“Africans and Christians”: Transitioning from Missionary-Guided to a Self-Determining Local Church

Pope Paul VI (1963–1978), in his homily on 31 July 1969 at the closing Mass of his pastoral visit in Kampala (Uganda), told the gathered faithful that his main mission was to foster what they already were: “Africans and Christians.” Lurking behind that papal assertion was the fear that Christianity might fade away in sub-Saharan Africa after attaining political independence. That fear came close to becoming a reality in Guinea when Sékou Touré, the country’s post-independent president, experimented with Marxist ideology by expelling foreign missionaries and even imprisoned the first Guinean-born bishop. As it turned out, the Guinean experiment became one of the few rare exceptions. The post-missionary Catholic Church in Africa is believed to have started its trajectory of growth and transition in the 1970s. In terms of a continent-wide consciousness as a local church, the 1974 Synod of Bishops in Rome allowed African bishops to come together to assess the situation of their local church and its post-missionary future. Their continental body, the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), gave them the platform to speak in unison. Using the historical narrative approach, this research demonstrates the historical/transitional curves of Catholicism in sub-Saharan Africa in the last fifty years. Its point of reference is the 1974 Synod in Rome, whose fiftieth anniversary of convocation is in October 2024.