church
on the frontier

The African Way to the Gospel
From March 17th to the 23rd, the Pope  travelled to Africa, a continent that has seen over 100 million conversions to Christianity only in the last century, and that today is a great “storehouse of faith for the Church.”

by Piero Gheddo*

Two events indicate that for the Catholic Church the year 2009 might be defined, “The Year of Africa”: the second Synod for Africa (the first was held in Rome in 1994) and Benedict XVI’s first trip to Africa, of which I will speak later. However, I think there is another great “sign of the times” that shows us, as Catholics, the importance and the urgency of taking an interest in the African peoples. The continent that in the near future offers the best possibility for Christian announcement and conversion to Christ is, without a doubt, Sub-Saharan Africa, which is still seeking its way, struggling to build its future in the political and socio-economic sense and also in the cultural and religious sense. The African peoples are deeply religious, but they experience concretely that in the modern world their traditional religion, animism, has no future. They are faced with a precise choice that they must make and make soon, between Islam or Christianity, two widespread religions “of the Book,” each with its founder, its tradition, its spirituality, and its community. The alternative to the choice of one of these two religions is practical atheism, which leads inevitably to nihilism and self-destruction of the cultures of these peoples.
From March 17–23, 2009, Benedict XVI  visited two of the African countries with the highest number of Catholics: 55,6% Angola and 26,7% Cameroon.  In the African continent as a whole, Catholics are 18%, and in Sub-Saharan Africa less than 30%, while Christians number 50%. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were only two million Catholics, consisting in part of colonizers and European traders. It is an astounding fact that one century later, in the year 2000, there were 130 million. There were about 10 African priests in 1900; in the year 2000 there were 14,000. The first two African bishops were consecrated in 1939, and now there are more than 400. 
I believe we all need to correct a certain generalized pessimism regarding Africa, which is rather common in the West. Of course, the situation of permanent political instability and economic underdevelopment that permeates Sub-Saharan Africa is no invitation to optimism, above all because the heads of nations interested and world leaders in general have not yet found the recipe, the key for opening up Africa to the march towards peace, development, respect for human rights and democracy that economic and socio-political globalization is bringing about almost everywhere in Asia (I saw this recently in Bangladesh). But one can’t be pessimistic about the African Church. We must rather note that it is precisely Christianity–the Catholic Church and the other Christian Churches–which gives hope and points the way for the redemption of the African peoples.
 Africa is the Church’s frontier today, the “Wild West” of Jesus’ “Go out to the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature,” whereas the “Far East,” the greater part of Asia, remains largely impenetrable to the Gospel announcement. Christians make up less than 5% of the three and a half billion population of Asia (62% of mankind). The mission “ad gentes” is anything but over, and it is precisely this horizon of universal commitment that can give us those great ideals that John Paul II foresaw in his encyclical Redemptoris Missio: “The mission ad gentes renews the Church.”
Pope Benedict went to Africa to personally hand over the text of the Instrumentum Laboris (working paper) of the upcoming Synod for Africa to the African Bishops’ Conferences. In Yaoundé, capital of Cameroon, John Paul II handed over the Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Africa, fruit of the first Synod celebrated the previous year in the Vatican. The second Synod (October 4–25, 2009), once more to be held in the Vatican, will have as its theme: “The Church in Africa at the service of reconciliation, justice and peace. ‘You are the salt of the earth… you are the light of the world’ (Mt 5: 13, 14).”
The Pope and the Synod invite the African Churches to an examination of conscience, and to conversion in order to be “salt of the earth… light of the world.” Not only the mission of the Church in civil society, but “reconciliation, justice and peace” are goals to be reached within the African Churches themselves. To think that only others need conversion is a tragic illusion. While the first Synod in 1995, concluded by Ecclesia in Africa, had the aim of exhorting to an awareness of the needs of Africa so as to respond with a spirit of service, this second Synod proposes to center the communities and the individual believers once more on the person of Christ, so as to present the message of salvation in a credible and effective way.

Cars and Containers.  The Year of Africa is meaningful and provocative not only for Africans. Even we Christians of an ancient faith, are not merely curious spectators at these epochal events, but we should be participants convinced that they concern us, too–our way of understanding and living the Christian life, our Churches and parishes, institutes and associations, and lay movements. We have given much to Africa: missionaries and volunteers, education in the faith, economic aid, vehicles, containers, medicines, and hospitality in our countries for students, priests and nuns. The time has come to receive something from them, to set ourselves to learn from these young Christian communities. They have many things to teach us, but basically only one fundamental thing: the enthusiasm of the faith. In 1991, in Maputo in Mozambique, a French White Father, Philip Legrand, faced with the misery of that country and its people (war, dictatorship, hunger, massacres), told me, “Don’t be shocked by the negative aspects you see. I have been in Africa for 40 years and I am convinced that here there is a storehouse of humanity for the whole world.” In 1975, in Angola, the Capuchin Fr. Flaviano Petterlini, told me, “Write it down, and tell people in Italy that when Christian Europe begins to understand that it has a lot to learn from this Africa, of which they see only the miseries and the sufferings of centuries, things here will begin to improve.”
*Director of the the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME) History Office in Rome.