The Pope and the herbalists

As Pope John Paul begins his African tour, Jack O'Sullivan examines the issues facing the continent's Catholics
THE POPE is no stranger to Africa. On Thursday, he began his third tour of the continent in his seven year pontificate. He came in the knowledge that the most exciting, vibrant and growing part of the Church is experiencing a "grassroots" revolution.
Warily endorsing this development, the Pope will be making one point quite clear: change and the adaptation of Christianity to African culture is all very well hut it must not challenge the unity of the Church. And the ever-travelling Pope will be the symbol incarnate of the universal Church.
The Pope will be receiving another chance to observe the whirlwind of change . that has swept Africa in the wake of the second Vatican Council. Latin has been replaced by African languages as the norm at services. Thousands of trained lay people have taken over from priests in administering parishes, preaching, and preparing converts.
Singing, dancing, drumming, the use of traditional dress and symbols have become commonplace. The African Mass is so revolutionised it makes its European counterpart look like a military parade.
The powerhouse for reform is Zaire, whose leading churchman, the 68-year old Cardinal Joseph Malula, Archbishop of Kinshasa, is the most highranking Catholic advocating vigorous accommodation with African culture.
In Zaire, which the Pope will visit for the second time for two days, are to be found the most revolutionary moves from the priest-centred Church found in Europe. Recently, 17 parishes in the capital, Kinshasa, were handed over to the laity to run.
At Cardinal Manila's disposal are some of the finest black theologians in Africa — at the Catholic university of Lovanium. In Zaire has originated talk of establishing an African rite. Rome remains suspicious.
And the papacy is still more concerned by those who regard the whirlwind of change as nothing more than a breath of fresh air. When a number of African bishops' conferences asked in the 1970s for the right to ordain married men to meet the chronic shortage of priests, a firm "no" was the reply they received. Ever since, the silence on the subject has been deafening.
But the real pressure for change is not really coming from the top-ranking leadership of the Church in Africa. The continent's dozen cardinals arc predominantly conservative theologically.
The quiet revolution is taking place in the African countryside. With the shortage of priests in the rural areas, communities are increasingly left to their own devices. The messages and images that the missionaries brought, so tied up with European culture, are being interpreted, drawing on African social and religious experience.
The Church is caught in a dilemma. h wants to root religion in African culture, but also to control and direct it, and to prevent heresy, schism and disunity.
Catholicism outstrips the other mainstream Christian faiths in growth, personnel and huge international resources. Two million Catholics are being added to the current total of 65 million every year. There are far more Catholic than Protestant missionaries in Africa.
But still there is the fear that if Catholicism does not change quickly enough to appeal to the African way of life, impetus will be added to the fastest growing religious phenomenon in Africa today — the homegrown "independent churches".
There are over 5,000 Of these churches, in almost every country, stretching from the north to the south of the continent. They fuse Christian and traditional beliefs. There is room in them for the exorcism of evil spirits, which are such a cause of anguish to so many Africans. Belief in such spirits has been dismissed by the Catholic Church of the enlightenment as primitive paganism, which would atrophy in a more rational sophisticated society.
The Pope will find the independent churches everywhere he goes in Africa.
In Kenya, at the end of his trip, he will encounter the Maria Legio, a breakaway from the Catholic church, whose main elements include deliverance from witchcraft, the proliferation of prophets
and the acceptance of polygamists.
In Zaire, Pope John Paul will encounter the 1: imbanguist L'glise, which grew up in the 1920s and is believed to have a following up to three million.
Clearly, the frontier between Christian and non-Christian religions is in flux. A Natal saying puts the process in a nutshell: "The pastor begat the herbalist. The herbalist begat a pastor."
The challenge is there and Rome has so far been ambivalent in its response. One Africanist argued recently that Rome does not mind particularly what goes on at the grassroots level as long as the top tier and conspicuous level of the Church remains consistent with the Vatican line.
This analysis would fit well the fate of Zambian Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, who was removed from his see in Lusaka as a result of his controversial "healing" ceremonies, when he offered to his congregations liberation from the evil spirits which they believed were possessing them.
In contrast, the vast majority of the "up GEARING UP — With the staff and headgear given to him by a Masai tribesman, Pope John Paul speaks to Kenyans during his 1980 visit to Uhuru Park in Nairobi. On August 18 the Pope will return to Uhuru Park for the close of the International Eucharistic Congress as part of his seven-nation African tour. country" bishops are left undisturbed, working out in the countryside, far from the capital and the eyes of the Apostolic Delegate.
There are now over 400 black African bishops, a huge increase over the past few years. In the early 1950s there was just one black bishop. These bishops have often received no training abroad and are close to their communities. Quietly, adaptations to African ways take place unnoticed.
The challenge to the growth of Christianity does not come only from traditional beliefs. It also comes from Islam. The Pope will be acknowledging this when he stops off in Morocco on the final day of his tour.
He knows that Islam with the financial backing of the oil-rich Middle East, has never had it so good and is looking south. Only recently, the Libyans paid for a mosque to he built in Botswana's capital, Gaberone. Attempts to impose Islamic law on Christians in the southern Sudan show the struggle that is taking place between the two world religions along a northern belt across Africa.
But in reality, both Christianity and Islam are growing very rapidly and the real pressures do not come from outside the Church. The cry for a deeply rooted African church is coming from within the fold and that is something the Church's pastor, Pope John Paul II will be listening to this week.
see interview, page five