LAT: African Catholics Seek a Voice to Match Their Growing Strength

[DeepModem Mom]

African Catholics Seek a Voice to Match Their Growing Strength
By Robyn Dixon, Times Staff Writer


....The number of African Catholics has increased 30% in a decade, to more than 130 million, served by 426 bishops and more than 27,000 priests. In Nigeria, with about 25 million Catholics in a population of about 137 million, congregations spill out onto benches outside most Catholic, churches, even with five or six Masses on Sundays.

The phenomenal growth brings ambitions, and not only for an African pope when the College of Cardinals convenes next week. Catholics here are also eager to dispatch a wave of African priests, generally conservative, to an increasingly secular Europe and United States, just as white missionaries once arrived on African shores.

Their time, these Africans believe, has come.

But the growth, attributed to high birthrates and Irish missionaries' proselytizing in schools, is also creating problems. Thinly stretched priests are barely able to serve their own congregation's needs, leading some neglected Catholics to turn instead to the less restrictive — and even faster-growing — evangelical Protestant churches....


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-africa16apr16,0,401594.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[Sandpiper]

1. An African Pope would be horrible for Africa

many Catholics believe that African priests are ready to lead Catholics in Europe and the United States back to the moral absolutes of the church, to preach the need to eschew contraception, avoid adultery and reject homosexuality as evil.


With Africa's horrible AIDS epidemic, the last thing they need is an African Pope telling them to eschew contraception.

[goclark]

3. Would it be better for a European Pope to tell them

not to use contraceptives?

[Sandpiper]

5. In a way, yes

As people tend to place more trust in the word of one of their own than that of a perceived outsider.

And Cardinal Francis Arinze, the favorite for an African Pope, is the worst sort of knuckle-dragging conservative and is hard-line anti-contraception.


I guess what I'm saying is, an African Pope from the current crop of African Cardinals would be disastrous for the people of Africa.

[Igel]

2. It's sad to see overt racial and geographic politics in the Church.

I'm not Catholic, and the Church has never been far from corruption, but I keep hoping.

[megatherium]

4. New York Times this morning said Cardinal Arinze is losing support

before the conclave, in favor of certain European and Latin American cardinals. But after running through the list of likely contenders, the article mentioned that the last time the media went through this exercise, the cardinals surprised almost everyone by picking Karol Wojtyla.

[DeepModem Mom]

6. Question: A recent article said evangelicals were growing in Latin Am....

at the expense of the Roman Catholic Church. The opposite seems to be the case in Africa, although this posted article indicates that there is some evangelical appeal in Africa, and some growth. Anyone have an idea of the reason for this difference?