WILL THE NEW POPE MAKE A REAL DIFFERENCE FOR AFRICA?

By Gabriel Neville and - - Reprint | | Print |

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PRETORIA, Apr 1 2005 (IPS) - Will the election of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope make a difference for Africa? asks Neville Gabriel, coordinator of the Justice and Peace Department of the Southern African Catholic Bishops\’ Conference, based in Pretoria, South Africa. In this article, Gabriel writes that the most urgent challenge facing the world today has more of a North-South than an East-West axis. The danger for Africa today is that intra-Northern competition for global economic and political dominance may mean another century dominated by East-West rivalry and conciliation, while the poorest of the world in Africa remain forgotten. While colonial political relations may have ended for Africa, colonial patterns still characterise Africa\’s economic relations with the world. The church under a new pontiff must actively work to at once transform Africa and its situation in the global community. The unmatchable popular pulling power of a pope with a pervasive social justice concern for Africa could make all the difference. However, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in his time as prefect of the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith has not demonstrated such a concern. His immediate concern has been the orthodoxy of internal church teaching. If Pope Benedict XVI continues in this vein, his papacy will change nothing in Africa\’s future.

Will the election of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope make a difference for Africa? A good starting point in answering this question would be the record of his predecessor. For all his remarkable presence and concern for the whole world, John Paul II was a thoroughly European pope.

His deep concern for Europe was pervasive: that it should revive its Christian cultural heritage and ”breathe with both lungs”, West and East. Through he came from a country of great repression, he found it difficult to fathom the ”dissident” of church personnel in countries of the South.

The most urgent challenge facing the world today has more of a North-South than an East-West axis, however. The danger for Africa today is that intra-Northern competition for global economic and political dominance may mean another century dominated by East-West rivalry and conciliation, while the poorest of the world in Africa remain forgotten.

Even in a world where, in the South, more than eight hundred million people go to bed hungry and twenty-four thousand die of starvation every day, and every year six million children die from malnutrition before their fifth birthday and HIV/AIDS kills more than two million, Africa faces the constant threat of dropping off the priority list of the world’s rulers.

The church in Africa has no choice about being involved in AIDS prevention and care. In Africa, the church has AIDS. That is to say, theologically, the ”body of Christ” has AIDS. Alongside impressive efforts by the church to care for the AIDS-sick, the African experience poses a grave challenge for the Holy See to give renewed significance to the teaching of the church on condoms for the prevention of HIV transmission. It would be a defeat of morality to continue making sinners out of good people who simply want to stay alive against so many odds.

However, the challenge for Africa goes beyond treating symptoms and preventing further decline. The church must tackle the depth of Africa’s vulnerability. The African Synod of Bishops pronounced firmly that the church must directly engage in transforming the root causes of Africa’s urgent social and economic injustices.

Despite bold efforts by some African politicians to renew the continent, Africa’s political leaders must be challenged to hasten efforts to reverse the downward spiral of the poor. However, while colonial political relations may have ended for Africa, colonial patterns still characterise Africa’s economic relations with the world. The church under a new pontiff must actively work to at once transform Africa and its situation in the global community.

With a few notable exceptions, however, African church leaders have neglected to muster a strong voice on key international economic and political injustices retarding the continent. Even when they have spoken out in defence of the poor, their voice has been all but ignored by world leaders.

However, it is naive to believe that the African church can truly muster sufficient public voice without being deeply rooted in the cultural realities of African peoples.

Ratzinger, in a moment of genius, wrote that we should properly speak of ”inter-culturation”, not ”inculturation” of the church, that evangelisation is the encounter of the gospel by a culture through its expression in a prior cultural form. He was right.

The character of the African church remains one of conformity to the Roman way. Only through a process of African Catholics taking ownership and leadership of their church and active participation in public life will the African church grow the gospel message in its own cultural expression and move from being a mission church.

The African church will be effective in transforming the depth of Africa’s material and spiritual reality to the extent that it develops its own cultural forms. Failing that, the African church will breathe with one lung.

The new pope must build trust within the church that the gospel can be revealed in African culture, and he need not be an African to do this.

The lobbying for an African pope was simplistic. What Africa needs is simply a pope who, in the global sphere, is for Africa. Africa’s problems are not all in Africa. They are equally in North America, Europe, and China; they are as much about debt bondage, trade injustice, global exclusion, and old geopolitical rivalries as about democracy, a culture of human rights, and development in Africa.

The unmatchable popular pulling power of a pope with a pervasive social justice concern for Africa could make all the difference. However, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in his time as prefect of the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith did not demonstrate such a concern. His focus was the orthodoxy of internal church teaching. If Pope Benedict XVI continues in this vein, his papacy will change nothing in Africa’s future. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)