10 000 Francs CFA Canonization of John Paul II

John Paul II was canonized on April 27, 2014, alongside John XXIII — the first time two popes had been canonized simultaneously. Burkina Faso, a majority-Muslim country with a substantial Catholic minority concentrated largely in the southwest, has issued papal commemoratives with some regularity, a commercial practice driven more by the numismatic collector market than by domestic religious demand.

The one-kilogram format places this firmly in the trophy-coin category produced for European and Asian collector markets. KM#28 is the catalog reference for this issue within the Burkina Faso series.