Religion: Black Bishops

French politicos and journalists are hot under the collar because of a new book with the provocative title The Vatican Against France. Its author: Protestant François Mejan, onetime (1946-50) head of the French Interior Ministry’s Direction des Cultes (which keeps a discreet watch on the activities of all religious groups in France). The book’s thesis: the Roman Catholic Church is undermining France’s prestige and power in her colonies, especially Africa, by setting up a native clergy instead of depending on French missionaries.

The cross and the flag were once good partners, Mejan maintains, but the Vatican dramatically switched its policy in 1951 with the publication of the encyclical Evangelii praecones (Heralds of the Gospel). In this encyclical the Pope specifically urged “a network of native priests” to protect the church in the event of nationalistic revolts in colonies. The Vatican’s reply to Mejan’s book: native clergy has been the church’s aim for centuries, but only recently has it become possible on an important scale, thanks to modern communications between Rome and the world’s missionary reaches, plus growing education among the natives.

Mejan’s militant indignation spotlights a remarkable achievement of the Roman Catholic Church in Africa’s 219 mission territories, where 19 black bishops and 1,690 black priests (up from three bishops and 1,254 priests in 1951) work smoothly with their white fellow churchmen. Notable among the native church leaders:

BISHOP ALOYSIUS BIGIRUMWANI, Apostolic Vicar of Ruanda Urundi (bordering on the Belgian Congo), is a descendant of the kings of the famed Watutsi tribe of giants. From a mountaintop mission at Nyundo, overlooking Lake Kivu and the flaring volcanoes of Nyiragongo and Nya-mulagira. tall (6 ft. 3 in.) Bishop Bigi-rumwani, 53, directs five white bishops and 471 priests, both white and Negro. Since his consecration in 1952, 20,000 converts have joined the church in his own diocese, but two-thirds of the half-million tribesmen in the territory he administers as senior bishop are still pagan. The bishop considers their conversion more a matter of manpower than of time. “With enough priests to station one every ten kilometers, it would not take too long,” he says. The first step in that direction is a new seminary with an enrollment of , more than 100 students on a 15-year course. One of his biggest problems: witchcraft, which he lets alone as long as it sticks to medicine, but attacks with a combination of logic and ridicule when it spills over into prophecy and sympathetic magic. Last year Bishop Bigirumwani consecrated Swiss Bishop Andre Perraudin at Kabgaye, Ruanda—the first white bishop ever to be consecrated by a Negro bishop on the African continent.

BISHOP JOHN KODWO AMISSAH, of the Cape Coast archdiocese in Ghana, was consecrated last June at the age of 35, less than eight years after he became a priest, and now serves as auxiliary to white Archbishop William Thomas Porter, 70. The archdiocese numbers 157,293 Roman Catholics, 27,158 taking instruction, and includes 82 priests (64 white, 18 Negro), with 40 parishes, three secondary schools, three teacher-training colleges, five hospitals and 329 primary schools. Bishop Amissah’s thesis at St. Peter’s College in Rome was on a comparison between Catholic canon law and native customs on marriage; he is currently investigating the native custom of pouring libations on important occasions (English gin, schnapps or potent akpeteshie, illicitly distilled from palm juice). There has been considerable church controversy over this practice; church leaders boycotted a welcome ceremony to the Duchess of Kent during Ghana’s recent Independence Day celebration because a libation was poured. “We educated people do not yet know what a villager understands when he pours a libation,” he says. “Until we do, we cannot decide whether it is good or bad.”

BISHOP JOSEPH KIWANUKA, of Masaka in Uganda, was consecrated at Rome in 1939, the first native African bishop of modern times. Swirling round his diocese in a 1956 Chevrolet and a cloud of dust. Bishop Kiwanuka, 58, oversees the work of 58 African priests, plus 15 white priests who work as teachers in schools and seminaries, are being replaced as native priests are trained to fill their posts. Many Masaka seminarians take specialist courses outside Africa after their ordination, and Bishop Kiwanuka himself hopes to make his second visit to the U.S. next year to study sociology. His biggest problem: Moslem competition. Says he: “Both African and Asian Moslems in the diocese accumulate wealth and slowly extend their influence. Their wealth, plus polygamy, enables them to win many young Catholic girls.” Bishop Kiwanuka’s second biggest problem: African nationalism, which is apt to view Christianity as a white man’s weapon. The nationalist Bataka Party has sponsored an organized reversion to tribal forms of worship. Under Bishop Kiwanuka’s leadership, 62,503 converts have joined his flock. “Even the young girls seduced into Moslem homes usually cling to their Catholic faith,” he says. “At least they die as Catholics.”

The importance of these churchmen and the 16 other native bishops is highly rated at the Vatican. Said an official in the Congregation Propaganda Fide last week: “Very few Africans know the name of Portuguese Cardinal de Gouveia of Lourengo Marques, Mozambique, the only cardinal in Africa. But they all know that there are 19 African bishops in Africa. Many of them know them all or most of them by name. Though this may not mean any appreciable increase in converts, it does show that Negroes have great pleasure in knowing that any of their number may reach to bishop’s rank if he has the attitude of virtue and the education.”