Pope Leo XIV’s visit to an African church linked to slavery reflects on his own complex heritage

People walk by the Muxima" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="118040" data-entity-type="organization">Church of Our Lady of Muxima in Muxima, Angola, Saturday, April 11, 2026, which Pope Leo XIV will visit during his 11-day pastoral visit to Africa. (AP Photo) 2026-04-18T01:16:52Z CAPE TOWN, Africa" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="534" data-entity-type="location">South Africa (AP) — The Muxima" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="118040" data-entity-type="organization">Church of Our Lady of Muxima was built by Portuguese colonizers in Angola at the end of the 16th century as part of a fortress complex and became a hub in the slave trade. It remains a reminder of the inextricable link hundreds of years ago between Catholicism and the exploitation of the African continent. Pope Leo XIV’s planned visit to the church in the town of Muxima on Sunday as part of his Africa tour is in recognition of it becoming a popular Catholic shrine after believers reported an appearance by the Virgin Mary around 1833. But before that, the white-walled church on the edge of the Kwanza River was a point where enslaved Africans were gathered to be baptized by Portuguese priests before being forced to walk the last 145 kilometers (90 miles) to Angola’s main port of Luanda to be put on ships to the Americas. The Portuguese colonizers were emboldened by 15th-century directives from the Vatican that authorized them to enslave non-Christians. Angola was at the center of the slave trade Ultimately, more than 5 million people left from Angola on the trans-Atlantic slave route, more than any other country and nearly half of the roughly 12.5 million African slaves sent across the ocean. People walk by the Muxima" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="118040" data-entity-type="organization">Church of Our Lady of Muxima in Muxima, Angola, Saturday, April 11, 2026 which Pope Leo XIV will visit during his 11-day pastoral visit to Africa. (AP Photo) People walk by the Muxima" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="118040" data-entity-type="organization">Church of Our Lady of Muxima in Muxima, Angola, Saturday, April 11, 2026 which Pope Leo XIV will visit during his 11-day pastoral visit to Africa. (AP Photo) --> Add AP News on Google Add AP News as your preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. --> Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit It’s unclear if Leo will address slavery on his Africa trip, as St. John Paul II did on papal visits to Cameroon in 1985 and Senegal in 1992. Joe Biden visited Angola in the last months of his presidency in 2024 and spoke about slavery as America’s “original sin.” But some African Catholics see a highly symbolic moment when the head of the Catholic Church — who is himself an American — recites the Rosary on the riverside esplanade next to the fortress and the centuries-old chapel in Muxima, as Leo plans to do. “For me, the pope going there to pray the Rosary ... he will give that place a new significance,” said Rev. Celestino Epalanga, a priest with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Angola. “We have to give it a new sense. To make this place sacred instead of being a place of evil.” The pope’s complex heritage The moment might resonate even more after revelations around Leo’s own heritage. (