Based on previous remarks the pope has made on LGBT issues, activists have reached out in the hopes that he will address gay tolerance on his visit. Next week, Pope Francis joins his forerunners and visits a region whose growing numbers of Catholics are seen as a bulwark for a church seeking to expand its appeal in the face of challenges from competing Christian faiths, secularism and violent extremism.
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But this is the first time Pope Francis has visited Africa, and he has chosen a hard journey, from Kenya and Uganda to the violence-racked Central African Republic.
“Kenyans actually need that reconciliation”, said Okello, an organizer of the papal visit.
“We want a positon that is very clear from the Vatican that says, ‘Do not discriminate, do not harm homosexuals, ‘ a message of tolerance”, he said.
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – As Catholicism grows in Africa, so do the dangers posed by terrorist group Boko Haram, which has surpassed ISIS in the number of terrorist-related deaths in the world.
Pope Francis, beginning his first visit to Africa on Wednesday, is venturing into a minefield of risky issues, from sectarian violence and radical terrorism to anti-gay persecution and rising social inequality.
Just a few days before the Pope’s scheduled arrival in Nairobi on Wednesday, he was given a sharp reminder of the terrorist threat when gunmen killed at least 22 people in a hotel in Bamako, the capital of Mali. “How do you reconcile mercy and war?” he added.
The shrine holds a special place in local Catholicism as it is dedicated to a group of Christians – referred to as the Uganda Martyrs – who were murdered on the orders of a local king eager to thwart the influence of Christianity. In Kenya, about 30 percent of the 45 million population are baptised Catholics, including President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Africa’s Catholic church is rising quick with an estimated 200 million adherents in 2012, a determine anticipated to attain half a billion in 2050.
While gays feel ostracized by the Catholic church’s teachings, Africa’s evangelical protestant preachers are often among the most strident opponents of homosexuality. Some Catholic priests have left the church rather than follow a vow of celibacy, and polygamy is practiced in some parts of Africa.
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“The church has the task of encouraging the conviction that monogamy is the way ahead”, Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze wrote in the preface to “Christ’s New Homeland – Africa”, a book published this year.
