EWTN News portal reports on the upcoming trip of the antipope Leo XIV to Algeria, Cameroon, Angola, and Equatorial Guinea, presenting “seven key things to know about the tiny but lively Catholic Church” in Algeria. The article frames the visit as a pastoral encounter with a small Catholic minority, emphasizing themes of interreligious dialogue, coexistence, and the legacy of the 1990s martyrs beatified in 2018. What the article omits is far more revealing than what it includes: there is not a single mention of the duty of states to publicly confess Christ the King, no call for the conversion of souls to the Catholic Church as the sole Ark of Salvation, and no recognition that the entire framework of “dialogue” with Islam is built upon the heretical foundations of Vatican II’s *Nostra Aetate* and *Dignitatis Humanae*. The article is a textbook example of the conciliar sect’s systematic reduction of the Catholic Faith to naturalistic humanism, interreligious sentimentality, and the abandonment of the Church’s divinely mandated mission to teach, govern, and baptize all nations.
The Antipope’s Pilgrimage: A Journey Without Supernatural Purpose
The very framing of Leo XIV’s trip as a “papal visit” to Africa is built upon a foundation of theological fraud. The Catholic Church teaches with absolute clarity that the mission entrusted by Christ to Peter and his successors is to “teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19). The Church is not a NGO engaged in “cultural encounters” and “building trust” — she is the one true religion, outside of which there is no salvation (*Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus*). The antipope’s journey to Algeria, as presented by EWTN News, contains not a single reference to this missionary mandate, not a whisper of the necessity of conversion, not an echo of the Church’s infallible teaching that the Catholic religion alone is the true religion of Christ.
Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemned under pain of anathema the proposition that “in the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship” (Proposition 77). The Algerian state enshrines Islam as the state religion, restricts non-Muslim worship, and prohibits conversion from Islam — and the antipope’s response is not to condemn this injustice against Christ the King but to celebrate “coexistence” and “dialogue.” This is not Catholicism; it is the complete inversion of the Church’s divine mission.
St. Augustine’s Homeland Desecrated by Modernist Sentimentality
The article notes with apparent pride that Algeria is “the homeland of St. Augustine” and that Leo XIV, as a member of the Order of St. Augustine, will experience “very special and personal moments” visiting Hippo Regius (modern Annaba). What the article conveniently omits is the profound irony: St. Augustine, Doctor of Grace and hammer of heresies, spent his entire episcopal career combating heresy, defending the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation, and insisting on the duty of the Church to seek the conversion of all souls. Augustine wrote: “The judgment of the Lord is not yet manifest, but in the meantime, the Church must labor, must pray, must preach, that all may be saved” (De Correptione et Gratia).
The modernist occupiers of the Vatican, masquerading as Augustinians, visit the city of this great Doctor not to proclaim the necessity of the Catholic Faith and the errors of Islam, but to engage in “academic exchanges” and “cultural encounters that build trust rather than confrontation.” The word “confrontation” here is a tell — it reveals the modernist terror of the very notion that truth must be proclaimed against error. St. Augustine confronted the Donatists, the Pelagians, and the Manichees. The antipope confronts no one. He builds “trust.” He creates “encounters.” He does everything except what a true successor of Peter would do: command the conversion of souls to Christ through His one true Church.
The 1990s Martyrs: Beatified by Apostates, Remembered Without Doctrine
The article references the 1990s martyrs of Algeria, including the Trappist monks of Tibhirine and Bishop Pierre Claverie of Oran, who were beatified in 2018. It describes them as remembered “not as political actors but as friends who chose to stay with the Algerian people, shaping today’s Catholic identity of fidelity and solidarity.” This framing is deeply problematic from the perspective of integral Catholic theology.
First, the beatification was performed by the conciliar sect — an institution that has systematically undermined the faith these martyrs died for. The question of whether the post-conciliar “beatification” process carries any validity is itself gravely doubtful, given that the same sect has “canonized” manifest heretics like John Paul II and John Henry Newman. Second, the reduction of these martyrs to symbols of “solidarity” and “friendship” strips their deaths of their properly Catholic meaning. Martyrdom, properly understood, is the supreme witness to the truth of the Catholic Faith, suffered precisely because the martyr refuses to deny Christ. As the Church has always taught, martyrdom requires that death be inflicted in odium fidei — in hatred of the faith.
The article’s framing transforms witnesses to Christ into humanitarian heroes — exactly the kind of naturalistic reduction that Pius XI warned against in Quas Primas, where he lamented that “the sweetest Name of our Redeemer is omitted with unworthy silence” and that “Christ was cast out of the state” and “forgotten and ignored through contempt.” The martyrs of Algeria died for Christ; the conciliar sect remembers them as social workers. This is blasphemy dressed in the language of piety.
Interreligious Dialogue as the Negation of the Catholic Faith
Perhaps the most theologically damning passage in the entire article is point six: “Interreligious dialogue is not optional but the heart of the mission. As a tiny minority in a Muslim-majority country, the Catholic Church defines much of its mission through respectful dialogue with Islam.”
This statement is a direct and explicit repudiation of the Catholic Faith. The “heart of the mission” of the Catholic Church is not “dialogue with Islam” — it is the proclamation of Jesus Christ as the one true God and the Catholic Church as His one true Church, and the conversion of all souls to this truth. The Church has always taught that she possesses the fullness of revealed truth, and that all other religions — including Islam — are false. Pius IX condemned the proposition that “man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation” (Proposition 16 of the Syllabus). St. Pius X, in Lamentabili sane exitu (1907), condemned the proposition that “all the dogmas of the Christian religion are indiscriminately the object of natural science or philosophy” (Proposition 9), and the modernist notion that “Christian doctrine was initially Jewish, but through gradual development, it became first Pauline, then Johannine, and finally Greek and universal” (Proposition 60).
The elevation of “dialogue with Islam” to the status of the “heart of the mission” is the practical application of the heretical principles condemned by every pope before John XXIII. It implicitly asserts that Islam possesses some element of truth worthy of “respectful” engagement as an equal partner — a proposition that is absolutely incompatible with the Catholic doctrine that the Church alone is the pillar and ground of truth (1 Tim 3:15). The Algerian “Church” described in this article is not the Catholic Church; it is a modernist community that has exchanged the mandate of conversion for the idol of dialogue.
Marian Devotion as Interreligious Syncretism
The article celebrates the Basilica of Our Lady of Africa in Algiers as “a unique site of interreligious coexistence where many Muslims visit to pray to Mary, whom they call ‘Lalla Meriem,'” noting the inscription: “Our Lady of Africa, pray for us and for the Muslims.”
While devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary is indeed a hallmark of Catholic piety, the article’s presentation of this shrine as a site of “interreligious coexistence” where Muslims “pray to Mary” reveals a profound theological confusion. Muslims do not pray to Mary as Catholics do — they do not believe she is the Mother of God, they do not seek her intercession in the Catholic sense, and they reject the divinity of her Son. To present Muslim visits to a Catholic Marian shrine as a form of shared worship is to engage in the very religious indifferentism that Pius IX condemned in the Syllabus (Proposition 15: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true”).
The inscription itself — “pray for us and for the Muslims” — while pious in intention, takes on a sinister character in the context of the conciliar sect’s systematic refusal to call for the explicit conversion of Muslims to Catholicism. The Church has always prayed for the conversion of infidels; the conciliar sect prays for their “coexistence.” The difference is the difference between faith and apostasy.
The Silence About Christ the King: The Defining Omission
The most revealing feature of this article is what it does not say. There is not a single mention of the social reign of Christ the King — the doctrine so powerfully proclaimed by Pius XI in Quas Primas (1925), which states that “the royal dignity of our Lord surrounds the earthly authority of princes and rulers with a certain religious reverence” and that rulers “have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him.”
Algeria’s legal framework — which enshrines Islam as the state religion, restricts non-Muslim worship, and prohibits conversion from Islam — is a direct violation of the rights of Christ the King over civil society. A true pope visiting Algeria would be obligated to proclaim, clearly and without ambiguity, that Christ is King of all nations, that the Algerian state has a moral duty to recognize the Catholic Church as the one true religion, and that laws restricting the Church’s freedom to preach, convert, and worship are gravely unjust and contrary to the divine constitution of society.
Instead, the antipope visits to celebrate “coexistence” and “dialogue.” He will not proclaim Christ the King. He will not demand religious freedom for the Catholic Church. He will not call for the conversion of Algeria to the Faith. He will do what every antipope since John XXIII has done: he will act as the chief representative of the conciliar sect’s program of capitulation to the world, reducing the Catholic Faith to a pleasant form of interreligious sentimentality.
The EWTN Apparatus: Complicity in the Great Apostasy
The source of this article — EWTN News — is itself a product of the post-conciliar crisis. While EWTN presents itself as a Catholic media organization, its consistent framing of Vatican II and its aftermath as legitimate, its positive coverage of the antipopes, and its refusal to confront the theological bankruptcy of the conciar sect make it an instrument of the very apostasy it claims to oppose. The article’s uncritical presentation of the antipope’s trip, its celebration of “dialogue” over doctrine, and its complete silence about the rights of Christ the King are not accidental — they are the natural fruit of an organization that has chosen institutional loyalty to the conciliar sect over fidelity to the unchanging Catholic Faith.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation in the Holy Place
The article about Leo XIV’s visit to Algeria is a perfect microcosm of everything the conciliar sect has done to the Catholic Faith. It replaces the mandate of conversion with the idol of dialogue. It transforms martyrs into humanitarian heroes. It celebrates interreligious syncretism as “coexistence.” It ignores the social reign of Christ the King. It visits the homeland of St. Augustine without a single Augustinian word about the necessity of the Catholic Faith for salvation. And it does all of this in the name of “the Catholic Church” — a name it has no right to claim.
The true Catholic Church — the Church of St. Augustine, of St. Pius X, of Pius IX, of Pius XI — teaches that there is no salvation outside the Church, that Christ is King of all nations, that the state has a duty to recognize and protect the Catholic religion, and that “interreligious dialogue” is not the “heart of the mission” but a betrayal of it. The structures occupying the Vatican have abandoned this faith. They have built a new religion — a religion of man, by man, for man — and they call it “Catholic.” It is not. It is the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Mt 24:15), and every soul who wishes to be saved must flee from it and return to the immutable Tradition of the Catholic Church.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV in Africa: 7 things to know about the Catholic Church in Algeria (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 13.04.2026