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"It
would show that God has a sense of humor to give the
people a black pope, but are Westerners ready to accept
that?" asked Cardinal Bernard Agre of Ivory Coast,
one of Africa's 12 cardinals.
The
growing Catholic churches in Africa now number 135.6
million, which is nearly 17 percent of worldwide membership.
While
John Paul increased the number of African cardinals
by only one, he greatly boosted their profile by calling
several to the Vatican. Arinze, for example, was entrusted
with mediating interfaith relations -- one of John Paul's
favorite projects.
"John
Paul strengthened Africa's role in the church,"
said Mario Aguilar, dean of divinity at St. Andrew's
University in Scotland. "John Paul gave the tools
to the African churches to become more central to the
church."
Aguilar
thinks that has increased the chances of seeing an African
pope, but many in Africa are skeptical that time has
come.
"I
doubt that the white man will allow a black man to become
pope," said Chinyere Osigwe, a 40-year-old Nigerian
Osigwe,
a mother of four children, would like to see the papacy
go to Arinze.
Arinze,
72, shares John Paul's conservative views on abortion,
contraception and homosexuality -- which tend to play
well in Africa.
Nigerians
also remember Arinze's work during the Biafra civil
war in the late 1960s and early '70s, when missionary
schools in the young archbishop's domain were transformed
overnight into camps filled with starving refugees.
The
church's influence in Africa goes beyond its congregations.
Catholic schools educate millions, counting several
current leaders among their alumni. Church-run hospitals
and clinics serve far more people than the Catholic
population. Catholic charities make the church known
even in villages without congregations.
John
Paul made 13 trips to Africa and underlined the continent's
importance to Catholicism by calling last year for a
second synod of African bishops, years before one was
due.
Such
a meeting is needed because of the rapid changes in
African Catholicism. According to the U.S. Catholic
News Service, half of Africa's 426 active Catholic bishops
have been named since the 1994 synod and the continent's
Catholic population has increased 30 percent over a
decade as has the number of priests and seminarians.
When
the pope made his first visit in 1980, many African
countries suffered under Marxist regimes that persecuted
Catholics or were fettered by military and civilian
dictatorships. Zimbabwe had just become independent,
but South Africa and Namibia remained under white rule.
Democracy
spread in the 1990s, although in places that let loose
tribal and ethnic rivalries blew up into civil wars
and regional conflicts.
Many
African think a leader like Arinze -- with his work
helping to ease discord between religions -- would have
a chance at inspiring democracy in a similar way that
John Paul contributed to the fall of communism in eastern
Europe.
Former
Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize
winner, praised John Paul for speaking out against the
evils of apartheid and seeking to unite humanity. He
also called for the next pope to be African.
"We
hope that perhaps the cardinals when they meet will
follow the first non-Italian pope by electing the first
African pope," Tutu said from Cape Town, South
Africa.
But
Archbishop of Dakar Theodore Adrien Sarr doesn't think
the cardinals will.
"An
African pope? Sooner or later we will see it, but this
time around, I don't think the time has come,"
he said.
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