Pope's Message to Africans Urgently Needs to be Heard in America & Throughout the World. Are We Listening?

Addressing Angolan political leaders and an international group of diplomats, Pope Benedict XVI appealed on behalf of African families struggling from the effects of poverty, disease and war.

The Pope said women and girls in particular experience "crushing" discrimination and sexual exploitation. At the same time, he criticized agencies that, under the pretext of improving health care, try to promote abortion.

"How bitter the irony of those who promote abortion as a form of 'maternal' health care! How disconcerting the claim that the termination of life is a matter of reproductive health!" he said.


The previous day, March 19, Pope Benedict delivered his sermon emphatically, speaking in French and English. He said it was essential for African mothers and fathers to pass on to their children the human and spiritual values of the past, beginning with belief in God.

"The first priority," he said, "will consist in restoring a sense of the acceptance of life as a gift from God. Every tiny person, however weak, is created in God's image. Every person must live! Death must not prevail over life!"

Celebrating Mass with more than 40,000 Catholics in Cameroon, Pope Benedict XVI urged African families to reject the "tyranny of materialism" and other social changes that risk eroding the continent's traditional values.

"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!" the pope said in a homily March 19 at the Amadou Ahidjo soccer stadium in Yaounde.

The Pope held out St. Joseph, whose feast day was celebrated the same day, as a model for husbands and fathers in Africa. He made a special plea for husbands to treat their wives with respect and love, as St. Joseph treated Mary. It is a sensitive topic in Africa, where in many places wives are still considered the property of their husbands and subservient to them.


The pope also offered special words to young Africans, asking them to allow Christ into their lives and, if they feel called, to enter the "supreme service" of the priesthood or consecrated life.

"To the children who no longer have a father, or who live abandoned in the poverty of the streets, to those forcibly separated from their parents, to the maltreated and abused, to those constrained to join paramilitary forces that are terrorizing some countries, I would like to say: God loves you, he has not forgotten you and St. Joseph protects you!" he said, as the crowd burst into applause.

At the end of the liturgy, the pope handed out the 60-page working document for the Oct. 4-25 Synod of Bishops for Africa. The text called on Catholics to help end the rampant injustice that fuels conflicts on the continent and usher in an era of peace. It said the synod would examine ways to better prepare the faithful in Africa for a more visible and active role in promoting unity both in the church and society.


The document said globalization "infringes on Africa's rights" and tends "to be the vehicle for the domination of a single, cultural model and a culture of death." But it also pinned the blame for many of Africa's ills on the evil in people's hearts, which makes them thirsty for riches, power or revenge.


sources: The Catholic Standard & Catholic News Service