The New York Times - March 16, 2009
Rachel Donadio

With one of the world's largest Catholic populations, estimated at 158 million, Africa is the continent where the church is at once strong -- in terms of sheer numbers and devotional vitality -- and weak, inevitably touched by the poverty, corruption, conflict and disease afflicting the larger society.

Benedict is expected to touch on both those realities in his visit, which kicks off a period of attention to Africa, culminating in October, when the world's bishops meet for their annual monthlong synod in Rome. This year it is devoted to "The Church in Africa at the Service of Reconciliation, Justice and Peace."

On the first stop in his six-day trip, in French- and English-speaking Cameroon, Benedict is expected to present the working paper for the synod, which was called by Pope John Paul II before he died in 2005.

The synod is expected to touch on the church's role in promoting democracy and social justice; "inculturation," or finding a balance between Rome-mandated Catholic dogma and the varieties of local practice; health; and the tensions in Africa between Catholics, Muslims and the continent's fast-growing Pentecostal population.

There is a lot at stake. By 2025, one-sixth of the world's Catholics, or about 230 million, are expected to be African. The world's largest seminary is in Nigeria, which borders on Cameroon in western Africa, and over all, Africa produces a large percentage of the world's priests.

Africa is the continent "where the church appears most vital, appears in a phase of expansion," said Sandro Magister, a veteran Italian Vatican journalist. "But this expansion is also very fragile." He added that it "shows the typical characteristics of youth and adolescence: great waves of feeling and emotion with rather weak roots."

Although the Vatican hierarchy is a deeply European institution, it too has changed over the years. Pope John XXIII appointed the first African cardinal in 1960. There are now 16 cardinals from Africa, out of 192.

"You sometimes hear the remark that the main problem with the Vatican is it's 2,000 miles too far north," said Philip Jenkins, a professor at Pennsylvania State University and the author of "The Lost History of Christianity," about the early history of Christianity in Africa and Asia.

In his more than 25 years as pope, John Paul II made 16 trips to Africa, visiting 42 countries. In many ways, Africa would seem a lower priority for Benedict, who in his four years as pope has been deeply preoccupied with strengthening the church in Europe, where its status is increasingly diminished.

But Africa is important for Benedict's vision. Compared with Europe and the United States, African churches tend to take a more traditional line on issues like homosexuality.

"Not just is Christianity booming in that part of the world, it seems to be a pretty conservative kind of Catholicism," said Professor Jenkins, of Penn State. "I think he has high hopes of the global south churches," and sees them "as a very serious counterbalance to liberal trends in the north."

But the situation on the ground is rich and complex.

Many local African prelates must set their own guidelines for how to balance Catholicism with the faith healing and animal sacrifice practiced by many parishioners.

The Catholic Church is also concerned that tribalism could undermine its more universal authority, especially if clerics are seen as too closely tied to a particular ethnic or tribal group.

Similarly, preaching the gospel in the local language could tie it to one ethnic group, yet reading it only in a formerly colonial language poses other complications.

Benedict has tried to crack down on the tendency of many African priests to take wives. Addressing a meeting of African bishops in Rome in 2005, Benedict implored them "to select conscientiously candidates for the priesthood," and to encourage them "to open themselves fully to serving others as Christ did by embracing the gift of celibacy."

In the same address, Benedict spoke on AIDS for the first time as pope, calling it "a cruel epidemic" that "not only kills but seriously threatens the economic and social stability of the continent."

He also stated the Vatican's position forbidding the use of condoms. "The traditional teaching of the church has proven to be the only fail-safe way to prevent the spread of H.I.V./AIDS," Benedict said then, adding his endorsement of "Christian marriage and fidelity" and "chastity."

On his Africa trip, the pope is not expected to revisit the Vatican's stance on condoms, according to the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi. "The position we have is that to think you can resolve AIDS with condoms is an illusion," Father Lombardi said. Instead, he added, the church will continue to endorse education, promoting "more responsible sexuality," within the confines of marriage.

In many places in Africa, including Nigeria, Catholicism and Islam are fighting for souls. In Cameroon, which has a significant Muslim population, the pope is expected to meet with Muslim clerics.

In Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, the church is increasingly worried about losing ground to charismatic Pentecostal churches. In recent years, those churches have radically transformed the religious landscape in Latin America, which has the world's largest Catholic population.

In Angola, which emerged in 2002 from 25 years of civil war, Benedict is expected to meet with politicians and diplomats to speak out against corruption and assert the renewed role that the church hopes to play in fostering democracy and civil society in Africa.

He will also mark 500 years since Catholic missionaries began converting people in the former Portuguese colony and meet with groups promoting the role of women in Africa.

In his weekly angelus message on Sunday, Benedict said that on his trip to Africa he intended "to embrace the entire African continent, its thousand differences and its deep religious spirit, its ancient cultures and its difficult path toward development and reconciliation, its painful wounds and its enormous potential and hope."
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