Today, the former Italian-built Mogadishu Cathedral stands in solemn ruin. Its Gothic arches and Romanesque carvings still bear faint traces of its southern European provenance, yet they remain scarred by the ravages of war. The vaulted ceilings are gone; its walls are broken and the ground beneath is now a littered bed of rubble and debris.

A photo shows a soldier, armed and anonymous, standing watch in the foreground – an ironic priest of a new order, not of peace and absolution but of force. The children gathered in the frame, some in brightly coloured T-shirts, appear strangely out of place against the ash-grey stones, as if merely passing through, unable perhaps to fully the standing museum for a destructive war they play in.

It joins the long list of things lost to the civil war, which was indiscriminate in the way it meted out violence on the city, much of which was destroyed. But its place on Mogadishu’s skyline was never quite settled, given its connection to Somalia’s colonial past.

When an old tweet by human rights activist and feminist Sagal Abbas about preserving the Mogadishu cathedral resurfaced, it reignited debate online. While the original post emphasised its historical value, many responded with strong opposition—some even called for its demolition. Omar Degan, a Somali Italian architect who champions African designs, posted a Twitter poll asking whether colonial-era buildings like the Mogadishu lighthouse and cathedral should be preserved and repurposed as museums or exhibition spaces. The majority (72% of 112 votes) agreed, but Degan faced backlash months later for simply sharing photos of the cathedral.

Curious about the strength of the reactions, I took the discussion to the Somalia subreddit, a large online community with over 40,000 members. The feedback echoed earlier responses: while a few supported preservation for historical reasons, most rejected the idea on the grounds of it being built as a monument to Italian colonialism. Some users even found the building’s continued existence offensive, with the consensus leaning towards demolition.

The hostility it provokes raises an important question about how to reckon with Somalia’s colonial legacy. For many Somalis, the building is inseparable from colonial rule and a foreign religion imposed upon the country—making preservation feel like complicity, or even endorsement of that very painful chapter. The rhetoric suggests that, for many, the cathedral represents a colonial intrusion into the national narrative—its broken shell a monument to an era of humiliation and subjugation.

Still, its desecration during the civil war was an assault on our collective memory and the city’s layered architectural heritage. How many more historic buildings must be reduced to photo opportunities for journalists and footnotes in forgotten history books before we admit that something essential has died—not just in stone, but in spirit? The cathedral’s ruin is a tragedy of both substance and meaning.

Built in 1928 by the Italian colonial administration, which then governed southern Somalia, the Mogadishu Cathedral was, at the time of its opening, the largest Christian cathedral in Africa, according to the Catholic news and lifestyle website Aleteia. It was also the tallest building in the Somali capital (37 meters) and was designed to resemble the Cefalù Cathedral in Sicily by Italian architect, Antonio Vandone di Cortemilia. This detail about its height—and what that symbolically suggests about the city—is particularly poignant, given that Somalia remains one of the few African countries with a population that is over 99% Muslim.

The cathedral was constructed to serve the spiritual needs of Italian colonial officers and their families, while also symbolising the Catholic Church’s presence and influence. Although a small number of Somalis eventually converted to Christianity and joined the congregation, for the vast majority, the cathedral was seen as an imposing symbol of foreign occupation and cultural imposition in a deeply Muslim society.

In the late 1950s, during the Italian trusteeship period, the church expanded both physically and administratively to meet the needs of a growing colonial and missionary presence. After Somalia gained independence in 1960—and especially under the military regime that came to power in 1969—the Catholic Church continued to operate with relative freedom. The new government adopted a secular posture, allowing religious minorities to function without major restriction. For a time, the Catholic community in Mogadishu, though small, lived and worshipped under the protection of the state. In 1975, it was even elevated to a diocese meaning it became an official district of the Catholic Church overseen by a bishop, responsible for managing the Church’s religious, administrative, and pastoral affairs in the region. In the 1976, Salvatore Colombo, was ordained the cathedral’s first bishop.

That sense of security, however, began to erode in the late 1970s. As political tensions grew and opposition to the military regime intensified, the government’s grip on security began to weaken. Anti-regime sentiment spread rapidly, and the overall environment became more unstable. The secular protections that had once shielded institutions like the Catholic church no longer held. In this increasingly hostile climate, the church, its congregants, and its leaders became more exposed to threats. For instance, Jean Gueury, a French diplomat stationed in Mogadishu, was kidnapped by members of the Djiboutian Liberation Front after leaving a church service, and held captive for five days at their HQ in the city before being released. Djibouti was a French colony at the time. The abduction took place in broad daylight, and his captors fired bullets into the air as they sped off in a Toyota. Reuters captured footage of his return to Paris following his release.

Bishop Salvatore Colombo, the last bishop of Mogadishu Cathedral, was assassinated in 1989, as security in the city began to collapse. His killing was followed by several days of rioting in the Somali capital, during which approximately 400 people were killed by government forces, according to human rights groups. As usual, he stood at the altar, delivering Sunday Mass. Then came the rupture. A man entered the church, not to pray, but to kill. Without a word, he raised a gun and fired, striking Colombo down in front of his congregation. The assassin disappeared, and the regime, almost reflexively, pointed fingers at “Islamic extremists”.

The civil war that began in 1991 did not just shatter lives—it tore through time itself. Nothing was spared. Layers of the city’s palimpsest architectural heritage, painstakingly built over centuries, were wiped away.

Among the ruins, Mogadishu Cathedral still stands, barely. But it stands not only in stone, but in controversy. What makes this structure such an unusual anomaly is not just its architecture, but the politics bound tightly to its existence: a cathedral in a predominantly Muslim nation; a colonial relic in a post-colonial era. To some, it is an affront; to others, a memory worth salvaging. It has become a cultural litmus test, revealing the fracture lines in Somalia’s modern identity.

Yet the debate itself is revealing. We cloak our neglect in nationalism. Under the convenient banners of religious homogeneity or anti-colonial purity, we erase rather than confront. The cathedral is reduced to a symbol of oppression, rather than something bigger than that, a historical site worth preserving that speaks to a chapter of the city’s history. What meaning we take from it can be left to the interpreter but we mustn’t simply force ourselves to forget or erase. Amid the noise, we risk letting a landmark slip quietly, and finally, into the ashes of history. Not because it fell, but because we chose not to hold it up.