Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Fides Service)-It is not easy to free ourselves of false idols and false beliefs. We are surrounded by magic practices of various types…millions of people live on the borders between pseudo religious practices, superstitions and ancestral religions, this is the history of mankind. In sub-Saharan Africa there are at least 10,000 religious movements founded by Africans which altogether have tens of millions of members. In South Africa alone for example there are 4,000 institutional African churches whose members form 26.1% of the population. In west Africa similar communities have developed mainly in Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Benin. In east Africa, in Kenya. In central Africa the primacy is held by Democratic Congo, formerly Zaire. A religious concept which crossed the Atlantic on the slave ships and found fertile land in the Americas.
An example of these practices is found at San Salvador in northern Brazil, where the mixture of rites seem absolutely normal, women are priestesses of a religion called “Candonble”, diffused mainly among Afro-American peoples.
In an interview with Italian TV, Cardinal Geraudo Majella Agnello President of the Brazilian Bishops’ Conference explained how the phenomenon started: “During the time of slavery baptism was not lived to the full, people did not understand the faith, not even the Portuguese. African slaves were baptised but kept their religious traditions in a syncretism of African religions and Christianity. In popular religiosity many African gods are seen as saints…still today people in San Salvador live the contradiction of taking part in the life of the Catholic Church while continuing Candonblè rites even in front of our churches and all this is not compatible with the Catholic faith”.
African religious syncretism originates from those people taken in chains to the Americas, flesh for labour, slaves for other men who were well versed in the Ten Commandments which God to Moses on Mount Sinai.
Boronde Namira, the village priest in Kiri, in Burkina Faso said this in an interview on Italian television: “My family practised traditional African religion and my father was the village priest. But as a child I was baptised and went to the local Catholic church and I went to church very often!
When my father died the villagers asked me to take his place and so I went back to our old traditions. However while living the traditional faith of our people and being the leader in the village, I still felt I was a Christian.. When peopel come to ask me to do a voodoo to kill an enemy I send them away, I only pray for healing. I am still a Christian. But I realise that for you Westerns it is difficult to understand…but I continue to prayer to my ancestors with the words of the Christian faith and I keep the 10 commandments.
Our people have always had the 10 commandments in their heart …they knew them even before the missionaries came…and I would put a question to you…if you knew the 10 commandments, why did you put us in chains, make us slaves and take us away from our lands and traditions?” (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 23/6/2004 righe parole)
