Will the next Pontiff from Africa?

If the only predictor of the one who becomes the next Pope was where the Catholic Church grows the fastest, then almost confident that he will come from Africa.

The Catholic population is expanding faster than any more than half a global increase.

Although there were at least three pontiffs from Africa, the latter – Pope Gelasia I – died more than 1500 years ago – many claim that it was time for another.

If the cardinals who vote for the leader of the Roman -Catholic Church – known as dramatic power plants, will meet in the Vatican to choose the successor of Pope Francis, or will these facts affect?

“I think it would be great to have an African Pope,” said the African priest of the Nigerian Catholic priest and associate professor at the University of Depoul in Chicago, claiming that the Church’s leadership should better reflect the World Congregation.

But the clergy confessed that it is more likely that the cardinals choose anyone who had already had a loud one – “the one who is already an influential voice.”

“The task is that you have no senior African clergy that occupy no important position in the Vatican today, and it causes the problem,” he said.

“If you think about African cardinals who are potential dads that are known today in the world?”

The contrast, he said, until 2013, when Cardinal Ghana Peter Turkson was a strong contender for the position of 2005, when Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinz was a potential candidate in the conical, which led to the election of Pope Benedict XVI.

This is despite Pope Francis, increasing the share of the Cardinals from Sahara from 8% when he was selected in 2013 by 12% in ten years, according to the Pew Research Center.

“As it came to this point for the continent of Africa and the Catholic Church, it is still what surprises many of us, given the openness of Pope Francis to Africa,” said Father Chi Ilya.

Francis visited 10 African countries during his pontificate – a time that noted a sharp increase in Catholics on the continent. Now they make up 20% of the World Congregation, and the last figures show how they grew from 272 million in 2022 to 281 million in 2023.

But some African Catholics do not like this focus on the origin – for example, Father Paulinus Ikechukva Odazor, Professor of the University of Notre in Indiana.

For the Catholic priest Nigeria, he just struck tokenism.

“It’s like people say, ‘Okay, so Africans grow in these figures, why not give them the pope,” he told me.

“I never thought just because you come from Africa or because you come from Europe, so you are the main candidate.

“No matter where you come from as soon as you choose, all problems become your problem. You have one problem to create the body of Christ, no matter where people are, no matter how much they are in any context.”

Most importantly, he said the BBC, to make the Pope be the “Church’s Church’s Church.”

“The Pope must be a person who knows the tradition very well,” and was able to use it to give people, he said.

According to him, it should be made more to ensure that issues that affect believers in Africa are taken seriously by those who hold the position of power in the Vatican.

He confessed that sometimes it was felt “as if Africans did not matter, or it is, as if their faith is regarded as slightly below the denomination or fakes, and they should not be taken seriously.”

“If Africans feel that their problems are out of the table, as they should, then people start asking, well, perhaps we can only hear or see if we have our own man.”

Pope Francis was praised for understanding the poor and marginalized – which made him especially loved in Africa.

For example, he spoke against what saw the robbery of natural resources in places such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a huge country in which the largest Catholic community in Africa lives with almost 55 million believers.

His role as a peacekeeper was also noted – he went on a large length to heal the division after the fierce civil war in the Central -African Republic, gloriously, rolling on his path to Imam, who invited him to pray in the Mosque in Bangui in 2015 and kissing his rival leaders.

But Pope Francis collided with a backlash from the African Church for his LGBT position.

Africa, bishops rejected their declaration in 2023, allowing priests to offer same -sex couples.

The Vatican said that the blessing “does not approve and do not justify the situation in which these people are”, and that “there are strong cultural and even legal issues in several countries that require time and pastoral strategies that go beyond the short term.”

This is a problem that seems to unite a continent where homosexual relations are prohibited in many countries.

Three African cardinals mentioned by observers, if not up, applicants – Turksan, Robert Sarah from Guinea and Fridolin Ambung Dr. Congo – all this is clear in the rejection of the issue.

Cardinal Congolz said that “the unions of the individual sex are considered controversial for cultural norms and essentially evil.”

Cardinal Sarah, Arch-Traditionalist, damned about the liberal relations of the West, talking about the Synod in 2015: “What Nazi fascism and communism were in the 20th century, Western homosexual and abortion and Islamic bigotry today.”

And although Cardinal Turkson was critical of Ghana’s step to impose severe punishments on LGBT, he is a line that same -sex relationship is “objectively sinful.”

Still.

And both clerics interviewed by the BBC indicated a question that could interfere with the efforts that Pope Francis made to make the Church’s leadership more representative – and the opportunity to get the Pontiff from Africa.

“The church still has a racism question that we never even talk about,” said Father Odazor.

“It can blow anyone, no matter how papal it is, and what it does, it will be considered simply as an African pope.”

Because Pope Francis has appointed 108 of 135 cardinals who have the right to vote in a conclave, there is a good chance that they will choose a person who will also refer to the poor and deprived.

This is an approach.

But as Pope Francis was chosen, he said the result would be unpredictable.

“I will answer as a good priest,” he told me, when he was asked for his prediction.

“I would like to pray that God gives us a Pope who will continue with Francis’ worldview, and I will pray that such a person would come from Africa.”