In April 2026, Pope Leo XIV made the first-ever papal visit to Algeria. Two weeks later, Father Arturo Sosa, SJ, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, travelled to Algeria to visit the small Jesuit community there for the first time since his election in 2016. The land of St Augustine, bishop of Hippo, Algeria belongs to a region that was once a major centre of Latin Christianity. Today it is a Muslim-majority country of around 47 million people, where some 9,000 Catholics live. Father Ricardo Jiménez Sanchez, SJ, Superior of the Jesuit community in Algiers, reflects on what these days meant for the Jesuits and for the friends and collaborators, most of them Muslim, alongside whom they live and work.
This is the land of St Augustine and, in our own time, a land marked by the witness of the martyrs of Algeria. To welcome here, within a fortnight, first Pope Leo XIV in mid-April and then the Superior General of the Society of Jesus two weeks later, was for us a grace given twice over: a source of joy, consolation and confirmation of our mission. For my part, I hold in memory the depth and intensity of the encounters and the moments we shared at our various gatherings.
In welcoming Father Sosa and Father Victor Assouad, SJ, Regional Assistant to Father General for Western Europe and the Near East, we wanted to make space for meeting our closest collaborators, volunteers, friends, members of the local Church, and the bishops of the two dioceses where we are present.
Meeting people
In Algeria, the bonds between people and the quality of human relationships matter enormously. Beyond explaining the role of the Superior General and of the Society of Jesus in a Muslim-majority country, we gave priority to meeting and exchange, to listening to one another and learning from each other’s experiences.
Each of the Jesuits, only nine of us in a country of more than two million square kilometres, had a personal moment with him: to raise a particular question, to show him something of the city and its people, or to introduce him to someone in particular. Every one of my brother Jesuits played a part in the preparations, however small: cooking a meal, attending to the welcome, taking time over an explanation, preparing a presentation. We wanted to present ourselves as an apostolic body, a small one certainly, as a Minima Compagnia.
Sharing a common mission
Across these encounters we were able to give an account of our Jesuit mission in Algeria. In Algiers and Constantine, we work closely with Muslims and with religious sisters and brothers from different cultures and congregations. Together we met in a climate of spiritual conversation at the Centre Culturel Universitaire in central Algiers, at the Centre Nibras and the Bibliothèque Dilou in Constantine: a cultural centre, a formation centre and a library that also serves as a space for study and gathering. These institutions vary in size, but each one shows how we carry out the mission of the Society of Jesus, guided above all by the Universal Apostolic Preferences, in a country where Christianity is a minority presence.
Our collaborators, most of them Muslim, share with us the substance of our mission and give it a humanist meaning rooted in common values. Each year, around 1 May, we host a gathering in Algiers with the friends and collaborators of the Jesuits at the Ben Smen House, a Jesuit spiritual centre. This time, it was Father Assouad who presented our four Apostolic Preferences to an audience that was 80 per cent Muslim; all were fully in resonance with what was said, and we carried on with a deep exchange, bearing hope.
A visit that opens wider the door of hope
Pope Leo XIV, on his visit to Algeria, was welcomed with open arms by the local authorities, by Algerian Muslims, by the country’s native Christians and by all of us who believe in Jesus Christ. Two weeks later, Father Sosa brought us an added measure of hope and joy. For us, there is a particular resonance between these two visits.
At our gathering on 1 May, we read, prayed with and discussed the message the Holy Father delivered on 13 April at the Monument to the Martyrs of Algerian Independence, the Maqam Echahid, which honours those who died in Algeria’s war of independence. In that message, he spoke of the need to build peace by building bridges between persons and between peoples, in order to move beyond history and beyond all that can hold us back. He urged us to seek reconciliation and forgiveness. This message recalls one of the missions entrusted to us today, confirmed by the Pope and by the third Meeting of Major Superiors of the Society of Jesus, held at the Jesuit Curia in Rome in October 2025: reconciliation and justice.
The hope our two visitors brought encourages us to carry on the dialogue and fraternity we live day by day with this “strong and young people”, as the Pope called them, in whose hearts “friendship, trust and solidarity are not merely words, but values that matter and give warmth and strength to your life together”.
By Ricardo Jiménez Sanchez, SJ
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