The Vatican has announced that Pope Leo XVI has three new foreign trips now scheduled. His first, a one-day visit to Monaco on March 28, will be followed by a ten-day visit to the continent of Africa, and a six-day trip to Spain.
On his April 13-23 trip to Africa, “he will move from Algeria, a Muslim nation where Christians are a small minority and a seed of fraternity, to countries with a Christian majority situated in the heart of the African Continent, with their challenges, but also their joyful testimony of faith,” Vatican News reports. The Pope himself had reported on his way back to Rome from his visit to the Middle East late last year that he next hoped to go to Algeria “to visit the places of Saint Augustine, but also in order to continue the conversation of dialogue, of building bridges between the Christian world and the Muslim world,” noting that “Saint Augustine helps a great deal as a bridge, because in Algeria he is very much respected as a son of the homeland.”
