Sainte-Marie Cathedral: its own archbishop’s name was found on a dead dictator’s death list

In Conakry, the capital of Guinea, the foundation stone of Sainte-Marie Cathedral was blessed in 1928 by Monsignor Raymond-René Lerouge, then head of the Catholic mission, with work continuing through the Thirties under the French colonial administration. The red-and-yellow building stands on the third boulevard of the Kaloum district, immediately next to the presidential palace. On its exact architectural style the sources disagree, some speaking of neo-Gothic elements and others of Orthodox influences, with neither version confirmed by a primary text; the most cautious description remains that of a colonial-era cathedral of local architectural note. The apostolic prefecture of French Guinea was erected on 18 October 1897, raised to an apostolic vicariate on 18 April 1920, renamed the apostolic vicariate of Conakry on 12 May 1949 and raised to a metropolitan archdiocese on 14 September 1955, later ceding territory in 2024 to the new diocese of Boké. After independence on 2 October 1958, the regime of President Ahmed Sékou Touré systematically persecuted the Catholic Church. In May 1967 Touré ordered the expulsion of all foreign missionaries by 1 June, over two hundred people removed almost overnight, after church property had already been confiscated by the state from 1961. Monsignor Robert Sarah was appointed archbishop of Conakry in 1979, at only 34, the youngest bishop in the world at the time, and publicly criticised the regime. After Touré’s death in 1984, his name was found on a list of people to be eliminated, discovered on the dictator’s desk. No specific episode, closure, confiscation or damage, concerning the cathedral building itself during those years is documented: the well-documented persecution concerns the church as an institution and its leaders, not a recorded event on the structure as such. Complaints of illegal expropriation of church property, according to the then archbishop Vincent Coulibaly, have continued in recent times, with episodes reported in 2020. After the military coup of 5 September 2021, the Guinean bishops’ conference condemned it and asked for guarantees for the safety of the deposed president Alpha Condé, while Cardinal Robert Sarah, by then in the Vatican but still archbishop emeritus of Conakry, wrote to the new military leadership urging a radical change in the running of the country; here too no specific episode linked to the cathedral building is recorded. Pope John Paul II visited Conakry in February 1992, as part of an apostolic journey that also took in Senegal and Gambia, though it is not confirmed with certainty whether he celebrated mass specifically inside this cathedral. The present archbishop is Monsignor François Sylla, in office since 28 February 2026, who succeeded Vincent Coulibaly.