Posted on 04/16/2005 2:26:39 PM PDT by kellynla
LAGOS, Nigeria — A fierce competition for souls is on in Lagos. In this sprawling capital that seems glued together out of scraps of rusted iron, plywood and torn posters, the immortal combat is being waged on faded billboards so closely planted along the highway that it's difficult to make them out as they flash by: Divine Harvest! Holy Fire! Winners Chapel! Victorious Family! Champions Chapel! Miracle Explosion!
None of the posters is for the Roman Catholic Church, which is growing faster in Africa than anywhere else. Father George Ehusani, secretary-general of the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria, hardly needs to advertise, when the church's biggest challenge is not attracting people but dealing with the growth.
The number of African Catholics has increased 30% in a decade, to more than 130 million, served by 426 bishops and more than 27,000 priests. In Nigeria, with about 25 million Catholics in a population of about 137 million, congregations spill out onto benches outside most Catholic, churches, even with five or six Masses on Sundays.
The phenomenal growth brings ambitions, and not only for an African pope when the College of Cardinals convenes next week. Catholics here are also eager to dispatch a wave of African priests, generally conservative, to an increasingly secular Europe and United States, just as white missionaries once arrived on African shores.
Their time, these Africans believe, has come.
But the growth, attributed to high birthrates and Irish missionaries' proselytizing in schools, is also creating problems. Thinly stretched priests are barely able to serve their own congregation's needs, leading some neglected Catholics to turn instead to the less restrictive — and even faster-growing — evangelical Protestant churches.
Catholic clerics also face cultural pressures...
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Cardinal Francis Arinze already PO'd Georgetown's Marxist faculty when he spoke there, to the extent that they lost control of their bodily functions. PO-ing Islamofascist terrorists would just be icing on the cake!
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20030530-124700-5779r.htm
Ping
God bless him!
Isn't it ironic that the people that American & European Catholic missionaries converted are coming back and speaking on the very beliefs that we taught them.
For the sake of diversity, there should be a Muslim Pope
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