LUANDA\/VATICAN CITY –\u00a0Pope Leo\u00a0plans to visit Angola as part of a multi-nation trip across Africa, the Vatican’s ambassador to the country announced on Tuesday, in what could be the pontiff’s first overseas trip in 2026.<\/p>\n
Archbishop Kryspin Dubiel, the Vatican’s envoy, told journalists at a briefing in Luanda that Leo had accepted an invitation from President Joao Lourenco\u00a0to visit, but\u00a0the date and other details had yet to be decided.<\/p>\n
“The Holy Father has accepted the invitation \u2026 (but) we are currently in the process of preparing the plan and programme,” said Dubiel.<\/p>\n
The Vatican press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Leo, elected in May to succeed\u00a0the late Pope Francis\u00a0as head\u00a0of the Catholic Church, has made only one overseas trip so far, visiting\u00a0Turkey and Lebanon\u00a0in November and December.<\/p>\n
The pope said in a December press conference that he wished to visit Africa but did not mention Angola. Leo, a member of the Augustinian religious order, said he wanted to\u00a0visit Algeria, birthplace of St. Augustine of Hippo.<\/p>\n
The last papal trip to Africa was in 2023, when Francis visited\u00a0Democratic Republic of Congo\u00a0and South Sudan. Pope Benedict XVI was the last pontiff to visit Angola, in 2009.<\/p>\n
Leo,\u00a0the first U.S. pope, previously travelled to Africa many times as a cardinal and the head of his religious order.<\/p>\n
Another trip Leo is expected to make in 2026 is to Spain and to the Canary Islands,\u00a0which has become a major point of entry for\u00a0migrants trying to get to Europe. A Spanish cardinal told reporters at the Vatican last week that the trip is in the planning phase. \u2014 Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LUANDA\/VATICAN CITY –\u00a0Pope Leo\u00a0plans to visit Angola as part of a multi-nation trip across Africa, the Vatican’s ambassador…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[63,1151,9550,131],"class_list":{"0":"post-21011","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-africa","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-angola","10":"tag-pope-leo-xiv","11":"tag-south-africa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}