From Pope Leo XIV's apostolic journey to Africa came an image of the Pope, seen from behind, bowing in prayer before Our Lady of Bisila. This ebony-skinned Virgin and Child expresses a different way of conveying motherhood — an alternative, implicit theology of closeness. Even her name means "compassion" in the local language.
The time of prayer took place during the final moments of the Mass that Pope Leo XIV celebrated at the stadium in Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea. The image quickly went viral: Who is this Mary? She's so beautiful!
What is this African image of the Virgin before which the Pope prayed, diverging from canons long shaped by the West?
The representation isn’t simply a geographical shift in Christian iconography. It isn't just about representing her differently, but about learning to see Mary within a culture that has long taught a different relationship to the body and to motherhood.
Rooted in local tradition
This devotion’s origins date back to a time before the first Christians arrived on the large island of Bioko. Before being identified with Mary, Bisila belonged to the spiritual universe of the Bubi people. She wasn't an iconographically represented figure, much less a statue presented for contemplation.
According to local tradition, long ago a plague struck the town of Botejé on Bioko Island (where Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, is now located). Mothers’ breasts stopped producing milk, children started dying, women became infertile, the sky darkened. Their shamanic medicine men were unable to do anything to stop it.
Then, the adolescent daughter of the local tribal chieftain, or Botuki, while in a cave, met an extraordinarily beautiful woman carrying a child. She had long hair with many braids, wore typical local garb, and was nursing her child.
As the story goes, she communicated with the tribal leaders through the child and told them what to do. This restored the island’s people to health, and from then on many more children were born than before.
The people identified this maternal presence as a deity. From then on, she belonged to the invisible realm, invoked when life hung in the balance: during childbirth, illness, or when children were frail. She was an active presence, tied to fertility and protection.
The research of Celeste Muñoz and Roger Canals has shown precisely that she occupied the role of a "great mother" in this cosmology, associated with fertility and the very survival of the group.
A complex process of inculturation
When Christianity encountered this world in the mid-20th century, evangelizers looked for parallels and footholds. Mary’s motherhood offered an immediate analogy.
What unfolded with the Virgin of Bisila involves a complex process intertwining mission, power, translation, and transformation. Anthropologists call it “syncretism”; the Church has another word: “inculturation.” An image introduced in a missionary context was gradually reinterpreted, appropriated, and embraced by the people it was intended for.
What is "inculturation"?
Inculturation through the centuries
From the first century, Christianity has taken root across diverse cultures. St. Paul’s preaching to Greeks and Romans showed that the Gospel could be expressed beyond Jewish categories without losing its truth.
In the early Church, theologians such as Justin Martyr and Augustine engaged classical philosophy, discerning what could be purified and elevated. In later centuries, missionaries like St. Cyril and Methodius translated Scripture and liturgy into local languages, shaping Slavic Christianity.
The term “inculturation” gained prominence in the 20th century, especially after the Second Vatican Council, but the principle is ancient: the Gospel enters every culture to transform it from within, while remaining faithful to Christ. Elements of the culture remain, but are incorporated into the Gospel message.
At the heart of this process stands a decisive figure: the Catalan sculptor Modesto Gené Roig. Born in Reus, near Barcelona, in 1914, he received a European academic education. Initially a naturalist sculptor influenced by Mediterranean tradition, he joined the networks of Spanish Africanism during the Franco era.
Arriving in Equatorial Guinea in 1957 (keep in mind that this is the only country in Africa with Spanish as an official language), he was tasked with studying and representing the colony's "human types" as part of an official mission. He was working in a colonial context where art played a role, at least in part, in an enterprise of knowledge and domination. While doing so, Gené developed a unique body of work fueled by his immersion in West Africa. He explored forms, gestures, and faces before committing himself to an original religious output.
An authentically African Marian image
Even before Bisila, he created several Black Madonnas, inspired notably by Our Lady of Montserrat. Venerated in Catalonia since the Middle Ages, she belongs to a very specific type of Romanesque statue known as the "Black Madonnas." Like the images in Częstochowa or the Basilica of Notre-Dame de la Daurade in Toulouse, she has a dark complexion.
Introduced to Equatorial Guinea by Catalan missionaries, Our Lady of Montserrat was the first image of the Virgin that early Christians there prayed before. Gené started by reproducing her features, then, from the mid-1960s onward, transformed this model to bring forth a Marian image that was no longer just Black, but authentically African.
He carved the first image of the Virgin of Bisila in 1968, on the eve of the country’s independence. He incorporated elements explicitly tied to Bubi culture: scarifications and a traditional bracelet, but above all, a radical transformation of the Marian motif. The Christ Child is no longer presented frontally; he's carried on her back. This detail isn't merely anecdotal. It initiates a different anthropology of the body, another way to express motherhood, and an alternative implicit theology of closeness.
A symbol of belonging
The image is thus doubly situated. It remains the product of a European perspective — Gené stayed true to figurative naturalism — but it's also infused with local forms that profoundly alter its meaning.
As the protectoress of the city and the country of Equatorial Guinea, the Virgin was installed at a high altitude on the summit of Pico Basilé. What had been designed within a missionary framework became the people's own image. The Virgin of Bisila was adopted, reproduced, and integrated into religious practices.
She became a sign of belonging, a site of memory, and an object of devotion. For the Bubis, she evolved into an identity symbol, even representing cultural and political claims in a tense postcolonial environment. At the same time, the Church officially recognized her: in 1986, the decree Continenter magna established the Virgin under this title as the patroness of the Archdiocese of Malabo.
Sadly, a violent weather event destroyed this mountaintop sculpture in 2016. Installed at an altitude of nearly 9,200 feet, constantly exposed to winds, tropical rains, and temperature swings, Our Lady of Bisila was vulnerable. But Equatorial Guinea had firmly established a model and a face.
Universal and incarnate
Today, she isn't just contemplated; she's carried. Both in Equatorial Guinea and among the diaspora, particularly in Spain, people make pilgrimages in her honor. They walk with her, sing to her, and pray to her as mother and queen. These processions gather a scattered community where languages, memories, and affiliations intertwine.
At the stadium in Malabo, Pope Leo XIV certainly didn't view this Virgin as an African curiosity or a mere aesthetic variation. Having previously prayed before Peruvian Virgins, he prayed to the Queen of Heaven before the graceful face of Our Lady of Bisila. Before this image, the Church encounters Bubi memory, colonial history, an artist's creation, ecclesial recognition, and popular appropriation. Bisila doesn't just show us an African Virgin. She compels us to reflect on what it truly means for the Church to become universal without ever ceasing to be incarnate.
