Pope Benedict XVI begins a visit on Friday to Angola, a country with an estimated nearly 10-million Catholics where bishops have condemned the grinding poverty amid multibillion-dollar oil revenues.
Benedict is paying tribute to where Portuguese missionaries baptised the continent’s first Catholic convert in 1491. Despite a Marxist revolution and a 1975-2002 civil war whose victims included many slain missionaries, more than 60% of Angola’s population is Catholic.
”Christianity is not only a religion but a composite part of the Angolan identity, said Nelson Pestana, a political scientist who lectures at the Catholic University of Angola.
So important is its influence that President Eduardo dos Santos formalised his liaison with a Catholic marriage in 1992, an event that was televised.
But Pestana said the pope must be careful that his visit this week is not seen as legitimising Dos Santos’ 30-year rule.
”The pope, who has great authority to speak, would influence the powers that be in Angola by drawing greater attention to the poor,” he said. ”But the regime wants a sort of papal benediction, so that its
authoritarianism will not be seen as an absolute dictatorship but a symbolic enthronement as a divinely inspired power.”
Dos Santos’ party swept elections last year that critics say were marred by fraud and corruption. The victory has silenced many dissenting voices, including those of the church, Pestana said.
The country is rich in diamonds and oil, but war and mismanagement have left most Angolans impoverished. Pestana says some of the country’s bishops have spoken out in courageous pastoral letters condemning the use of multibillion-dollar oil revenues for personal enrichment while citizens remain mired in poverty.
He says the bishops are divided between those who would see the church reinforcing its status by cementing a strong alliance with the government and those who warn that this would be corrupting.
Pestana fears the papal visit will profit only the government because ”the benefits for the image of those in power does not necessarily translate into benefits for the population or into social progress.”
Benedict indicated he was not looking for confrontation, telling reporters before he left for Africa: ”The church does not pursue economic, social and political objectives. The church announces Christ, certain that the Gospel can touch the hearts of all and transform them.” – Sapa-AP