Will it be the next Pontiff from Africa?

If the only predict of who will become the next pope was the place where the Catholic Church grows the fastest, then it is almost certain that it will be welcomed by Africa.

The Catholic population of the continent is growing faster than anywhere else, representing more than half of the global increase.

Although there were at least three pontiffs from Africa, the latter – Pope Gelassius I – died more than 1500 years ago – many would claim that it was high time for another.

When the cardinals who vote for the leader of the Roman Catholic Church – known as the Cardinal Electors – meet in the Vatican to choose Pope Francis’ heir, will these facts affect their decision -making?

“I think 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, claiming that the church leadership should better reflect the composition of the global congregation.

But the priest admitted that it was more likely that the Cardinals would choose someone who already has a high profile – “someone who is already an influential voice.”

“The challenge is that you do not have a higher African priests today, holding an important position in the Vatican and this is a problem,” he said.

“If you think of African cardinals, which are potential popes that are today visible in global Catholicism? The answer is.”

Contrast, he said, until 2013, when the Ghanai 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, although Pope Francis increases the share of Africa Cardinals to the south of Sahara from 8% when it was elected in 2013 to a 12% decade later, according to the US-based Pew-based study center.

“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 the discovery of Pope Francis to Africa,” said Father Ilu.

Francis visited 10 countries in Africa during his pontiffene – a time that marks a drastically increase in the Catholics of the continent. They now make up 20% of the world congregation, with the most new data showing how they popped up from 272 million in 2022 to 281 million in 2023.

But some African Catholics do not like this focus on origin – like Father Paulin Ikechukvu Odosor, a professor at Notre Dam University in Indiana.

For the Catholic priest born in Nigeria, he simply heard of tokenism.

“It is as if people say,” Okay, so the Africans are growing in these numbers, so why don’t we give them a pope, “he told me.

“I have never been a person to think that just because you come from Africa or because you come from Europe, therefore you are a major candidate.

“No matter where you come from as soon as you are selected, the problems of all become your problem. You have one care to build the body of Christ, no matter where people are, no matter how much they are, in any context.”

The most important thing, he told the BBC, is the Pope to be the “chief theologian of the church.”

“The Pope must be someone who knows the tradition very well” and managed to use it to give guidance to people, “he said.

According to him, more should be done to ensure that issues affecting the faithful in Africa are seriously accepted by those of the Vatican’s position positions.

He admitted that at times he felt “as if the Africans did not matter, or as if their faith was regarded as slightly below nominal or fake and should not be taken seriously.”

“When the Africans think their problems are not on the table as they should be, then people start to ask, well, maybe we can hear or see or see if we have our own person there.”

Pope Francis is praised for his understanding of the poor and the marginalized – which makes him particularly loved in Africa.

For example, he spoke against what he saw as a looting of natural resources in places such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a huge country that is home to the largest Catholic community in Africa with almost 55 million believers.

His role as a peacemaker is also praised – he fell greatly for the treatment of divisions after the brutal civil war in the Central African Republic, known to ride on his popmobile to an imam, who invited him to pray in a mosque in 2015 and to kiss the legs of the rival beads of the southern beaders of the southern beaders of the rival beaders of the southern beaders of the beaders of the southern beaders of the southern beaders of the beaders of the southern beaders of the southern beaders of the beaders of the southern beaders of the southern beaders of the beaders of the southern beaders of the southern beaders of the southern leaders of the beaders.

But Pope Francis encountered a reaction from the African Church because of his position on LGBT questions.

The African bishops rejected his declaration in 2023, allowing priests to offer blessings to same -sex couples.

The Vatican explained that the blessings “neither approve nor justify the situation in which these people turn out to be” and that “in several countries there are strong cultural and even legal issues that require time and pastoral strategies that go beyond the short -term plan.”

This is a problem that seems to unite the continent where homosexual relations are out of law in many countries.

The three African cardinals mentioned by the observers, if not on top, the contenders – Turkson, Robert Sarah from Guinea and Fridolin Ambongo on the Congo – are clear in rejecting a change in this matter.

The Congoan cardinal said “the unions of people of the same sex are considered contradictory to cultural norms and inherent evil.”

Cardinal Sarah, arch traditionalist, damn the liberal attitudes of the West, saying a Synod in 2015: “What Nazi fascism and communism were in the 20th century, Western homosexual and abortion ideologies and Islamic fanaticism are today.”

And while Cardinal Turkson is critical of moving Ghana to impose severe penalties on LGBT people, he spins the line that same -sex relationships are “objectively wrong”.

Nevertheless, Father Odosor agreed that despite the increase in the number of cardinals from the African continent, they have no real power in the church.

Both clergy interviewed by the BBC have pointed out a question that can hinder the efforts that Pope Francis has made to make the church leadership more representative – and the opportunity to receive a Ponif from Africa.

“There is still this issue of racism in the church that I never even talk about,” said Father Odosor.

“This could undermine someone, however papal it may be or what they do, it will be regarded simply as African Pope.”

As Pope Francis has appointed 108 of the 135 Cardinals eligible to vote in a conclave, there is a great chance of choosing someone whose focus is to reach the poor and despondent.

This is an approach from which FS Ilo is called the “bad first” perspective, with an emphasis on being a “listening to listening.”

But as when Pope Francis was selected, he said the result would be unpredictable.

“I will answer as a good priest,” he told me when I asked him for his forecast.

“I would pray that God will give us a pope to continue with the perspective of Francis. I will pray that such a person will come from Africa.”