avrupa'da katolik kilisesi kriz yaşarken afrika'da katolik nüfusta artış var (ft)

African claim to papacy
rests on growth
By Xan Rice in Lagos


In Europe, poorly attended services and emptying seminaries hint at the troubles in the
Catholic church. In Africa, clergymen have a different headache.
“We are struggling to build enough churches to accommodate everyone,” says Archbishop
Matthew Ndagoso of Kaduna, in central Nigeria. “Our numbers keep growing.”
The latest statistics from the Vatican bear this out. The global Catholic population increased
to 1.196bn at the end of 2010, up 15m from 2009. More than 6m of those new members
came from Africa, which now has 186m Catholics.
Part of that increase is due to population growth, which is higher in Africa than elsewhere.
Yet the continent also saw the biggest rise in its overall percentage of Catholics, from 18.1
per cent to 18.3 per cent. In Europe, the proportion of Catholics declined slightly to 39.9 per
cent.
The shifting demographics within the Catholic Church have come into focus this week with
Pope Benedict XVI’s shock resignation. Within hours bookmakers had put cardinals from
Nigeria and Ghana among the early favourites.
While there has not been a pope from Africa for more than 1,500 years, there is growing
speculation that the time may come soon. In 2002, while still a cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI
suggested as much in an interview, saying that an African pope would be “a positive sign for
the whole of Christendom”.
Two African candidates have been tipped as possible frontrunners to succeed Pope Benedict
XVI. The first is Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze, 80, the current Prefect Emeritus of the
Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Once the world’s
youngest Catholic bishop, aged just 32, he rose to become one of the main advisers to Pope
John Paul II. Though his age may count against him, he is popular in the Vatican, with
conservative views in line with the church hierarchy.
The other person hotly tipped is Peter Turkson, the 64-year-old Ghanaian cardinal who
heads the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Schooled in seminaries in his
home country and the US, Cardinal Turkson was archbishop of Cape Coast in Ghana before
becoming a cardinal in 2003. He has a reputation as a peacemaker, having mediated
between the two main parties in Ghana after the closely-contested election in 2008, and is
seen as more progressive than Mr Arinze.
While Nigeria has an estimated 25m Catholics, there does not appear to be any sense of
entitlement when it comes to the next pope. Matthew Hassan Kukah, Bishop of Sokoto said
that if the papacy was allocated as a reward for expanding congregations there would be
have to be a Latin American pope.
“It is only the Holy Spirit who knows who God wants to be pope and will nudge the cardinals
in the appropriate direction, not as a result of somebody granting a concession to Africa. God
is the god of surprises,” he said.
Father Louis Odudu, a director of the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria, agreed. “This issue is
not on the frontburner here at all.”
Of greater concern for the Catholic clergy in Nigeria, and more broadly in Africa, is ensuring
that the church is able to keep growing strongly while maintaining the quality of its
members’ faith.
Encouraging belief is not a problem. A 2010 survey of Islam and Christianity in sub-Saharan
Africa conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that more than threequarters of Africans felt religion was “very important” in their lives. In the US, by
comparison, the figure is 57 per cent. Four in five Christians in Africa attend church at least
once a week – Nigeria tops the list with an 88 per cent attendance rate – and nearly the
same number believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, the Pew study found.
The Catholic church has an advantage over some other forms of Christianity because it runs
a vast network of schools and hospitals in Africa that touch many millions of lives. But
Pentecostal churches, with their boisterous music, fiery preachers and promises of
prosperity, have made strong gains in recent years, especially among younger people. The
biggest megachurches in Nigeria draw tens of thousands of people to a single Sunday service.
“People are being tempted by these sorts of churches, especially in times of crisis” said Fr
Odudu. “We have to show them that faith is not just about miracles and seeing evil
everywhere."