The Pope in Africa

The American president has been sparring with the American pope. After Leo XIV condemned “absurd and inhuman violence” in the Middle East, President Trump called the pope “weak on crime” and “terrible on foreign policy” and said Leo was in the Vatican only because of him.

That, along with an A.I.-generated image of Trump as a healing Jesus — Trump later argued it portrayed him as a doctor — made for a lot of dramatic headlines this week. But from the church’s perspective, all this is overshadowing the main focus of Leo’s current trip. Today my colleague Motoko Rich, who is on the road with him, writes about a place that is central to the future of Catholicism: Africa.

The future of the Catholic church is in Africa. It could get complicated.

By Motoko Rich

There are already 288 million African Catholics, representing more than one fifth of the faithful worldwide. The religion is growing faster in Africa than on any other continent.

In a sign of the region’s growing importance to the church, Pope Leo XIV is visiting Africa before traveling to either the U.S. — his homeland — or South America, one of Catholicism’s traditional strongholds, where he spent two decades of his career before assuming the papacy.

But Africa is also tricky ideological territory. It’s where resistance to some of the reforms enacted by Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, runs deepest. When Francis allowed priests to bless same-sex couples, it inflamed Africa’s conservative bishops, many of whom still discourage priests from performing the blessings today.

It’s a place where Catholicism is in competition with conservative evangelical and Pentecostal rivals for worshipers, and where church leaders worry that Francis’ reforms might have hurt the church’s prospects for expansion.

Leo, who is about a quarter of the way through an 11-day trip, is potentially wading into long-running tensions over some of Catholicism’s most charged issues.

The ideological battles being fought in Africa “will define the future of the Catholic Church,” said Ebenezer Obadare, a senior fellow for Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

The Cameroon case study

One country that encapsulates the tensions over Africa’s place within the church is Cameroon, which Leo is currently visiting.

The country has deep Catholic roots dating back to the 19th century. Close to 30 percent of the population — about 8 million people — identifies as Catholic, including the president, Paul Biya.

It’s also a place where homosexuality is outlawed, as it is in dozens of African countries. After Francis said of gay priests, “Who am I to judge?”, and later let priests bless same-sex couples, Cameroonian bishops were among the fiercest opponents.

“Africa operates with its cultural values, its ancestral customs,” said Paul Engoulou, a parish priest in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon. “As such, it cannot adapt to unnatural practices such as homosexuality.”

So far, Leo, who has tried to walk a middle ground on social issues after Francis’ reforms, has not brought up homosexuality on his trip. (One theology professor told me he thought the topic might be “a lion that he wants to let sleep.”)

He also hasn’t brought up polygamy, a practice that is legal in Cameroon and a common cultural practice on much of the continent — but a violation of Catholic doctrine. Late last month, a commission of African bishops released a report discussing the need for the church to offer Catholics in polygamous relationships a path to participate in the faith. The report made clear that anyone with multiple spouses could not be baptized. But it offered support to those who might consider how to combine their faith with polygamy as they slowly worked to move away from the practice.

In Yaoundé, Leo made a speech yesterday at the presidential palace, where he stressed the importance of government transparency and the rule of law. The speech helped assuage the concerns of some that Biya, the world’s longest-serving authoritarian leader, could use the papal visit to rehabilitate his image. But so far this trip — though we’re just a few days in — the church’s ideological fault lines have gone unaddressed.

A power disparity

The tensions between the church’s leadership in Rome and its followers in Africa are arguably a reflection of a long-running disparity: Africa’s importance to the future of Catholicism is not reflected in the makeup of the Vatican’s leadership.

There are no Cameroonians in the College of Cardinals, the group of 121 senior church leaders who advise and elect popes. Only 14 are from the entire continent of Africa. By comparison, 18 are from Italy.

“Cameroon and Africa provide the numbers to keep the church alive,” said Henry Michael Gueche, 36, a technology entrepreneur in Yaoundé, who described himself as a faithful Catholic. But while Africans have “a seat at the pew,” Gueche said, they don’t have “a real seat at the table in Rome.”

As an Argentine, Francis was the first non-European pope since 741 A.D. He has since been followed by Leo, another non-European. The church’s leadership is moving toward what Francis called the “peripheries,” where Catholicism is most vibrant. Before Leo’s selection, there was speculation that the next pope could be African.

That hasn’t happened yet. But Leo’s visit highlights both the continent’s ongoing importance and the tensions that may deepen as that importance grows.

For more: How do you ask the pope about Trump? Here’s how.

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Iran has continued to exchange messages with the U.S. through Pakistan since the initial talks ended without an agreement last weekend, and the two sides have yet to agree to another round, an Iranian spokesman said yesterday.

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RECIPE

This quick sheet-pan shrimp brings the smoky, tangy essence of tandoori-style cooking into the kitchen with minimal effort. The shrimp are marinated in spiced yogurt. Serve with warm naan, roti or fluffy basmati rice and a cooling raita for a complete meal.