Strengthening Spiritual Ties

By Richard N. Ostling

Borne on a 20-ft. fishing boat covered by a canopy in the papal colors of yellow and white, John Paul II, successor of Peter the Fisherman, traveled to the waterside sanctuary of Our Lady of Lake Togo. To many of the smiling tribesmen who came to greet the white-robed visitor, the omens for the day were auspicious. That morning a 5-ft. python had slithered over a wall in the church compound. A majority of the people in the region are animists who venerate pythons. The incident, early in the Pope's seven-nation tour of Africa, indicated the huge spiritual challenges and opportunities on a continent where Christianity is rapidly winning converts without completely weaning all of them from tribal faiths.

The twelve-day journey took John Paul to Togo, the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Zaire, Kenya and, this week, to a final stop in Muslim Morocco. As in two previous African journeys, in 1980 and 1982, the turnouts were exuberant, totaling more than 1 million in Zaire alone. Says Cameroon's President Paul Biya, himself a Roman Catholic: "The Pope loves Africa, and Africa loves the Pope."

In Zaire's capital of Kinshasa, 250,000 attended a Mass where the Pope performed the first beatification of a black African woman, Sister Marie-Clementine Anuarite Nengapeta, who was beaten and bayoneted to death in 1964 as she resisted a rape. Before a hushed assembly that included Anuarite's family, John Paul recounted that the martyred nun had, "like Christ," pardoned the soldier who assaulted her. Then he added dramatically, "And I too forgive her killer with all my heart, in the name of the entire church." The man, educated by missionaries, had asked publicly for the Pope's healing words.

The Pope's moral stature and commanding presence give him an influence in Africa greater than other European or American visitors. Said Kwanteng Pius Javran, a 22-year-old student in western Cameroon: "We do not regard the Pope as a white man. He is an ordinary person sent to us black men." John Paul used his position to appeal for human rights and religious liberty. Though he had planned to downplay political issues on the trip, as violence spread in South Africa he repeated earlier denunciations of apartheid. In a speech to diplomats in Cameroon, the Pope then broadened the issue beyond apartheid by taking up the cause of all in Africa who suffer human rights abuses: "I would like to lend them my voice," he said. "How can one not think of arbitrary arrests, of executions without due process, of detention for political opinions, of tortures and disappearances?"

John Paul's grueling tour is part of a long-range effort to strengthen Rome's spiritual ties with the important African church. The ranks of Catholics on the continent tripled between 1950 and 1970, and now grow by 2 million per year. (Current total: an estimated 77 million out of the more than 200 million Christians in Africa.) In line with his strategy, the Pontiff had few kind words for the West, and even offered one apology: "Men belonging to Christian nations did not always act [as Christians], and we ask our African brothers who suffered so much, for example because of the slave trade, for forgiveness."

The Pope had a related goal: to urge balance between respect for African and Catholic traditions. "Having received the Christian faith, develop it," he bade the Togolese. But he warned, "It is not the Gospel that must change. It is the different cultures that must strive to better absorb the life and spiritual health brought to the world by Jesus Christ."

The Vatican is especially wary of "Africanization," a movement in which primitive fetishes turn up in church art and indigenous theologians speculate on blending ancestor worship with the Mass. Although the church is expanding, it suffers a dire shortage of African priests: for every new man ordained, there are 10,000 baptisms. The Pope performed two priestly ordination services, underscoring the importance of recruitment. In addition, numerous Catholics cannot receive Communion because of polygamous or tribal marriages that are not recognized by the church.

Christianity faces another external challenge, from Islam. South of the Sahara, Christian-Muslim relations generally are good, and the tension at the moment is mainly that of competition in seeking converts. In Cameroon, during one of several meetings he arranged with Muslim chieftains, John Paul addressed them as "brothers," and urged them to "walk hand in hand" with Christians "to serve God and humanity." Before returning to Rome this week, the Pope for the first time was to accept an invitation from the head of an Islamic state, King Hassan II of Morocco, to deliver an unprecedented speech to 60,000 Muslim youths gathered in Casablanca for the Pan-Islamic Games. The Pontiff hoped that this appearance would encourage the forces of toleration within Islam, and that his latest tour would help prevent the militant brand of the rival faith from spreading in black Africa, where so much of Christianity's future hope lies. --By Richard N. Ostling. Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof with the Pope and Joseph Ngala/Nairobi

With reporting by Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof with the Pope, JOSEPH NGALA/NAIROBI