ROME
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
ERIC REGULY
ROME — The Globe and Mail
Africa gives the Vatican bragging rights.
It is the one significant part of the Catholic world that is on the rise, with near explosive growth. The question is whether Africa’s enthusiastic response to the missionary church should be rewarded with the election of an African pope.
The idea certainly resonated with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, in 2004, when he told German TV that “we are ready for a black pope” and called Africa the “spiritual lung of the world.” He said much the same in 2009 when he visited Cameroon and Angola (he went to Benin in 2011).
But the 115 elector cardinals, whose conclave to elect a replacement for Pope Benedict begins Tuesday afternoon, may not be ready for an African pope just yet, given the fact that the Latin American church is much larger. About 40 per cent of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics are Latin Americans – Brazil and Mexico having the biggest Catholic populations.
“It would certainly be encouraging for the [next] pope to be non-European,” said Father Norman Tanner, professor of church history at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, noting the church’s decline in Europe and North America.
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