Alioune Diop (10 January 1910 – 2 May 1980) was a Senegalese writer and editor, founder of the intellectual journal Présence africaine, and a central figure in the Négritude movement.
[1] Born a Muslim in Saint-Louis, Senegal, French West Africa, Diop attended a koranic school but his aunts also taught him to read the Bible.
[1] As an adult, Alioune Diop converted to Christianity[2] and received his Catholic baptism from Dominican Father Jean-Augustin Maydieu on Christmas night of 1944 in Saint-Flour in Cantal (France) under the name of Jean.
Diop had an important role in Second Vatican Council as an African Catholic and was a friend of Popes John XXIII and Paul VI.
[4] On the occasion of the preparation of the Second Vatican Council, Alioune Diop mobilized, within the Société africaine de culture, Catholic intellectuals, priests and laity, for the meeting in Rome which took place from 26 to 27 May 1962, on the theme "African personality and Catholicism".