When Pope Francis presided over a Mass that incorporated elements of Congolese tradition in St. Peter’s Basilica in 2019, it was seen as a sign of his enduring commitment to Roman Catholics across Africa.
When he visited African migrants in southern Italy and later kissed the feet of South Sudan’s two competing warlords, his actions drew more attention to his focus on a continent where the number of Catholics is growing faster than anywhere else in the world.
“Being from Latin America, he felt for our predicaments as a third-world continent struggling in a world controlled from far away,” said Cardinal John Onaiyekan, the former archbishop of Abuja, Nigeria, who voted in the 2013 conclave that elected Francis.
As Cardinal Onaiyekan and his peers prepare to meet in the Sistine Chapel next week to elect the new pope after Francis’ death, the question of how Africa’s rising Catholic population might shape the next papacy and the church’s future has become more timely than ever.
About a fifth of Africa’s population, roughly 280 million people, are Catholic. Nearly a fifth of all Catholics are Africans, and that balance is changing: According to the Vatican, more than half of the 13 million people who joined the church in 2022 were in Africa.
Mourning Pope Francis in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, last week. Francis visited the country in 2023.Credit…Guerchom Ndebo for The New York Times