While in Europe and other areas of the world there has been a mixed reaction to the publication of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s statement ‘Fiducia Supplicans’, with German bishops in clear majority in favour or French who speak of blessings as a ‘way to get closer to God’, the Catholic Church in African is in revolt.
The publication, on 18 December last, of the doctrinal declaration, specifically the chapter referring to the possibility of blessing ‘irregular’ or same-sex couples, is triggering unrestrained reactions in many bishops’ conferences and causing worrying splits.
Not a day goes by without pronouncements by bishops, official statements by entire conferences or interviews with individual exponents expressing absolute opposition, even to the point of threatening total disobedience.
Already at the beginning of November, the responses of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, to the doubts expressed by Mon[1]signor José Negri, bishop of Santo Amaro, Brazil, had raised much controversy.
The very important Vatican body, the same one that issued the “Fiducia Supplicans” on the Pope’s input, had on that occasion expressed (actually reiterated) that transsexuals can also ask for and receive baptism, and that transsexuals as well as homosexuals living with another person – provided that they lead “a life in conformity with the faith” can be godparents and witnesses at weddings in church. But African reactions to ‘Fiducia Supplicans’ go much further.
Home to 236 million of the world’s 1.3 Luca Attanasio billion Catholics – as Fides News Agency reports – Africa accounted for more than half of the 16.2 million people who joined the Church worldwide in 2021, one of the places where Catholicism is more on the rise.
Concerns – as the New York Times writes – have been raised about whether this declaration, as well as other Rome’s positions, could lead to a rift between Pope Francis and a region that is a demographic bright spot for Catholicism. “Homosexuality falsifies and corrupts human anthropology and trivialises sexuality, marriage and the family, the foundations of society.”
African culture
In African culture, this practice is not part of family and social values,’ thunders the Cameroonian bishops’ conference. ‘Consequently,’ it concludes, ‘we, the bishops, prohibit forever all blessings of homosexual couples in the Church of Cameroon.
This is a clear act of insubordination to an official document of the dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith approved by the Pope. In a statement issued on 5 January 2024, the Bishops’ Conference of the Democratic Republic of Congo affirms “Regardless of the recognised right of the faithful to receive help from the sacred pastors through the spiritual goods of the Church, especially the Word of God, the sacraments and the sacramentals, we say NO to any form of blessing of same-sex couples”.
Very similarly, Nigeria’s bishops say that ‘it is not possible for the Church to bless same-sex unions and activities’ and add that allowing such blessings ‘would go against the law of God, the teachings of the Church, the laws of our nation and the cultural sensitivity of our people’.
The positions of individual bishops such as the Kenyan Martin Mtumbuka of Karonga Diocese “[It] looks to us like a heresy; it reads like a heresy; and its effects a heresy,” or the Malawian Martin Mtumbuka, diocese of Karonga, who called on God’s people to ‘forget and ignore this controversial and blasphemous statement’, even though he was aware that, ‘in doing so, I invite you to publicly reject a document signed by the Holy Father’, leave no doubt.
Like an axe comes, then, the position of the umbrella body of the Regional Bishops’ Conference of West Africa (Recowa): ‘With regard to the blessing of homosexual couples, Recowa remains categorical: it will not take place in our area’.
Apparently more nuanced but equally harsh in content is the statement of the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops. The document states that the Church works to ‘recover the lost and redirect all sinners to the source of salvation and eternal life, but does not approve of sinful behaviour, such as homosexual activity. In blessing people, we do not bless the immoral actions they may engage in, but we hope that the blessing and prayers offered over them will cause them to convert and return to the ways of the Lord”.
The Zambian bishops maintain that ‘Fiducia Supplicans’ “is not and should not be under[1]stood as an endorsement of same-sex unions,” and they state that the scriptures “present homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity”. The list is much longer and the uprising almost general.
So much so that Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, Archbishop of Kinshasa, in his capacity as president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (Secam, the body that groups together all the conferences of the Catholic bishops of Africa, ed.), on Christmas Eve launched a continental consultation “to provide unequivocal clarity” on the “Fiducia Supplicans” for the African population, and offer “definitive guidance” to God’s people.
In the meantime, the same dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith is also running for cover. Urged on by harsh stances by episcopates from halfway around the world, not only from Africa, it published a clarification text on 4 January, stressing that the blessings envisaged by the “Fiducia Supplicans” differ from liturgical blessings in that they are “blessings of a few seconds, without Ritual and without a Blessing”.
African laws
It is certainly difficult to imagine an imminent change in the African Church with regard to people who are homosexual or have orientations other than heterosexuality. The African continent, in fact, is by far the most homo-transphobic continent on the planet. In most of Africa – 33 out of 55 countries – homosexuality is a crime punishable by imprisonment.
Last year alone, six states (Kenya, Ghana, Namibia, Niger, Tanzania and Uganda) have taken steps to even tighten their anti-homosexuality laws, and others could follow suit. The range goes from legality without recognition of status (a block of Central Africa including Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Gabon etc., or western including Mali, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, etc.), to a prison sentence but without enforcement (South Sudan, Namibia), to actual imprisonment (all of North Africa, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Nigeria and various others) to the death penalty not enforced (Mauritania and various states of Nigeria), even going as far as the actual death penalty in the Nigerian state of Bauchi or in the areas under the control of al Shabab in Somalia.
Sealing a very bad trend, comes the news in late 2023 of Burundi President Evariste Ndayishimiye’s shock proposal to introduce stoning against gays. People are certainly less homophobic than their rulers who maintain or propose medieval measures. Paradoxically, the Church, with its roots in the continent, among thousands of controversies and disagreements, is opening a debate that, maybe, can trigger change.
