Bozur
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Post by Bozur on Apr 4, 2005 11:59:08 GMT -5
World - AP Prospect of Third World Pope Excites Some Mon Apr 4, 8:02 AM ET World - AP By NIKO PRICE, Associated Press Writer MEXICO CITY - As cardinals rushed to the Vatican on Sunday to begin the process of selecting a new pope, many back home were asking a pointed question: If most of the world's Roman Catholics live in the developing world, why has every pope been European? AP Photo / Sun Apr 3,10:36 PM ET / People prays and light candles under a statue of Pope John Paul II at the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City Sunday April 3, 2005. Pope John Paul II, the Polish pontiff who led the Roman Catholic Church for more than a quarter century and became history's most-traveled pope, has died at 84, the Vatican announced Saturday. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo) . Pope John Paul II former Polish cardinal Karol Wojtyla, smiles at the Vatican, 16 October 1978, after being named head of the Catholic Church. When he was elected pope after seven inconclusive rounds of voting, John Paul II was 58, a robust sportsman and a relative outsider amid the vast bureaucracy of the Holy See(AFP/File Pope John Paul II supervises an exhortation sent via electronic-mail from Saint-Peter's Church in Vatican City in 2001. Pope John Paul II was known as a gifted communicator in an electronic age and his followers are making creative use of e-mail, mobile phones and text messages to share their grief.(AFP/ANSA/File/Alessandro Bianchi) The possibility that the next pope could come from Latin America, Africa or Asia is creating a buzz from Mexico City to Manila, from Tegucigalpa to Kinshasa. Many Latin American Catholics said the only way to improve on a papacy they overwhelmingly supported would be to select someone from their own ranks. Their hopes were fueled by the last papal conclave, in which a Polish archbishop became the first non-Italian pope in 455 years, as well as by the global outreach John Paul II made the cornerstone of his papacy. They also have been boosted by sheer numbers: Half the world's 1 billion Roman Catholics live in Latin America alone, and the church is seeing explosive growth in Africa and Asia. Even outside Roman Catholicism, leaders from the developing world saw a chance for change. "We hope that perhaps the cardinals when they meet will follow the first non-Italian pope by electing the first African pope," Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu said Sunday from Cape Town, South Africa. Many Catholics in poor countries said a pope from their own regions would better understand the challenges they face, and would make the church more relevant in the lives of its increasingly diverse followers. "It will further help the church, whose membership is growing fastest in Asia, Africa and Latin America, if a new pope emerges from one of those areas," said Isidore Chukwuemeka, a Catholic in Lagos, Nigeria. "That will help build loyalty in the universal church and reassure people that the rich countries are not calling the shots." While several names from developing countries have been mentioned as candidates, it is unclear what kind of chance Third World religious leaders stand. Only 21 of the cardinals eligible to vote on the new pontiff are from Latin America and the Caribbean, and only 11 from Africa, compared with 58 from Europe alone. The Dominican Republic's Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez, who will participate in the conclave, said the next pope should be oriented toward Latin America, but he stopped short of saying the pontiff should be a native of the region. "The majority of Catholics in the world are in Latin America, so whoever is elected should focus on this continent," Lopez Rodriguez told reporters after celebrating a Mass at Santo Domingo Cathedral. Hundreds of Dominicans cheered and wished the 68-year-old cardinal well after the Mass, with many chanting "we hope they pick you." Vatican observers disagree over the amount of pressure there will be to return the papacy to an Italian — Italy still has 20 voting-age cardinals, by far the largest group — or whether the conclave could expand the message of universality by selecting a candidate from a developing country. Church leaders insist the cardinals' decision will not be based on a geographical calculation. The candidates, they say, will be judged by their faith and their ability to lead. "It won't matter where he comes from, from which continent," Sao Paulo, Brazil Archbishop Claudio Hummes, who is often mentioned as a candidate, said Friday after Mass. "It will matter that the cardinals will be in front of God, under oath, and they will have to choose the one they think is the man for this moment in the history of the church and the world." But across the globe, many of the faithful suggested that kind of talk was merely diplomacy. "We hope that his successor will be a black person from the African continent," said Patrique Ngoma, a 20-year-old student attending Mass in Kinshasa, Congo. "It would be better to have a Latin American pope, someone on our side," said Anjelica Navarro, 30, as she cooked up blue-corn tortillas stuffed with fragrant meat and onions at a stand in downtown Mexico City. Andres Nunez, 67, who co-owns a nearby hardware store, was more blunt: "It's about time we got something!" But beyond the national rivalries, many said a Latin American pope would help the church counter Protestant evangelism, and a Third World pope with roots among the poor would be better able to respond to the most pressing needs of his flock. "As an African, he would be able to better engage himself in the battle against poverty, which he himself would know and have conquered," Ngoma said. Jorge Rouillon, who writes on religious issues for the Argentine daily La Nacion, said choosing a Third World candidate for the papacy would make the church appear more in tune with the modern world. "He could be the image of a universal church that we have seen more of in recent years," he said. Some Catholics in developing countries, despite their faith in the church, were pessimistic about the chances of seeing a non-European pope. They accused the church of racism. "I doubt that the white man will allow a black man to become pope," said Chinyere Osigwe, 40, at Our Lady of Fatima Church in Lagos. Others, while wishing for a pope from their own ranks, simply lowered their expectations. Andrea Villaruel, 36, begged for pocket change for her 11 children on the steps of the San Isidro Cathedral in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and praised the last pope for speaking so many languages. "John Paul II has been one of the greatest," she said. "Well, I hope the next one also speaks Spanish." ___ Associated Press writers Tales Azzoni in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Bill Cormier in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Freddy Cuevas in Tegucigalpa, Honduras; Eddy Isango in Kinshasa, Congo; Dulue Mbachu in Lagos, Nigeria; Peter Muello in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Will Weissert in Mexico City; and David Koop in San Juan, Puerto Rico contributed to this story.
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Bozur
Amicus
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Post by Bozur on Apr 8, 2005 16:38:43 GMT -5
NYTimes.com > International
Third World Represents a New Factor in Pope's Succession
By LYDIA POLGREEN and LARRY ROHTER
Published: April 5, 2005
LAGOS, Nigeria, April 3 - In the modest sanctuary of the Church of the Assumption here, there is no glint of stained glass, just cheap frosted louvers to let the breeze in. The Stations of the Cross are not painted by the hand of a Renaissance master. They are rendered in simple wood carvings hung on the wall.
Yet it is here, not in the sumptuous cathedrals of Europe, that the future of the Roman Catholic faith lies, said the Rev. Francis Anyanwu, pastor at the church.
"Here in Africa the church is growing, vibrant, alive," Father Anyanwu said as he waited to deliver the benediction after two hours of prayer on Friday night for Pope John Paul II as he lay on his deathbed. "By the grace of God our flock is strong."
As the conclave of cardinals assembles to choose a successor to the pope, the strength of the Roman Catholic Church in Africa, Latin America and other developing lands, where two-thirds of Catholics now live, is sure to be a factor in those deliberations.
Though only a third of the cardinal electors are from developing countries, representatives from Latin America will outnumber those from Italy. Several Latin American cardinals have been mentioned as possible successors to John Paul II, and a Nigerian cardinal, Francis Arinze, is frequently cited as a papal candidate.
"Why not an African pope?" the Rev. Julius Olaitan, administrator of Holy Cross Cathedral in Lagos, said after a dawn Mass on Saturday. "We have played second fiddle for so long, but now the church has found its roots in Africa."
The feeling for a pope from the developing world may be even more pronounced in Latin America, which has the highest concentration of Roman Catholics in the world.
Some feel that a leader like Cardinal Cláudio Hummes of São Paulo, Brazil, also mentioned as a possible successor, could revitalize a church that has been steadily losing ground to Pentecostalism and other evangelical sects that particularly since the 1990's have taken the developing world by storm. "Aside from being a great honor, it would really be advantageous to have someone who truly speaks our language and comes out of a Latin American experience," Marcelo Lisboa, a 65-year-old retiree, said Sunday morning after Mass in Rio de Janiero.
"I think it would draw people back into the church," he said, "because even though Latin America has so many Catholics, most people don't go to Mass, and it would certainly help brake the advance of all these evangelical sects."
Pentecostalism has made great gains in Africa, too, but the competition here is frequently for millions of souls who are up for grabs and arrive at Christianity from animist and other traditional faiths, though it bumps up against Islam, too.
The Catholic Church in Africa has in fact enjoyed its fair share of the religious fervor that has swept Africa in the last century, a spiritual frenzy that saw the percentage of Africans practicing Christianity soar to nearly half of the continent's 900 million inhabitants, from just 9 percent.
Today the Catholic Church in Africa claims nearly 150 million adherents, 20 million in Nigeria alone, according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass.
Yet in Africa and Latin America alike, the Catholic Church also faces steep challenges, primarily from the Pentecostal wave that has drawn millions with its energetic, all-night-revival style of worship and its promises of material as well as spiritual riches, especially among the deeply impoverished.
Once an active force in the lives of many poor people in Latin America when the liberation theology movement dominated in the 1970's and 1980's, the church under Pope John Paul II became an increasingly conservative force and, in the view of some, less involved in the everyday concerns of the poor.
In Africa the church occasionally found itself compromised in the continent's complicated and bloody wars. In Rwanda, priests and nuns were accused and in some cases convicted of aiding the Hutu perpetuators of the genocide against the minority Tutsi in 1994.
But those challenges pale in comparison with the decades of stagnation and declining church attendance in Europe and the United States, and many see the future of the church as lying in the developing world.
In many developed nations, including deeply Catholic ones like Ireland, the pope's firm stands against divorce, abortion, homosexuality and birth control have to some extent alienated populations whose views on such issues have loosened.
But particularly in Africa, where the church is looking to grow and families have been devastated by AIDS, it is precisely those conservative doctrines that endeared the pope to a new generation of Catholics.
"The Holy Father has stood up for traditional values, and those are the same as African values," said Marie Fatayi-Williams, who came to pray for the pope at the Church of the Assumption on Friday night. "We believe in family, in life, in the sanctity of marriage. There is no controversy about such things here."
Indeed, if his conservative message grated on the ears of the European and American faithful, the pope also preached eloquently about the dignity of suffering and the value of each human life, a message that seemed to answer Africa's needs in a tumultuous quarter-century of unceasing war, cycles of famine and death and the devastation of AIDS.
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Bozur
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Post by Bozur on Apr 8, 2005 16:38:57 GMT -5
In upholding conservative values, his teachings fit neatly into the deeply held traditional mores that dominate most African societies. He visited Africa again and again, drawing huge, adoring crowds. Even among non-Catholics he was beloved.
"On a continent where suffering is a fact of daily life, he is an inspiration and a guide," said Henry Akinwunmiho, 50, an elementary school teacher who arrived at the Holy Cross Cathedral in Lagos on Saturday before dawn to pray for the pope.
At the parish, Father Olaitan said that just as a Polish pope was the right man to meet the great political shift of the last generation, the end of the cold war, an African or Latin American pope could be just what the church needed to secure its future in the new millennium.
"Pope John Paul II knew what an evil Communism was, and he helped stamp it out in this world," Father Olaitan said. "It could be that a pope from Africa or Latin America could stamp out our generation's evils - extreme poverty, ethnic strife and disease - and transform Africa just as the Holy Father transformed the rest of the world."
John Paul's conservative message also transformed the church in Latin America, even as its position eroded with the growth of boisterous new Protestant churches whose unmediated style of worship - employing healings, speaking in tongues and casting out demons - and use of television drew millions of believers.
No country has a larger Catholic population than Brazil, for instance, and at the start of John Paul II's papacy more than 90 percent of Brazilians considered themselves Catholic. By the time of the last census in 2000, just under three-quarters of Brazil's 180 million people declared themselves so, while Brazil's Protestant population quadrupled.
More than 25 million Brazilians now belong to evangelical and Pentecostal churches, leading some Protestant pastors to predict that the country will have a Protestant majority within 25 years.
"I don't know if Brazil can continue to be as Catholic a country as it has traditionally been," said Waldo César, a Brazilian sociologist of religion who is a Lutheran. "There is still a lot of room for Protestantism to grow. Poverty and internal migration are not slowing, and they feed this phenomenon."
Across the rest of Latin America, from Mexico to Argentina, much the same thing is happening. Even fervent Catholics acknowledge that the church has been slow to respond to the challenge, something that leaders in Rome may now seek more aggressively to reverse.
It will not be easy. The Roman Catholic Church today finds itself hamstrung by a shortage of clergy that seems to be grow each year.
Vocations among young Brazilians are not enough to make up the gap. Fewer Europeans and Americans, a big source of priests in the past, are available, with the result that many communities in the arid backlands and the Amazon see a priest only every couple of months or so.
Belatedly, after years in which John Paul centralized authority in Rome, the Catholic Church in Latin America has responded with a movement known as charismatic renewal, which has used rock-style hymns and borrowed Pentecostal thunder by incorporating Bible readings and even speaking in tongues.
"Our liturgy is expansive and creative, foreseeing a high degree of popular participation," said the Rev. Pedro Félix Bassini, director of pastoral outreach for Brazil's National Conference of Roman Catholic Bishops. "There are certain norms and basic principles, but we are not saying that you have to be this or that. We're leaving it up to each bishop to provide an orientation."
In other dioceses, bishops have sought ways to reach an accommodation with Candomblé and Macumba, Afro-Brazilian cults that are similar to voodoo and Santería and have millions of followers.
At the start of John Paul II's papacy, the church had similarly been trying to adjust to changing social and political conditions in Latin America with liberation theology.
Drawing freely on Marxism for its "preferential option for the poor," the movement aimed at involving priests more in the daily concerns of parishioners and transforming what were seen as unjust structures that perpetuated inequality and poverty.
But with his experience living under a Marxist-Leninist government, John Paul II quickly showed himself to be skeptical of the approach and doubtful of its doctrinal foundations. In an emblematic moment during a Central America trip in the 1980's, he wagged his finger in admonition at priests in Nicaragua who had aligned themselves with the Sandinista revolution. All over Latin America, when bishops sympathetic to liberation theology retired they were replaced by priests who were not.
Today the cardinal of Lima, Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne, 61, is a member of the ultraconservative Opus Dei movement who believes that the church needs to confine itself to a more narrow, traditional role. He was appointed to his post by John Paul II in 2001 with an eye on what kind of legacy the pope would leave.
Lydia Polgreen reported from Lagos for this article, and Larry Rohter from Rio de Janeiro.
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Bozur
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Post by Bozur on Apr 9, 2005 20:27:54 GMT -5
NYTimes.com > International Third World Represents a New Factor in Pope's Succession By LYDIA POLGREEN and LARRY ROHTER Published: April 5, 2005 Vanessa Vick for The New York Times IN AFRICA Parishioners attending Sunday Mass at Christ the King Church in Kampala, Uganda, mourned the death of Pope John Paul II, whose message reached many in Africa. Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times IN LATIN AMERICA Members of Asunción parish in Mexico City in a procession after a Mass for the pope. LAGOS, Nigeria, April 3 - In the modest sanctuary of the Church of the Assumption here, there is no glint of stained glass, just cheap frosted louvers to let the breeze in. The Stations of the Cross are not painted by the hand of a Renaissance master. They are rendered in simple wood carvings hung on the wall. Yet it is here, not in the sumptuous cathedrals of Europe, that the future of the Roman Catholic faith lies, said the Rev. Francis Anyanwu, pastor at the church. "Here in Africa the church is growing, vibrant, alive," Father Anyanwu said as he waited to deliver the benediction after two hours of prayer on Friday night for Pope John Paul II as he lay on his deathbed. "By the grace of God our flock is strong." As the conclave of cardinals assembles to choose a successor to the pope, the strength of the Roman Catholic Church in Africa, Latin America and other developing lands, where two-thirds of Catholics now live, is sure to be a factor in those deliberations. Though only a third of the cardinal electors are from developing countries, representatives from Latin America will outnumber those from Italy. Several Latin American cardinals have been mentioned as possible successors to John Paul II, and a Nigerian cardinal, Francis Arinze, is frequently cited as a papal candidate. "Why not an African pope?" the Rev. Julius Olaitan, administrator of Holy Cross Cathedral in Lagos, said after a dawn Mass on Saturday. "We have played second fiddle for so long, but now the church has found its roots in Africa." The feeling for a pope from the developing world may be even more pronounced in Latin America, which has the highest concentration of Roman Catholics in the world. Some feel that a leader like Cardinal Cláudio Hummes of São Paulo, Brazil, also mentioned as a possible successor, could revitalize a church that has been steadily losing ground to Pentecostalism and other evangelical sects that particularly since the 1990's have taken the developing world by storm. "Aside from being a great honor, it would really be advantageous to have someone who truly speaks our language and comes out of a Latin American experience," Marcelo Lisboa, a 65-year-old retiree, said Sunday morning after Mass in Rio de Janiero. "I think it would draw people back into the church," he said, "because even though Latin America has so many Catholics, most people don't go to Mass, and it would certainly help brake the advance of all these evangelical sects." Pentecostalism has made great gains in Africa, too, but the competition here is frequently for millions of souls who are up for grabs and arrive at Christianity from animist and other traditional faiths, though it bumps up against Islam, too. The Catholic Church in Africa has in fact enjoyed its fair share of the religious fervor that has swept Africa in the last century, a spiritual frenzy that saw the percentage of Africans practicing Christianity soar to nearly half of the continent's 900 million inhabitants, from just 9 percent. Today the Catholic Church in Africa claims nearly 150 million adherents, 20 million in Nigeria alone, according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass. Yet in Africa and Latin America alike, the Catholic Church also faces steep challenges, primarily from the Pentecostal wave that has drawn millions with its energetic, all-night-revival style of worship and its promises of material as well as spiritual riches, especially among the deeply impoverished. Once an active force in the lives of many poor people in Latin America when the liberation theology movement dominated in the 1970's and 1980's, the church under Pope John Paul II became an increasingly conservative force and, in the view of some, less involved in the everyday concerns of the poor. In Africa the church occasionally found itself compromised in the continent's complicated and bloody wars. In Rwanda, priests and nuns were accused and in some cases convicted of aiding the Hutu perpetuators of the genocide against the minority Tutsi in 1994. But those challenges pale in comparison with the decades of stagnation and declining church attendance in Europe and the United States, and many see the future of the church as lying in the developing world. In many developed nations, including deeply Catholic ones like Ireland, the pope's firm stands against divorce, abortion, homosexuality and birth control have to some extent alienated populations whose views on such issues have loosened. But particularly in Africa, where the church is looking to grow and families have been devastated by AIDS, it is precisely those conservative doctrines that endeared the pope to a new generation of Catholics.
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Bozur
Amicus
Posts: 5,515
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Post by Bozur on Apr 9, 2005 20:28:16 GMT -5
"The Holy Father has stood up for traditional values, and those are the same as African values," said Marie Fatayi-Williams, who came to pray for the pope at the Church of the Assumption on Friday night. "We believe in family, in life, in the sanctity of marriage. There is no controversy about such things here."
Indeed, if his conservative message grated on the ears of the European and American faithful, the pope also preached eloquently about the dignity of suffering and the value of each human life, a message that seemed to answer Africa's needs in a tumultuous quarter-century of unceasing war, cycles of famine and death and the devastation of AIDS.
In upholding conservative values, his teachings fit neatly into the deeply held traditional mores that dominate most African societies. He visited Africa again and again, drawing huge, adoring crowds. Even among non-Catholics he was beloved.
"On a continent where suffering is a fact of daily life, he is an inspiration and a guide," said Henry Akinwunmiho, 50, an elementary school teacher who arrived at the Holy Cross Cathedral in Lagos on Saturday before dawn to pray for the pope.
At the parish, Father Olaitan said that just as a Polish pope was the right man to meet the great political shift of the last generation, the end of the cold war, an African or Latin American pope could be just what the church needed to secure its future in the new millennium.
"Pope John Paul II knew what an evil Communism was, and he helped stamp it out in this world," Father Olaitan said. "It could be that a pope from Africa or Latin America could stamp out our generation's evils - extreme poverty, ethnic strife and disease - and transform Africa just as the Holy Father transformed the rest of the world."
John Paul's conservative message also transformed the church in Latin America, even as its position eroded with the growth of boisterous new Protestant churches whose unmediated style of worship - employing healings, speaking in tongues and casting out demons - and use of television drew millions of believers.
No country has a larger Catholic population than Brazil, for instance, and at the start of John Paul II's papacy more than 90 percent of Brazilians considered themselves Catholic. By the time of the last census in 2000, just under three-quarters of Brazil's 180 million people declared themselves so, while Brazil's Protestant population quadrupled.
More than 25 million Brazilians now belong to evangelical and Pentecostal churches, leading some Protestant pastors to predict that the country will have a Protestant majority within 25 years.
"I don't know if Brazil can continue to be as Catholic a country as it has traditionally been," said Waldo César, a Brazilian sociologist of religion who is a Lutheran. "There is still a lot of room for Protestantism to grow. Poverty and internal migration are not slowing, and they feed this phenomenon."
Across the rest of Latin America, from Mexico to Argentina, much the same thing is happening. Even fervent Catholics acknowledge that the church has been slow to respond to the challenge, something that leaders in Rome may now seek more aggressively to reverse.
It will not be easy. The Roman Catholic Church today finds itself hamstrung by a shortage of clergy that seems to be grow each year.
Vocations among young Brazilians are not enough to make up the gap. Fewer Europeans and Americans, a big source of priests in the past, are available, with the result that many communities in the arid backlands and the Amazon see a priest only every couple of months or so.
Belatedly, after years in which John Paul centralized authority in Rome, the Catholic Church in Latin America has responded with a movement known as charismatic renewal, which has used rock-style hymns and borrowed Pentecostal thunder by incorporating Bible readings and even speaking in tongues.
"Our liturgy is expansive and creative, foreseeing a high degree of popular participation," said the Rev. Pedro Félix Bassini, director of pastoral outreach for Brazil's National Conference of Roman Catholic Bishops. "There are certain norms and basic principles, but we are not saying that you have to be this or that. We're leaving it up to each bishop to provide an orientation."
In other dioceses, bishops have sought ways to reach an accommodation with Candomblé and Macumba, Afro-Brazilian cults that are similar to voodoo and Santería and have millions of followers.
At the start of John Paul II's papacy, the church had similarly been trying to adjust to changing social and political conditions in Latin America with liberation theology.
Drawing freely on Marxism for its "preferential option for the poor," the movement aimed at involving priests more in the daily concerns of parishioners and transforming what were seen as unjust structures that perpetuated inequality and poverty.
But with his experience living under a Marxist-Leninist government, John Paul II quickly showed himself to be skeptical of the approach and doubtful of its doctrinal foundations. In an emblematic moment during a Central America trip in the 1980's, he wagged his finger in admonition at priests in Nicaragua who had aligned themselves with the Sandinista revolution. All over Latin America, when bishops sympathetic to liberation theology retired they were replaced by priests who were not.
Today the cardinal of Lima, Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne, 61, is a member of the ultraconservative Opus Dei movement who believes that the church needs to confine itself to a more narrow, traditional role. He was appointed to his post by John Paul II in 2001 with an eye on what kind of legacy the pope would leave.
Lydia Polgreen reported from Lagos for this article, and Larry Rohter from Rio de Janeiro.
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Bozur
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Posts: 5,515
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Post by Bozur on Apr 15, 2005 13:55:43 GMT -5
As Catholic as the Pope By LYDIA POLGREEN Published: April 10, 2005 Tony Gentile/Reuters A compelling religious case can be made for Cardinal Francis Arinze, or another African, to be elected pope, as Europe quickly loses its status as the dominant region in the Roman Catholic Church. DAKAR, Senegal — This week a cardinal from Nigeria, Francis Arinze, edged ahead of an Italian, Dionigi Tettamanzi, at Paddypower.com, an Irish wagering Web site taking bets on who will be the next pope, with 11-4 odds on the Nigerian and 7-2 on the Italian. While Irish odds makers may not be the best guide to the intentions of the 117 Roman Catholic cardinals who will begin the ancient, mystical and extremely secret task of electing the next pope on April 18, they may be onto something. Much has been made of the fact that two-thirds of Catholics now live in the southern hemisphere, and the church's traditional stronghold in Europe, which has produced more than a millennium of popes, is withering away at an alarming rate. These trends have led many to conclude that the next pope is likely to be from the developing world, most likely Latin America - as though the papacy were a tribal chieftaincy naturally shifting to the clan in ascendancy. But that pointedly secular view misses a deeper spiritual argument for why the next pope might, and perhaps should, emerge from Africa. In some fundamental ways, the spirit of the Roman Catholic church in Africa is closest to the kind of Catholicism Pope John Paul II worked to engender across the globe. Cardinal Arinze himself doesn't appear likely to ascend to the papacy, betting odds notwithstanding. Yet, neither did Karol Wojtyla, and just as a Pole is considered by many to have been the right man to lead the church through the thickets of the late 20th century, perhaps a son of Africa will be seen as the right man to meet the spiritual challenges of this millennium. "Geographical origin is important in the sense it was important the last time," said George Weigel, senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a Catholic theologian. "One of reasons why Karol Wojtyla was the man he was is that he was the product of an intact and intense Catholic culture. The first thing cardinals are looking for and asking themselves about any possible candidate is, 'Is this a man of God?' The intensity and vibrancy of Catholic life south of the equator suggests by analogy that it is likely to produce, if not now, then certainly in the 21st century, a successor to Peter." Few generalizations about a place as vast and diverse as Africa could possibly hold true, but it is fair to say that it is a continent of deep religiosity. Agnosticism and atheism are virtually unheard of here. Modernity and postmodernity, with their materialism, nihilism and skepticism, have yet to find purchase. Africa is, to its core, a continent of believers whose 900 million souls are very much up for grabs. "We are by nature spiritual people," said the Rev. George Ehusani, secretary general of the Catholic Bishops' Conference in Nigeria, which has 20 million Catholics. "It is in our blood. It is who we are." Also, like John Paul II, and virtually all of the cardinals who will choose his successor, Africans tend to be deeply conservative on issues like abortion, birth control and homosexuality. Beliefs about human life and its essential inviolability hold strong. While it may not have Latin America's numbers, the church in Africa is growing rapidly. Between 1970 and 2000, the number of Catholics here grew by 3 percent to 5 percent a year (to 150 million) while Latin American countries on average saw their flock grow less than half as fast , according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass. Of course, the African church faces its own challenges, not only from Pentecostalism, as in Latin America, but even more seriously from Islam. It is also a continent that seems to be moving backward on the scale of human development, as AIDS and bloody cycles of war exact a brutal toll. Indeed, despite the deep affinity between the African church and the Catholicism shaped by Pope John Paul II, a variety of factors make an African papacy unlikely at this time. "One would have to wonder whether racial attitudes in Europe and Latin America would pose a challenge to a successful African candidacy," Mr. Weigel said. He noted that of the three vital challenges the church faces - its virtual collapse in Europe, the moral questions raised by biotechnology and the rise of militant Islam - only the last is intimately tied to Africa. And while some Africans have voiced an eagerness to have an African pope - South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who is an Anglican, for example - Catholics are not openly clamoring for one of their own. "People outside the church and in the secular media are more preoccupied than many of us in the church on this subject," said Father Ehusani. "We are more concerned about having a leader who has the kind of charisma and personality that John Paul had." YET such attitudes are precisely what make Africa a perfect expression of the current spirit of the church, something the cardinals will surely note, said the Rev. Dr. Clarence E. Williams of Detroit. "The Cardinals are not looking at continuing a European papacy, they are looking at the future of the church," he said. "They are now global cardinals. They have lived long enough and have traveled enough to know the future belongs to the people who are carrying the true Catholic culture. They won't find that in Europe. They have to look south. In that sense, an African pope might not be as far off as you'd think."
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