, Vicar General of the diocese of Laghouat-Ghardaïa, who describes the Catholic community in Algeria as a “Church of encounter and dialogue with Muslims,” dedicated to “fraternity, mutual understanding and harmonious co-existence.” The visit’s motto, “Peace be with you” (Assalamu Alaykoum), is presented as a bridge between the risen Christ’s greeting and Arabic culture. The article highlights the Basilica of Our Lady of Africa, with its inscription “Our Lady of Africa, pray for us and for the Muslims,” and the Basilica of St. Augustine in Annaba. The entire narrative is a masterclass in the conciliar apostasy, reducing the Church’s divine mission of salvation to a naturalistic project of interfaith syncretism, where the unchanging demands of the Gospel are sacrificed on the altar of modernist “dialogue” and the false peace of the Antichrist.
The “Church of Dialogue”: A Betrayal of the Mandate to Evangelize
The interview with Fr. Kyererezi lays bare the fundamental apostasy at the heart of the post-conciliar mission. He describes the Church in Algeria as centered on “encounter and dialogue with Muslims,” with the “major apostolic activity” being “seeking the kingdom of God first through encounter and dialogue with our Muslim brothers and sisters.” This is a direct and damnable contradiction of the Church’s divine mandate. Our Lord Jesus Christ did not command His Apostles to “dialogue” with pagans, but to “teach all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19). The mission of the Church is not to foster “fraternity” with those who deny the Divinity of Christ and the Holy Trinity, but to convert them. As Pope Pius XI unequivocally stated in his encyclical Mortalium Animos (1928), the Church cannot participate in assemblies of non-Catholics, for to do so would be to “betray the divinely entrusted mandate of preaching the Gospel.”
The activities described—cultural centers, libraries, caring for the handicapped, promoting women’s crafts—are mere naturalistic humanitarianism, indistinguishable from the work of any secular NGO. They are the logical fruit of the modernist error condemned in Lamentabili sane exitu (1907), which rejects the supernatural origin of the sacraments and reduces the Church to a purely human institution subject to evolution. Where is the preaching of the Gospel? Where is the call to conversion? Where is the clear affirmation that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation? The silence on these points is deafening and damning. This “Church of encounter” is not the Church of Christ; it is a “synagogue of Satan” (Apocalypse 2:9), as Pope Pius IX warned in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), a structure that has replaced the supernatural order with the naturalistic humanism of the world.
“Pray for the Muslims”: A Blasphemous Inscription and a False Mariology
The article proudly highlights the Basilica of Our Lady of Africa, specifically the inscription on its main fresco: “Our Lady of Africa, pray for us and for the Muslims.” This inscription is not a pious sentiment; it is a theological scandal and a form of blasphemy. It implicitly places Muslims—who explicitly reject the Divinity of Christ, the Holy Trinity, and the Divine Maternity of Mary—on the same plane as Catholics, as if they were equally objects of Our Lady’s intercession and equally within the fold of salvation. This is a direct denial of the dogma Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus (Outside the Church there is no salvation). The Blessed Virgin Mary is the Mother of God and the Mediatrix of all graces; her intercession is for her children, those who are members of the Mystical Body of Christ, which is the Catholic Church. To ask her to pray for those who are not only outside the Church but actively deny its foundational dogmas is to make her complicit in a lie. It is a modernist corruption of true Marian devotion, reducing Our Lady to a universal mother of all religions, a concept anathematized by the Council of Trent and condemned by every Pope up to and including Pius XII.
This false Mariology is intrinsically linked to the modernist project of ecumenism. It is the same spirit that animates the false apparitions of Fatima, where the “conversion of Russia” is invoked without demanding the conversion of schismatics to the one true Faith. The inscription is not a prayer; it is a declaration of apostasy, a public renunciation of the Church’s exclusive claim to be the Ark of Salvation.
The “Peace” of the Antichrist: A Greeting of Apostasy
The motto chosen for Leo XIV’s visit, “Peace be with you” (Assalamu Alaykoum), is presented as a bridge between Christ and Islam. This is a deliberate and perverse manipulation of Sacred Scripture. The greeting of the Risen Christ, “Pax vobis,” was given to His Apostles, the first priests of the New Law, and signified the peace that He alone, as God-Man, could give: the peace of sins forgiven, of grace bestowed, of eternal life secured. It was not a generic cultural salutation. By equating it with the Arabic “Assalamu Alaykoum,” the conciliar sect reduces the supernatural peace of Christ to a mere social nicety, a tool for “dialogue” and “co-existence.” This is the peace of the Antichrist, a false peace built on the denial of truth, not on its proclamation.
Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the secularism and laicism that seek to remove Christ from public life. He declared that “the peace of Christ is only possible in the Kingdom of Christ,” and that this Kingdom encompasses all men, including non-Christians, who are subject to His authority. The Kingdom of Christ is not a vague spiritual ideal; it is the Catholic Church, with her sacraments, her hierarchy, her infallible Magisterium. To seek peace outside this Kingdom, to build “fraternity” with those who deny Christ’s Kingship, is to build on sand. It is the “peace” of the world that Our Lord warned against: “I came not to send peace, but the sword” (Matthew 10:34). The true peace of Christ demands the submission of all men and nations to His divine law, not a syncretistic handshake with His enemies.
The Pilgrimage of a Usurper: Following in the Footsteps of Lavigerie
The article notes that Leo XIV is visiting Algeria as a “pilgrim to the birthplace of his spiritual identity,” referencing St. Augustine and the founder of the Missionaries of Africa, Cardinal Charles Lavigerie. This is a telling admission. Lavigerie, while a figure of the 19th century, was a proponent of a certain style of missionary activity that, while zealous, often accommodated itself to local cultures in ways that sowed the seeds of the later modernist “inculturation.” The conciliar sect has taken this tendency and run with it to its logical, apostate conclusion.
The visit to the Basilica of St. Augustine in Annaba is particularly ironic. St. Augustine was a Doctor of the Church who wrote extensively against heresies, who defended the necessity of the one true Church, and who proclaimed the absolute truth of the Catholic Faith. To invoke his name while promoting a “dialogue” that denies the need for conversion is to prostitute his memory. It is akin to the modernist error condemned in Lamentabili, which claims that the dogmas of the faith have evolved and that the Church of today is fundamentally different from the Church of the Fathers. Leo XIV, as a usurper on the Chair of Peter, has no authority to invoke the patronage of the Fathers. His pilgrimage is not a journey of faith, but a political and spiritual stunt designed to legitimize the conciliar revolution’s embrace of religious indifferentism.
The entire narrative of the article, from the interview with Fr. Kyererezi to the description of the visit’s itinerary, is saturated with the spirit of Vatican II. It is a testament to the complete triumph of Modernism within the structures occupying the Vatican. The Church’s mission has been reduced to social work and interfaith chatter. The supernatural has been eclipsed by the natural. The call to conversion has been replaced by the call to “encounter.” The peace of Christ has been traded for the peace of the world. This is not the Church of the Apostles, the Church of the Martyrs, the Church of the Fathers. It is the “abomination of desolation” (Matthew 24:15) standing in the holy place, and Leo XIV is its chief promoter.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV Visiting Algeria as a Messenger of Peace and as a Pilgrim to the Birthplace of his Spiritual Identity (vaticannews.va)
Date: 11.04.2026