When Pope Benedict XVI commented this month that condom distribution isn’t helping, and may be worsening, the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa, he set off a firestorm of protest. Most non-Catholic commentary has been highly critical of the pope. A cartoon in the Philadelphia Inquirer, reprinted in The Post, showed the pope somewhat ghoulishly praising a throng of sick and dying Africans: “Blessed are the sick, for they have not used condoms.”
Yet, in truth, current empirical evidence supports him….
At a Mass on Saturday in Luanda, Angola, Pope Benedict tried to warn his listeners of the dangers of belief in witchcraft. Though he never used that word, his implication was clear when he suggested that African Catholics should offer Christ to their fellow citizens because “so many of them are living in fear of spirits, of malign and threatening powers.” He worried aloud about many Africans: “In their bewilderment they end up even condemning street children and the elderly as alleged sorcerers. Who can go to them to proclaim that Christ has triumphed over death and all those occult powers?”
Who indeed? The statement reflects a real and tragic problem in many parts of Africa, even among people who identify as Christians. Many still consult shamans and use talismans or potions for everything from fertility problems to exorcisms, while others take things a horrifying step further: Children, especially those with a physical deformity or afflicted with a disease like AIDS, are often brutalized or killed in the belief that they are possessed by evil spirits. The elderly, especially women, are also common targets. Earlier this month, Amnesty International reported that more than 1,000 people were rounded up in Gambia in a government-sponsored witch-hunt, and in Tanzania alone, at least 45 albinos have been murdered since 2007 because popular superstition holds that they are witches.
No wonder church leaders who praise the explosion of faith across Africa as the future of Christianity — the Christian population has gone to 360 million today from eight million in 1900 — also take pains to try to purge superstition and witchcraft from the continent. And they regularly fail, or offend.
CHARLIE ROSE: Your thesis in [your new book] “Dead Aid” is?
DAMBISA MOYO: My thesis is two parts. Essentially first of all a critique of the billion dollar government to government aid packages that have gone to Africa, now totaling over a trillion dollars in the past 60 years. But the second half of the book which I consider actually more important, is, are the prescriptions for actually getting Africa on track to achieve long-term economic development and become an equal partner in the global stage.
CHARLIE ROSE: And aid is preventing that?
DAMBISA MOYO: Absolutely. The types of aid that I’m talking about, I’m not talking about humanitarian or emergency aid, sort of the aid that goes for tsunami, for example. Nor am I talking about NGO or charitable aid which is relatively small beer. I myself sit on the board of a number of charities. But I think it’s important where charities are concerned to understand what they can and cannot do. So they can provide Band-Aid solutions. So we can send a girl to school for example, but they cannot deliver long-term economic development growth and growth or alleviate poverty on the level that we want to see across the continent.
In 2003, imams in northern Nigeria fomented a boycott of polio vaccinations, claiming they were a Western plot to make Muslims infertile or infect them with AIDS. The result: The number of newly crippled children more than doubled the following year, and there were fears that the disease would spread into a dozen countries nearby.
Now, after another tripling of cases in 2008, a big new anti-polio push is under way in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. And this time, some Muslim clerics have made themselves part of the solution, joining community leaders, health workers and the victims themselves in waging the war.
In the dusty streets of Kano, northern Nigeria’s main city, town criers with bullhorns cut through the traffic and crowds, urging parents to take their children to one of hundreds of vaccination centers. Radio and newspapers are full of get-vaccinated ads.
Africans always give a visiting pope a hearty welcome. Thousands of finely dressed Cameroonians danced and sang at the roadside this week as Pope Benedict XVI arrived on an inaugural African tour that will also take in Angola. The Vatican is keen on the continent, home to around 135m Catholics. Pope Benedict delivered a compassionate message, recognising that Africa suffers disproportionately from food shortages, poverty, financial turmoil and a changing climate. Yet for all the mutual appreciation, he got one matter painfully wrong.
Asked about the use of condoms to help tackle the scourge of AIDS, the pope restated, in unusually explicit terms, the church’s position that these are not useful to “overcome” the epidemic, indeed their use actually makes the problem worse. He suggested the disease could be beaten through chastity, abstinence and “correct behaviour”. Speaking in a continent where more than 20m people have died from AIDS and another 22.5m are infected with HIV, his statement sounded otherworldly at best, and crass and uncaring at worst. Merely wishing away human sexual behaviour does nothing for the potential victims of AIDS, many of whom are innocent under even the most moralistic definition of that word.
Pope Benedict XVI, midway through his first trip to Africa, arrived in oil-rich Angola on Friday and admonished those enjoying the nation’s newfound wealth not to ignore the justifiable demands of the poor.
“The multitude of Angolans who live below the threshold of absolute poverty will not be forgotten,” he said in a speech moments after getting off his airplane. “Do not disappoint their expectations!”
In a second address, this one delivered hours later at the residence of President José Eduardo dos Santos, he challenged Angola and other African countries to free their people “from the scourges of greed, violence and unrest” through “modern civic democracy.”
Religion must reject violence, Pope Benedict XVI told Muslim leaders Thursday before celebrating an open-air Mass in front of thousands and delivering a message of hope for Africa’s expanding, vibrant Catholic flock.
In Cameroon’s capital of Yaounde, a clapping, swaying crowd of 40,000 welcomed Benedict to a sports stadium ”” his first occasion as pope to be among a great crowd of faithful on the continent that is witnessing the church’s biggest growth.
Speaking to the mothers and fathers present, the Pontiff asked, “Do you accept that [God] is counting on you to pass on to your children the human and spiritual values that you yourselves have received and which will prepare them to live with love and respect for his holy name?”
“You must be very careful,” he warned. “Africa in general, and Cameroon in particular, place themselves at risk if they do not recognize the True Author of Life!
“Brothers and sisters in Cameroon and throughout Africa, you who have received from God so many human virtues, take care of your souls!”
“Do not let yourselves be captivated by selfish illusions and false ideals,” he continued. “Believe — yes! — continue to believe in God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — he alone truly loves you in the way you yearn to be loved, he alone can satisfy you, can bring stability to your lives. Only Christ is the way of Life.”
In your dioceses, many young men are presenting themselves as candidates for the priesthood. We can only thank the Lord for this. It is essential that serious discernment should take place. With this in mind, I encourage you, despite the organizational difficulties that can sometimes occur at the pastoral level, to give priority to the choice and training of formators and spiritual directors. They must have a personal and profound knowledge of the candidates for the priesthood, and must be capable of offering them a solid human, spiritual and pastoral formation so as to make them mature and balanced men, well prepared for priestly life. Your constant fraternal support will help the formators to accomplish their task in the love of the Church and her mission.
From the earliest days of the Christian faith in Cameroon, men and women religious have made an essential contribution to the life of the Church. I join you in giving thanks to God for this, and I rejoice at the development of consecrated life among the sons and daughters of your country, giving rise also to the expression of distinctively African charisms in communities that originated in your country. In fact, the profession of the evangelical counsels acts as “a sign that can and should effectively inspire all the members of the Church to fulfil indefatigably the duties of their Christian vocation” (Lumen Gentium, 44).
In your ministry of proclaiming the Gospel, you are also assisted by other pastoral workers, particularly catechists. In the evangelization of your country, they have played and they continue to play a key role. I thank them for their generosity and their faithfulness in the service of the Church. Through their work, an authentic inculturation of the faith is taking place. Their human, spiritual and doctrinal formation is therefore indispensable. The material, moral and spiritual support that they receive from their pastors, so that they can accomplish their mission in good living and working conditions, also serves to express to them the Church’s recognition of the importance of their commitment to proclaim the faith and foster its growth.
As Pope Benedict XVI makes his first trip to Africa as the head of the Roman Catholic Church, he will confront a phenomenon that can only be called a mystery.
Why is it that Africa ”“ a continent of bloody conflicts, forced migration, rampant health problems, and profound poverty where as many as 800 million people suffer from chronic hunger ”“ contains some of the most exuberantly religious people on earth? How do Africans find so much hope amid the hopelessness?
Unlike Europe and much of the Western world, where church membership seems to be on a constant decline, Africa is a kind of religious Klondike, where mainstream Christian churches, evangelical churches, and Muslim faiths all appear to be growing with no end in sight. The Catholic Church alone has 185 million members in Africa ”“ 20 percent of the continent’s population. In countries, like Angola, with a Catholic colonial past, Catholics make up 60 percent of the population.
(ACNS) Participants included bishops, clergy and lay people, both men and women, of ECS along with representatives of the Sudan Council of Churches and CMS. There was a representative from the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Presentations were made on inter faith relations in each of seven clustered areas, covering the whole Province. Based on the presentations and the discussion which followed, a number of areas for consultation and dialogue ecumenically and with Muslim partners emerged: the relationship between the churches and the National Government; a review of provision for Christian teaching and curriculum in schools; devising an inter faith curriculum in theological institutions; issues concerning the safety and dignity of women and children; increased local interaction between Christians and Muslims to develop mutual understanding and respect, and to safeguard permanent prosperity.
Future immediate work will concern the strengthening of ecumenical relationships within the Sudan ”“ nationally and regionally ”“ clustered inter faith workshops with Muslim people. The Commission recognised the importance of positioning inter faith dialogue within the contexts of identity, mission and witness. It further recognised he interconnectedness of the dialogue of life and the dialogue of ideas.
The Archbishop of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan, the Most Rev’d Dr. Daniel Deng Bul Yak, has this week sent a petition, on behalf of his Church, the Church of Uganda and the Anglican Church in north eastern DR Congo, to the Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
In the letter, the Anglican Church leaders of the region affected since Christmas by repeated attacks by the self-styled Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) ”“ Southern Sudan, northern Uganda and north eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) ”“ appealed to the British Government for assistance.
The request was specifically two-fold: firstly to put diplomatic pressure on the LRA leaders, leaders in Sudan, Uganda and Congo, and leaders of the UN peacekeeping missions in Sudan and Congo to do more to bring an end to the brutal attacks on unarmed civilians by the LRA, which have seen many Congolese and Sudanese towns swamped with refugees and displaced people since December. Secondly, the prelates pleaded for more international assistance for the relief effort in supporting these displaced people ”“ most of whom are now dependent on their and other churches.
One of …[Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s] first actions after the arrest warrant was to undertake yet another crime against humanity: He expelled major international aid groups, including the International Rescue Committee and the Dutch section of Doctors Without Borders. In effect, he is now preparing to massacre the Darfuri people in still another way, for Darfuris are living in camps and depend on aid workers for food, water and health care ”” even as deadly meningitis has broken out in one of the camps.
“The consequences are going to be dire,” notes George Rupp, the president of the International Rescue Committee, on which 1.75 million Sudanese depend for water, sanitation, education and health care. “If Sudan persists in this decision, it’s difficult to see how the outcome will be anything other than serious suffering and death for hundreds of thousands of people.”
Mr. Bashir is now testing the international community, and President Obama and other world leaders must respond immediately and decisively, in conjunction with as many non-Western nations as possible.
Follow up: This related NPR story which I caught driving home last night is worthwhile also.
Twenty-five years ago, people involved in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa would say wistfully: “Look at Zimbabwe. It’s come through a bitter war of liberation without wrecking its social cohesion, it’s developed a proper democratic culture and it’s feeding itself.”
Granted, this was, even then, a slightly too rosy picture, but it wasn’t nonsense. It represented a conviction that Zimbabwe was showing what was possible to its neighbours and indeed to the whole continent.
And this means that one of the worst of the countless casualties inflicted by Robert Mugabe on his wretched country is the destruction of many people’s hopes, both in Zimbabwe itself and throughout Africa. The continent can’t afford more failed states, mass hunger, contempt for the rule of law. And how much more painful it is when a country has been held up as a sign of promise.
A new wave of violence has erupted in Nigeria as Muslims and Christians battled in the northern Bauchi state.
The latest incident saw Muslims attacking Christian places of worship after two mosques were set on fire. The Muslims blamed this on the local Christian population.
However, Government officials were blaming the violence on local politicians. “This is a crisis fomented by troublemakers intent on causing disaffection in the state,” state governor Yuguda said in a radio broadcast.
I was going to begin this column with a 13-year-old Chadian boy crippled by a bullet in his left knee, but my hunch is that you might be more interested in hearing about another person on the river bank beside the boy: George Clooney.
Clooney flew in with me to the little town of Dogdore, along the border with Darfur, Sudan, to see how the region is faring six years after the Darfur genocide began. Clooney figured that since cameras follow him everywhere, he might as well redirect some of that spotlight to people who need it more.
It didn’t work perfectly: No paparazzi showed up. But, hey, it has kept you reading at least this far into yet another hand-wringing column about Darfur, hasn’t it?
So I’ll tell you what. You read my columns about Darfur from this trip, and I’ll give you the scoop on every one of Clooney’s wild romances and motorcycle accidents in this remote nook of Africa. You’ll read it here, way before The National Enquirer has it, but only if you wade through paragraphs of genocide.
The Darfur conflict has now lasted longer than World War II, but this year could be a turning point – provided that President Barack Obama shows leadership and that the world backs up the International Criminal Court’s expected arrest warrant for Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
“You can’t understand Africa without understanding religion,” said Emmanuel Katongole, a Catholic priest from Uganda. As he led a tour of Kampala, Uganda’s capital, it was soon clear what he meant. Slogans such as “Jesus cares” and “Try Jesus” adorn taxicabs. Ads for a Catholic bank named Centenary print the letter T as a cross. Businesses have such names as “Holy Light Clinic,” “Born Again Bankers” and “Holy Hair Care.” “There is no Western-style division between secular and sacred or public and private here,” Katongole said.
But the infusion of religion into everyday life has not made Uganda a peaceful land. “We have a culture in Uganda of taking power by the point of a gun,” said Archbishop John Baptist Odama. The archbishop’s see, based in the town of Gulu in the north of the country, has been the scene of a vicious civil war for the past 22 years. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony, has waged an antigovernment insurgency, savagely attacking rural villages and abducting children, who are turned into soldiers or sex slaves. An estimated 25,000 to 30,000 children have been kidnapped over the years.
(ACNS) The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is pleased to appoint the Revd Canon Joanna Udal to serve as the Secretary for Anglican Communion Affairs, based at Lambeth Palace.
She said: “It’s an exciting time to be involved as we try to build on the positive encounters of the Lambeth Conference and to rebuild mutual trust and recognition. We’re challenged to keep uppermost that God’s mission is for the world, as together we seek to be conformed to Christ in our identity and in our common life.”
Since 2001, Canon Joanna has been serving in the Sudan as Assistant to the Archbishop of the Sudan, an appointment made jointly through the Church Mission Society and Lambeth Palace. In this work she has travelled widely in Sudan and internationally, supporting the Archbishop in his public ministry.
Human Rights Watch is reporting that the rebel Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) brutally slaughtered at least 100 Congolese civilians in the Kivu provinces in the east between January 20 and February 8.
According to reports, HRW researchers interviewed dozens of victims and witnesses who recently arrived at camps near Goma, the capital of North Kivu. Their accounts are the first reports of killings of civilians by the FDLR since joint operations between Rwandan Defence Forces and the Congolese army against the group began on January 20.
“The FDLR have a very ugly past, but we haven’t seen this level of violence in years,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg, the senior researcher in the Africa division at Human Rights Watch. “We’ve documented many abuses by FDLR forces, but these are killings of ghastly proportions.”
The Primates of the Anglican Communion, meeting in Alexandria, Egypt on 3rd February, 2009, heard first hand reports of the situation in Zimbabwe, and note with horror the appalling difficulties of the people of this nation under the current regime.
We give thanks to God for the faithful witness of the Christians of Zimbabwe during this time of pain and suffering, especially those who are being denied access to their churches. We wish to assure them of our love, support and prayers as they face gross violation of human rights, hunger and loss of life as well as the scourge of a cholera epidemic, all due directly to the deteriorating socio-political and economic situation in Zimbabwe.
It is a matter of grave concern that there is an apparent breakdown of the rule of law within the country, and that the democratic process is being undermined, as shown in the flagrant disregard of the outcome of the democratic elections of March 31st 2008, so that Mr Robert Mugabe illegitimately holds on to power. Even the recent political situation of power sharing, brokered by SADC, may not be long lasting and simply further entrench Mr Mugabe’s regime. There appears to be a total disregard for life, consistently demonstrated by Mr Mugabe through systematic kidnap, torture and the killing of Zimbabwean people. The economy of Zimbabwe has collapsed, as evidenced by the use of foreign currencies in an independent state.
We therefore call upon President Robert Mugabe to respect the outcome of the elections of 2008 and to step down. We call for the implementation of the rule of law and the restoration of democratic processes.
5. GLOBAL CONCERNS
a. As a result of a presentation of a mission survey in the Sudan we were humbled by the remarkable faith of the bishops, clergy and congregations in a country that has been devastated by war for more than two decades. We embraced the Primate’s call for a continuing Sudan Mission Initiative and as initial steps appointed the Dean, Archbishop Maxwell Anikwenwa, as the interim Sudan Mission Coordinator to work with the leadership of the Church of the Sudan so that we might discern together the next steps for this partnership. We resolved to continue the work of the Church of Nigeria Mission Society locally and in the francophone countries of West Africa including Benin Republic, Cote d’Ivore, Chad, Niger, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Mali and Togo and individual dioceses are urged to take an active role in specific projects.
b. Following the Primate’ report on the meeting of the GAFCON Primates Council with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the House of Bishops, while expressing support for this effort to build bridges, stressed that in any effort to bring restoration to the Communion there can be no compromise on the need for genuine repentance by those who have walked away from the ”˜faith once delivered to the saints’. We are, however, delighted by the continuing fruit of GAFCON, the developing Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans around the world, the work of the GAFCON Primates Council and the emerging Anglican Church in North America.
You may never have heard of E. A. Adeboye, but the pastor of The Redeemed Christian Church of God is one of the most successful preachers in the world. He boasts that his church has outposts in 110 countries. He has 14,000 branches””claiming 5 million members””in his home country of Nigeria alone. There are 360 RCCG churches in Britain, and about the same number in U.S. cities like Chicago, Dallas, and Tallahassee, Fla. Adeboye says he has sent missionaries to China and such Islamic countries as Pakistan and Malaysia. His aspirations are outsize. He wants to save souls, and he wants to do so by planting churches the way Starbucks used to build coffee shops: everywhere.
“In the developing world we say we want churches to be within five minutes’ walk of every person,” he tells NEWSWEEK. “In the developed world, we say five minutes of driving.” Such a goal may seem outlandish, but Adeboye is a Pentecostal preacher: he believes in miracles. And Pentecostalism is the biggest, fastest-growing Christian movement since the Reformation.
The African Children’s Choir goes to the neediest places ”” those hardest hit by disease, war or poverty. The children are brought to a training academy for about four months, Victor says, and then they join the choir. The children tour for 12 to 15 months, and when they go home, they go to a Music for Life center to get an education. Victor himself was chosen from an orphanage to join the choir: Music for Life paid for his schooling up to the university level, and when he graduated, he came back to the choir to volunteer.
“About 2,000 babies are born every day in sub-Saharan Africa to HIV-positive mothers,” [Bill] Rankin said, “and we thought we could save a lot of the children by getting that medication out into the villages where the people are.”
Rankin and Wilson started the alliance with donations from friends but have since secured a $1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a $360,000 grant from the Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation.
Contacts with African religious groups that Rankin made during his career as a priest came in handy.
“We knew that the best pathway to get to the villages and reach the people was to go through the religious organizations,” Rankin said, “because in very poor countries the religious groups are the only stable infrastructure in place.”
For more than 120 years an area the size of Europe has been known as the African Free State, the Belgian Congo, Zaire, and today the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Stretching from the Atlantic coast to the borders of Uganda and Rwanda and Tanzania in the east and Sudan and Angola to the north and south, this nearly ungovernable territory is home to a multitude of tribes and languages, huge potential of human talent, intelligence and imagination and vast natural resources.
Why, then, is such a wonderful part of God’s creation the subject of Joseph Conrad’s ominous novel The Heart of Darkness (1899)?
The even more crucial question is why over a hundred years later, as Andrew Mitchell MP reported in this Agenda column on November 28, is the Eastern DRC still “a humanitarian catastrophe”?
A very hearty amen to this final question. It remains a matter for daily prayer. Read it all.
If Barack Obama wants to help end the genocide in Darfur, he doesn’t have to look far for ideas of how to accomplish that.
President Bush and his top aides have been given, and ignored, a menu of options for tough steps to squeeze Sudan – even destroy its air force – and those will soon be on the new president’s desk.
The State Department’s policy planning staff prepared the first set of possible responses back in 2004 (never pursued), and this year Ambassador Richard Williamson has privately pushed the White House to squeeze Sudan until it stops the killing.
Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it’s Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.
It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.
Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa….