Is the church ready to choose an African pope?

If there have already been popes born in Africa, such as Victor I (189-199), originally from North Africa, the conclave which must start between May 6 and 11 to elect the successor of François could bring to the head of the church a pope from this continent where Catholicism continues its boom as the population grows, while gray and secularizes? The question of whether the church is ready to welcome its first black pope is again on the table.

“There has been this feeling that the Pope, if he has to be a global authority, must come from the world Church,” said Miles Pattenden, a Catholicism historian at the University of Oxford (United Kingdom).

Peter Turkson, a crisis specialist

Coming from a modest family of ten children, Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, 76, was the first Ghanaian ecclesiastics to become a cardinal in 2003. In 2008, he had helped to avoid violence in his country in West Africa after a disputed presidential election, and he worked in the high spheres of the Vatican bureaucracy.

He recently defended the rights of LGBT + persons in his country and affirmed in an interview dating from 2023 that these “cannot be criminalized because they have not committed any crime”.

Robert Sarah, loved by the Conservatives

Within the Church, traditionalists like the Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, also quoted as a potential future Pope, compare homosexuality, but also abortion and “Islamic fanaticism”, with Nazi ideology.

Another possible candidate, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, of the Democratic Republic of Congo, also opposed the blessing of the same sex couples.

Fridolin Ambongo, made cardinal in 2019 by François of which he was close, is from the largest Catholic country in Africa, where half of the 100 million inhabitants are faithful in Rome.

Despite a certain opening, Pope Francis played the balancingists between a moderate discourse and the conduct of concrete reforms within the Church, which, according to the professor in religious studies at the New York University in New York (United States), Cristina Traina, could leave the door open to African candidates criticized for their conservative vision.

There is no guarantee that the next Pope will remain in the more liberal line of François.

François created a precedent

Pope Francis’s pontificate marked a break with European leadership of the Catholic Church. His desire to ensure that the Vatican hierarchy is a reflection of its members means that African cardinals today represent 12 % of the conclave, against 8 % in the last election of a Pope.

An African Pope could bring a fresh look at certain subjects. François’ social justice message has notably found a strong echo on the continent, which is also at the forefront of climate change

“It would be almost impossible to imagine that the world accepts an African pope, if there had not previously been a transition with Pope Francis, an Argentinian,” said Ms. Traina.

Africa, which has 20 % of the 1.4 billion Catholics on the planet, remains underrepresented at the conclave, with 17 cardinals. As much, for all this dynamic continent, as for North America or Italy alone. However, the last Census of the Church shows it, not only one in five Catholic, today, lives in Africa, but this continent is the only one where the vocations of nuns or seminarians is not decreasing, as elsewhere in the world, but well increased.

Discrimination remains a reality

According to a Congolese priest who requested anonymity, a long path has been traveled but there is a reason why there has been no African pope for 1,500 years: “Discrimination, even if it is not manifest among our brothers Europeans, is still a reality which we often do not speak”.

An African pope could bring a fresh look at certain subjects within the church. Pope Francis’s social justice message found a strong echo in the poorest countries and on the continent at the forefront of climate change.

Faced with a shortage of priests, some in Africa have also expressed themselves in favor of a re -examination of the ban on the marriage of religious, notably underlines Ms. Traina.

Cardinal Ambongo, who worked alongside François, is also working on how the church should deal with the question of polygamous marriage, especially for those who would like to convert.

“It’s the Tour of God”

“We have always wanted to have an African pope,” said Father Paul Maji, priest in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria. Even if he claims not to put more “affect” than that in the question of the origin of the next sovereign pontiff.

“We should not think that it is our turn,” said Professor Sylvain Badibanga, dean of the Faculty of Theology of the Catholic University of Congo, adding: “It is the Tour of God”.