A NYTimes profile of the Roman Catholic bishop of Algeria…the land of St. Augustine, where Christianity has just about disappeared.

When he began his work as a parish priest in 1958, there were more than 700 churches in the country. But even then Christianity was only an implant.

Within months of Algeria’s independence from France in 1962, 900,000 Christians had fled to Europe’s shores. Most of those who remained left after the government nationalized land and businesses in 1964, and all but a few thousand of the rest were forced out when Islamic radicals started killing foreigners in the 1990’s. Nineteen Catholic clergy members were killed, including seven Trappist monks. Only their heads have been found.

There are only about 20 churches left in Algeria, and they are mostly empty. The rest have been converted into mosques or cultural centers or have been abandoned. All of the church’s schools and hospitals were nationalized in the 1970’s. Recently, the church’s activities have been further circumscribed by a new law against proselytizing that leaves many of the church’s charitable activities vulnerable to politically motivated interpretation.

BUT the archbishop is not a man to show despair. He maintains that the Roman Catholic clergy has a role to play in Algeria and elsewhere in the Muslim world even if there is no indigenous church left to maintain. Most of the Catholics in the country today are temporary residents from sub-Saharan Africa.

A thread from a few months ago on the Monks of Tibhirine.