The Alfred Landecker Programme, based at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University, examines the rights of minorities and other vulnerable people around the world. The Programme facilitates cross-disciplinary conversation and research on how the protection of such minorities can be strengthened through legal and democratic mechanisms.

On November 2nd 2021, Dr. Alexis Artaud de La Ferrière will present a paper on Catholicism in the post-colonial Maghrib as part of the Alfred Landecker Programme's seminar series on religion, politics & belonging at the University of Oxford.

National independence in the Tunisia (1956) and Algeria (1962) transformed the sociology of Roman Catholicism in these countries of the Maghrib. With the end of French colonial rule, the majority of lay Catholics and diocesan (or secular) clergy emigrated from the region, usually settling in metropolitan France.

However, the post-colonial period did not spell the end of Catholic presence in the Maghrib. The aim of this presentation will be to examine the activities through which the Catholic Church maintains its presence in Tunisia and Algeria and to analyse how Catholics themselves interrogate and debate the spiritual and social meaning of their presence in the region.

Drawing on interviews, archival data, and written memoirs, the discussion will examine the lived experiences of men and women who have chosen to live their religious vocation at the threshold of the Catholic and the Muslim worlds: fully Catholic, but radically outside of the Catholic mainstream world; fully within the Muslim world, but radically outside of the Islamic faith.