Pro-Cathedral of Our Lady of Grace: the working seat that replaced a ruin — Cape Verde’s slave-trade history belongs to a different building entirely

In Praia, the capital of Cape Verde, the pro-cathedral of Our Lady of Grace was built between 1894 and 1902 in neoclassical style, with its main façade facing Praca Alexandre Albuquerque and its bell tower at the rear, towards Avenida Andrade Corvo. Neither the building materials nor the name of an architect is documented. It carries the canonical title of «pro-cathedral» rather than full cathedral, because the original seat of the diocese was the Se of Ribeira Grande, today’s Cidade Velha, whose construction had begun as early as 1556 and which survives now only as a ruin, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2009. The diocesan seat was moved from Ribeira Grande to Ribeira Brava, on the island of Sao Nicolau, in 1786, and finally to Praia in 1943, for practical reasons tied to the role of the latter as national capital. The diocese of Santiago of Cape Verde was erected on 31 January 1533 and is still a diocese, not an archdiocese, immediately subject to the Holy See. After a reorganisation in November 2003, its jurisdiction covers only the southern Sotavento islands, Santiago, Maio, Fogo and Brava, while the northern Barlavento islands form a separate diocese. On 16 February 2026 Pope Leo XIV accepted the resignation of Cardinal Arlindo Gomes Furtado, bishop since 2009 and the first cardinal in the history of Cape Verde, appointing on the same day as his successor Monsignor Teodoro Mendes Tavares, of the Spiritan order, whose installation was held on 3 May 2026 at the National Stadium of Praia, before about 15,000 people. It should be said clearly that the history of the Atlantic slave trade, well documented at Cidade Velha, with the pelourinho, the pillory column raised between 1512 and 1520, and the practice of «ladinization» of enslaved Africans before embarkation for Brazil, the Caribbean and Spanish America, is not linked in any documented way to this building in Praia, built almost a century after the Portuguese abolition of the trade and far from the historic site, geographically as well. Pope John Paul II visited Cape Verde from 25 to 27 January 1990, but his presence in this pro-cathedral is not confirmed by primary sources. The building was also designated a jubilee church for the extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy in 2016.