By BY BBC| If the sole predictor of who would become the next pope was where the Catholic Church is growing fastest, then it is almost certain he would hail from Africa.
The continent’s Catholic population is expanding more rapidly than anywhere else, representing more than half of the global increase.
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While there have been at least three pontiffs from Africa, the last – Pope Gelasius I – died more than 1,500 years ago – many would argue it is high time for another.
When the cardinals who vote for the leader of the Roman Catholic Church – known as the cardinal-electors – meet at the Vatican to choose Pope Francis’ successor, will these facts influence their decision-making?
“I think that it will be great to have an African pope,” Father Stan Chu Ilo, a Nigerian Catholic priest and associate professor at DePaul University in Chicago, told the BBC, arguing that the leadership of the Church should better reflect the make-up of the global congregation.
The challenge is that you don’t have any senior African clergy holding any important position today at the Vatican, and that poses a problem”
Father Stan Chu Ilo
Associate professor at DePaul University
But the cleric admitted it was more likely that the cardinals would pick someone who already had a high profile – “someone who is already an influential voice”.
“The challenge is that you don’t have any senior African clergy holding any important position today at the Vatican, and that poses a problem,” he said.
“If you think about African cardinals who are potential popes, who is prominent in global Catholicism today? The answer is none.”
A contrast, he said, to 2013 when Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson was a strong contender for the position, and 2005 when Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze was a potential candidate in the conclave that led to the election of Pope Benedict XVI.
This is despite Pope Francis increasing the proportion of cardinals from sub-Saharan Africa from 8% when he was elected in 2013 to 12% a decade later, according to US-based Pew Research Center.
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“How it has come to this point for the continent of Africa and the Catholic Church is still something that surprises many of us, given Pope Francis’s openness to Africa,” Fr Chu Ilo said.
Francis visited 10 countries in Africa during his pontificate – a time that marked a dramatic increase in Catholics on the continent. They now make up 20% of the worldwide congregation, with the latest figures showing how they surged from 272 million in 2022 to 281 million in 2023.
Pope Francis has been commended for his role as peacemaker in Africa – seen here in 2015 in Bangui
But some African Catholics do not like this emphasis on origin – like Father Paulinus Ikechukwu Odozor, a professor at Notre Dame University in Indiana.
For the Nigerian-born Catholic priest, it just smacks of tokenism.
“It’s like people are saying, ‘OK, so Africans are growing in these numbers, so why don’t we give them a pope,'” he told me.
“I have never been one to think that just because you come from Africa, or because you come from Europe, therefore you are a prime candidate.
“No matter where you come from, as soon as you are elected, everybody’s issues become your issue. You have one concern, to build up the body of Christ, no matter where the people are, no matter how many they are, in whatever context they are.”
The most important thing, he told the BBC, was for the pope to be “the chief theologian of the Church”.
“The pope must be somebody who knows tradition very well” and was able to use that to give people direction, he said.
In his view, more needs to be done to ensure that matters affecting the faithful in Africa are taken seriously by those in positions of power at the Vatican.
He admitted that at times it felt “as if Africans don’t matter, or it’s as if their faith is seen as a little bit below par, or counterfeit, and should not be taken seriously”.
“When Africans feel that their issues are not on the table as they should be, then people begin to ask, well, maybe we can only get ourselves heard or seen if we have our own man there.”
Pope Francis has been praised for his understanding of the poor and marginalized – which made him particularly loved in Africa.
For example, he spoke out against what he saw as the plundering of natural resources in places such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, a vast country that is home to Africa’s largest Catholic community with almost 55 million believers.
His role as a peacemaker has also been commended – he went to great lengths to heal divisions following the brutal civil war in the Central African Republic, famously giving a ride on his popemobile to the imam who invited him to pray at a mosque in Bangui in 2015 and kissing the feet of South Sudan’s rival leaders four years later.
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