OUIDAH, Benin — In a basilica built in the heartland of Africa’s voodoo religion, Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday unveiled a treatise outlining the role of the Roman Catholic Church on the continent, explaining how the faith can help address Africa’s chronic wars and interact with indigenous practices.
The immediate backdrop for the release of the 87-page guide for the faithful in Africa was the soaring basilica in this coastal town, a symbol of the church’s roots on the continent. But just 100 yards from the nave where Benedict was introducing the papal text, voodoo priests in flowing robes sat inside their own temple, carefully listening to his words that wafted outside across the basilica’s sound system.
Among the messages contained in the pope’s road map for Africa is an attempt to show how Catholicism has evolved from the rigid religion missionaries first brought to Ouidah, considered the cradle of voodoo, a state religion in Benin alongside Christianity and Islam.
Catholics need to cultivate respect for Islam and for traditional practices, the pope said in the document. He encourages the study of indigenous beliefs to determine what aspects are helpful to humans.
But he told bishops they must nevertheless discern which traditional practices clash with church doctrine so they can “separate the good seed from the weeds.”
“The church is open to cooperation with all the components of society, particularly with the representatives of the churches and ecclesial communities not yet in full communion with the Catholic church,” the pope said as African priests and nuns held up camera phones in the pews of the basilica to record his message, “as well as with the representatives of the non-Christian religions, above all those of traditional religions.”
