USA Africa Dialogue Series - African Catholicism: The era of Benedict and its Aftermath, threshold of an evolving African Catholic Church

African Catholicism: The era of Benedict and its Aftermath, threshold of an evolving Catholic Church

Today, we saw the Cardinals that have arrived in Rome bidding Pope Benedict XVI their farewell, sharing some personal moments and thank you for his eight years of Petrine service for the good of the Church of Christ and all humankind.

 Later in the day, Pope Benedict at 8.00pm Roman time would abdicate the Papacy, after announcing a fortnight ago, his intention to renounce the Papacy in full freedom and volition according to the Canon Law (Can. 332 par. 2).

 Sooner, in some weeks time, the Cardinal electors; those less than the age of eighty, would be assembled in a conclave, hopefully voting to produce a new Pope to replace Pope Benedict, who is abdicating because having accessed his capability, adjudging himself as possessing limited strength due to advanced age and a weakened spiritual state. The Pope, has now travelled a new path, of resigning from office as Pope. This action is the first in contemporary times, since about 600 years ago.

 Pope Benedict XVI has shown to be a very erudite pope, and one who truly and earnestly cares about the church and the future role of the Catholic faith in the world, and its ability to positively impact modern humanity. The eight years of Pope Benedict's papacy has not been always easy. While, no one expects, the leadership of such an ancient, massive, robust, and global institution to be easy, Pope Benedict XVI has obviously faced some really challenging times.

 Pope Benedict XVI inherited the spilled over problem of priests' sexual abuses of minors that surfaced and rocked the last years of the papacy of his immediate predecessor, Pope John Paul II. However, since his ascension as Pope, the sexual abuse seemed to have  also exploded in Europe, involving bishops and priests in Poland, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Austria, among other countries outside of Europe such as in Australia and Brazil. Asia and Africa seemed to have been insulated from such tendencies or trends.

 Whether, this is entire true is questionable. It seems that doe to the nature of these societies' abuses have not massively bubbled onto the surface. One must note that it took several decades for the cases of sexual abuses in the American and European churches to provocatively unmask.

 Nonetheless, certain hints began to evolve depicting that the African Catholic church may not, after all, be that healthy. In Zimbabwe, a vocal Catholic archbishop, Pius Ncube, opposed to the political rule of the Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe, was removed after he was outed following photographs indicative of having adulterous relationship with a married woman, which he first denied, only to later readmit as true.

In Nigeria, an Irish-born now former Catholic archbishop of Benin City, Richard Burke, and member of the Irish based, St. Patrick's Society, was removed, after a Canadian-Nigerian woman, Dolores Atwood, claimed Archbishop Burke sexually molested and abused her as a minor, while serving as a priest in Warri diocese.

Another incidence was the volatile case in Central African Republic. There, a Vatican investigation claimed that many priests were living extravagantly and as if married. This investigation led to the immediate removal of two bishops; one the archbishop of Bangui and the other, the president of the bishop's conference of that country.

Interestingly, here, thrown into the center of the storm was the Nigerian-born archbishop and Papal Nuncio to Central African Republic, Jude Okolo, whom the priests of that nation, tagged as "The Nigger" doing the Master's [Massa's] bidding. In their antagonistic face off, these priests in solidarity with their removed bishops, claimed that Archbishop Okolo was acting indiscriminately in targeting black priests against similar abuses and negligence equally committed by their peers;  white missionaries serving in the Catholic faith communities of Central African Republic. The Vatican investigation was also headed by a Guinean archbishop.

In this instance, we perceive the increasing involvement of the Vatican in African church affairs using African agency; church personnel. This mode of acting, presumes shielding the Pope and the Vatican from direct accusations of racism.

As Peter Hebbleweitte reporting in the National Catholic Reporter in April 1994, he noted that during the First African Synod of Bishops in 1994, during the event's opening liturgical ceremony, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger seemed very ill at ease with the rhythmic dances presentation of the African participants, hoping for it to be all over with. While, the late Pope John Paul II was seen as an advocate of Inculturation in theology, liturgy, and even church life; a process that aimed at utilizing the good elements of human culture to advance the Christian message, Cardinal Ratzinger seemed to be observed as averse to inculturation, and preferences a return to a more structured and formal liturgy, theological conformity rather than the pluriform theological discourses that seemed arbitrary and ad hoc. 

Pope Benedict seem in his interviews to convey the viewpoint that the events and protests in 1968 in Europe has been focal to such mindset viewing the episodes of that year as threatening the European heritage, he was so used to. Some have tried to connect his been a part of HItler's Youth during the World War II as responsible for some of his viewpoints.  That Pope Benedict had trouble with the Jews, and then Moslems was seemed to be viewed along these lines. To compound this viewpoint was the issue of the Society of Pius X, whom he was engaged in dialogue to bring them into the structural framework of the Catholic hierarchy, in spite of their schimatic status since 1988, when the late Archbishop Lefevbre, in spite of Vatican opposition went ahead in ordaining some bishops for his society.

Following the election of Pope Benedict XVI, the Zambian archbishop, Emmanuel Milingo, who had been consigned to the Vatican since the early 1980s, following allegations of impropriety in his healing and deliverance sessions, and had returned to the faith after marrying a Korean physician in a Moon sectarian marriage, kept in the Vatican, finally escaped and broke rank, forming a group called "Married Now." This group, in his opinion, was a movement to ensure the Roman Catholic church's clergy to marry. After ordaining some men as bishops, he was also excommunicated by Pope Benedict XVI.  No offer was extended to Archbishop Milingo again, as was the case with the Society of St. Pius X.  Many Zambian bishops publicly denounced Archbishop Milingo, in what some saw as a Vatican strategy to ensure comformity, and set an example of zero-tolerance for any further dissension from the African Catholic ranks.

Some observers of the Pope Benedict XVI era also have expressed that the quality of episcopal appointments to dioceses in many Africans was very inferior, and one that despised highly educated African clerics.  The reason it seems was to steer African priests from pursuing higher education and academic credentials, especially in the west.  It has since been assumed that Pope Benedict XVI have consistently been focused upon African bishops ensuring that their priests should not to allowed to "over-stay" in the west, in the name of acquiring higher education or degrees.  According to one informed priest, he was noted to have told some group of Nigerian bishops during their ad limina visit, that they should not be compelled to select a bishop from the ranks of the very so-called "highly educated priests" who studied or are staying in "Europe and America." 

Such position have been interpreted to mean favoring a less superior quality for bishopric candidates for the African church, bishop, in comparison to their western counterparts, thus making them always dependent on the west, and somewhat subservient to their interests. Thus, such assumptions presume the preclusion of true independence and autonomy for the African Catholic faith communities.  

 Today as Pope Benedict XVI relinquishes the papacy, the media has reintroduced the question of a third world candidate, especially from Africa, Asia, or Latin American, becoming a pope. The young Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Kodwo Tuckson has been touted as a possible papal candidate, receiving some prominent media focus, as also the Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze, a media front-runner in the 2005 Papal conclave that produced Pope Benedict XVI.

Given the saying that "one who goes into the conclave as a pope comes out a cardinal," the heightened media seems to be a well-crafted clever media plot to deny them that same possibility, by woefully marking out potential African cardinals to be eliminated and given prominent consideration. While these western media pointers seem welcoming on their face value as recognizing the attainments of these African cardinals, it seems to embody a masked intentionality aimed at causing these targeted cardinals disproportionate harm; setting them up as the candidates to beware.

 While, according to the Catholic norms, media reports should not inform the cardinals in their choice of a pope, yet  this week, we have seen the Vatican vehement reactions in attacking the media stating an attempt toward undue predetermining the eventual outcome of the impending conclave.

 The cardinals are human beings who also watch these news footages.  One cannot be absolutely sure regarding how such prior imaginations would positively or negatively bias or influence their eventual choice. The numbers of non-European and non-white cardinals are fewer in comparison to the overwhelming white and European number of cardinals to form a major shift.

As much as the church has moved south and continues to growth overwhelming in those spaces, it is not indicative that would form the basis of the leadership shift from a predominant European and white cardinalate structure to a non-white or non-European Pope.

Further, many of the African cardinals are either too young or short of experiences relative to a vast bureaucracy, and even some with curial exposures have limited experiences, which may be critical in efficient management of the vast ecclesiastical structure,  few are polyglots, and have solid theological credentials to head such a vast institution, that is in the view of many westerners ( in spite of how many westerners think or feel about the church), as a major "white" cultural institution, one for which many would wish to be so maintained as such; one of the remaining leftover and operating legacies of western institutions, hegemony, civilization, and domination.

No matter the outcome of the conclave, one thing is sure, that the African Catholic church has come of age, and that some of her sons, are been put forward, even by the media with veiled intentionality, is a mark of a great strive and a thriving testimony to the organic and living faith of the church, of which as Pope Benedict XVI asserted, points to Africa, as the "Church's spiritual lungs."