A year after his accession, in May 1930, an International Eucharistic Congress was convened in Carthage to celebrate the centenary of the French conquest of Algeria. It was the first such congress held in Africa, and the first in a Muslim-majority country. Ahmed Bey reluctantly agreed to serve as Honorary President of the Congress, which was partly paid for with 2 million francs worth of funds from the Tunisian government, raised in taxes on Tunisia's Muslim population. The event, with some participants dressed as Crusaders and others using it as a platform for speeches hostile to Islam, caused a furore in the Tunisian national movement. The nationalist newspaper "La Voix du Tunisien" ('The Tunisian Voice') called on the Bey to resign his Honorary Presidency and for other officials to dissociate themselves from the event and members of the Destour Party claimed that the Bey's involvement demonstrated his subservience to the French and abandonment of the defence of his people's interests.