Beloved Ancestor: Pope Francis and the Church in Africa

If you ask Africans to name three Argentinians they know, they will quickly rattle off Diego Maradona, Lionel Messi and Pope Francis. The first two because of their soccer prowess and the third because he is Catholic – Catholic and Pope. Soccer is considered a kind of religion in Africa and Catholicism is the most prominent religion on the continent. African Catholics loved Pope Francis. In his April 22, 2025 tribute in the Jesuit magazine, America, Jesuit priest, Rev Dr. Orobator ascribed to Pope Francis, the title “ancestor.” To use this title, even in a figurative sense, is exceptionally a great recognition of the breadth and depth of the person’s life, and many Africans will approve this. 

“In Africa, a person of Francis’ moral caliber and spiritual substance holds the coveted designation of ‘ancestor’, whose role includes everlasting solicitude for the community he or she leaves behind,” wrote Fr. Orobator. “The Church and the world can rejoice to have a good disciple, a faithful servant and a beloved ancestor praying and interceding for us in the presence of God,” he added. The title “ancestor” is not given to just anyone. It is a title of endearment, of the recognition of the excellence of one’s life. And looking at Pope Francis’ relationship to Africa, there is no doubt he deserves the title. 

In 1994, Pope John Paul II convened the Special Assembly on Africa, and then gave us Ecclesia in Africa, which primary theological gift remains the enunciation of the image of the “Church as family of God.” Fifteen years later, Pope Benedict XVI convened the Second Synod on Africa, and wrote Africae Munus which literally means Africa’s commitment (2011) – the Church in Africa in Service to Reconciliation, Justice and Peace. The reality of the family, native and prevalent in Africa, seems challenged by many wars and conflicts. Hence the need for a second gathering, meant to deepen the theology of the Church as family, so as to combat the divisions and wars; and this should bring about reconciliation, justice and peace. Pope Benedict XVI, in that document, challenged the Bishops and priests of Africa to transform “theology into pastoral care, namely into a very concrete pastoral ministry in which the great perspectives found in Sacred Scriptures and Tradition find application.” Herein lies the legacy of Pope Francis to Africa. Through his life, he enunciated Ecclesia in Africa’s theology of the Church as the family of God, and worked earnestly for peace on the continent. In him there is an embodiment of the familial, and hence his ethos of the culture of encounter. 

It is customary to measure the legacy of a Pope by the apostolic journeys he embarked on, and on the number and quality of the cardinals he appointed. And as veteran journalist, John Thavis, noted, “Each of the last three popes was important to Africa”. 

It is no longer “ground breaking” for a Pope to visit Africa, since Pope Paul VI, in this modern era, visited Africa in 1969. St. Pope John Paul II took this to different heights and visited 43 countries in Africa over his 27 years pontificate. In eight years, Pope Benedict XVI made two visits to the continent and visited three countries. In 12 years, Pope Francis made five visits, and spent time in ten African countries. There was something different about Pope Francis. The “peripheries” featured prominently in most of his utterances. 

During his first visit to Africa, he started off in Kenya, then Uganda and ended in the Central African Republic. In Kenya, he sought out the poor in Nairobi, visiting the Kangemi slum. The slum is not one of those “ideal” places fit to host a Pope. In Uganda, he celebrated the 50th anniversary of the canonization of the martyrs of Uganda. The last lap of his first visit to Africa took place in the war-torn Central African Republic. There was an active civil war going on at the time, and the capital city Bangui was a security nightmare. Yet, Pope Francis insisted on going to visit. He visited the St. Sauveur refugee camp in Bangui. Even more significantly, it was in Bangui, that he opened the Holy Door marking the extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, Pope Francis had declared. He chose to “smell like the sheep.”

His fourth trip to Africa took him to Mozambique, Madagascar and Mauritus. This was at a time Cyclone Idai had wreaked havoc in Mozambique, and typical of Pope Francis, he wanted to smell like the sheep. He took the opportunity of this propitious moment to echo his clarion call to care for creation as evident in his groundbreaking document of his, Laudato Si. Africa is the least emitter of pollutions, but one of the hardest hit, because of climate change; and Pope Francis championed the cause for awareness and action, based on the debilitating effects of climate change, not in furtherance of a leftist Marxist agenda or mere environmental enthusiasm but from the family construct, inclusive of all creation. 

Pope Francis, from the peripheries, went to the peripheries, from where he selected Cardinals from places that would never have dreamt of, such as Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Cape Verde, Lesotho, Mauritius, Madagascar, Morocco, Mozambique, and South Sudan. The story of Cardinal Okpaleke from Nigeria and Cardinal Ameyu from South Sudan is very striking, as both were rejected when appointed Bishops by the dioceses to which they were respectively sent. He simply appointed them to different dioceses, and then raised them to be Cardinals. The stone rejected by the builders thus became the corner stone. It is impressive that Cardinal Bedungu Ambongo of the Archdiocese of Kinshasa, appointed by Pope Francis, is currently touted as one who could succeed him and be the first African Pope of the modern era. 

In the words of John Thavis, “Pope Francis also saw Africa as a big part of the church’s future.”

Pope Francis: Crusader for Peace in Africa 

The invitation Pope Benedict XVI issued to “the Church ... in Africa to be a witness in the service of reconciliation, justice and peace, as ‘salt of the earth’ and ‘light of the world’,” (17), finds authentic and tangible expression in the courageous acts of Pope Francis, such as visiting an active war zone, not for fanfare or photo-op, but to help bring about peace. While the search for lasting peace continues in the Central African Republic, it is clear that Pope Francis’ visit helped shape the contours of the Peace landscape. His words in the CAR, “I come as a pilgrim of peace and an apostle of hope,” define his pastoral ministry. 

One of the most memorable public acts of witness to this peace and reconciliation remains Pope Francis’ engagement with South Sudan. In 2019, he invited the President of South Sudan Salva Kiir and his Vice Riek Machar to the Vatican, and could be seen on his knees kissing their feet in supplication for peace. In 2023, Pope Francis followed up and visited South Sudan, together with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. His parting words to the people of South Sudan were: “Dear brothers and sisters, I return to Rome with you even closer to my heart. Never lose hope. And lose no opportunity to build peace. May hope and peace dwell among you. May hope and peace dwell in South Sudan.” See how he connects two of his favorite themes, hope and peace. As the wars in South Sudan and the Central African Republic rage on, the people of these countries can seek the intercession of Pope Francis, the Ancestor, for Pope Francis was truly the Lord’s instrument of peace. 

“Hands off Africa”

Pope Francis lamented the wanton dispossession of Africa’s riches, and time and time again called for this neocolonialism to stop. 

Ecclesia in Africa described Africa as “a Continent where countless human beings – men and women, children and young people – are lying, as it were, on the edge of the road, sick, injured, disabled, marginalized and abandoned. They are in dire need of Good Samaritans who will come to their aid.” 

Pope Francis continued this rhetoric, especially in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti. Yet he recognized that some of the so-called Good Samaritans could be thieves themselves, and so stated in very bold words during his visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo: “Hands off Africa. Stop choking Africa; Africa is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered.” He took it one step further. During his return flight from South Sudan to Rome, he said in response to a question by a journalist that: “Some say – I don’t know if it is true – that the former colonial empires granted independence from the ground up, but not underground, so they come for minerals. Africa has its own dignity. And Congo in this regard is at a high level. We have to rid ourselves of the idea that Africa is there to be exploited.”

“Hands off Africa” became the title of a book by Pope Francis, which is a compilation of the speeches and sermons he gave in the DRC and South Sudan. In the preface to this book, celebrated Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, defines the Pope’s encounter with the people of the Congo and South Sudan as “a tribute to the primary importance of ordinary human beings. Here is a religious leader attentive to the minutiae of people’s suffering, to the weight and value of emotions, of feelings. Here is a religious leader who sets an example, urging others not to lose their sense of wonder at the human encounter”. “Hands off Africa!” – confides the Nigerian writer – “brings me a small sliver of hope for Congo, and for the beloved and broken-hearted continent that I call home”

As EWTN’s Regional Director for Africa, George Wirnkar noted: “Africa will miss his advocacy for the poor, whom most politicians don’t care about, and who seem not to have too much space in the lives of many parishes, priests and prelates.”

It is also worth stating that Pope Francis also diminished the footprints of Africa at the Vatican, beginning with Cardinal Sarah, whose resignation from the Congregation for Divine Worship and discipline of the Sacraments he accepted and did not reassign him, followed by Cardinal Turkson from Justice and Peace and who is now President of Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences – a merely ceremonial role. The only African within the hierarchy at the Vatican is Archbishop Fortunatus Nwachukwu, in the Dicastery for Evangelization. Pope Francis also caused a stir with Fiducia Supplicans, which provided for blessings to same sex couples! African Bishops pushed back very forcefully against this, and Pope Francis dispensed them from the proposal.  

Nevertheless, Pope Francis has been a great champion of and for Africa. The explosive growth of the Catholic Church in Africa has not been in spite of Pope Francis, but precisely because of him. The youthful bulge on the continent is dividend not only economically but also spiritually. And many found him inspiring, caring and examplarThey would gladly call him “Baba”