The Pope and Africa

Pope Benedict XVI was met by tens of thousands of people in a packed soccer stadium in Cameroon this week. Among the crowd attending Mass during the Pope's African tour were Cameroon’s President Paul Biya and his wife. Africa is the last continent that Pope Benedict had left to visit, “and one he could not avoid,” explained David Gibson, a biographer of the Pope. "He knows he has to do this. He knows Africa is the future of the Catholic Church, as it is for all of Christianity," said Gibson.

Christianity, like Islam, is on the rise in Africa and Latin America, even as the northern hemisphere tends to become more secular. Recent studies by the Pew Foundation show that both Christianity and Islam are expanding rapidly in Africa. Less than one in ten people in sub-Saharan Africa was Christian in 1900. Today nearly six in ten are. The region was about 14 percent Muslim at the beginning of the 20th century, he said, and about 30 percent Muslim now.

With all of the changes going on in this vast continent -- its increasing influence on First World cultures and the growing presence of African issues on the world stage -- one must consider that the next Pope may well be an African. And what a change that might be!