Pope Leo XIV has returned repeatedly to one phrase since his election: the call to “disarm” hatred, violence, and division. The theme isn’t new to him. It comes from a bishop he has admired for years, one martyred in Algeria three decades ago. Aleteia reports on the surprising link between the Pope’s signature message and the nineteen martyrs of Algeria, beatified in 2018.
What happened
Pope Leo XIV was elected on May 8, 2025. That date is the feast day of the Martyrs of Algeria, nineteen priests, religious, and laypeople killed during Algeria’s civil war in the 1990s. Among them was Bishop Pierre Claverie of Oran, who died in a bombing on August 1, 1996.
Bishop Claverie preached frequently about the need to “disarm” oneself of fear, prejudice, and the impulse to violence. That vocabulary has become central to Pope Leo’s teaching. In his first encyclical and multiple addresses since his election, the Pope has called Catholics to “disarm” their hearts, echoing the Algerian bishop’s words nearly verbatim.
The connection goes deeper. Pope Leo, then Father Robert Prevost, spent a sabbatical year in Algeria in 1998, two years after Claverie’s death. He visited Oran, prayed at the sites where the martyrs died, and studied Claverie’s writings. That experience, he has said in interviews, shaped his understanding of Christian witness in a fractured world.
Why this matters
Bishop Claverie is not a household name outside of France and North Africa. His beatification in 2018, alongside eighteen other martyrs, received modest coverage. But his thought has quietly influenced one of the most visible voices in the Church today. The “disarm” theme is not a papal invention or a product of focus groups. It is the fruit of one bishop’s witness under fire, handed on to another bishop who now leads the universal Church.
The coincidence of dates is striking. Pope Leo was elected on the feast of the martyrs who shaped his thinking. That he spent his first papal visit to Africa in Algeria, walking the streets where Claverie once walked, suggests a deliberate continuity. The Pope is not simply borrowing a slogan. He is honoring a teacher.
For Catholic readers
If you want to understand Pope Leo’s vision, read Bishop Pierre Claverie. His collected homilies, translated as Letters to a Young Muslim and Humanity Is Also My Country, are available in English. They are brief, clear, and deeply rooted in the Gospels. You will recognize the voice the Pope is channeling.
Sources:
1. Aleteia — original report
