Galvanising the local Church

by Editor · Published July 13, 2011 · Updated April 26, 2018

In international terms, the Catholic Church in Southern Africa is something of a backwater. With few exceptions notably the struggle against apartheid and the contributions of the late Archbishop Denis Hurley the local Church has rarely stood in the international spotlight.

We have never hosted a global Catholic event, and none of the many holy men and women who have served the faith in South Africa have been beatified, never mind canonised. The closest we have to a local saint is the French missionary Blessed Joseph Gerard, whose mission field was mainly in Lesotho.

One can understand if Catholics in the southern tip of Africa sometimes feel marginalised in the big family of God that is the universal Church.

At present two South African dioceses are pursuing the beatification causes of two Servants of God: Abbot Franz Pfanner, founder of the Congregation of Mariannhill Missionaries and the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood, and Benedict Daswa of Tzaneen, who was martyred for his faith on February 2, 1990.

One day, Sr Reinolda May, the visionary of Ngome in KwaZulu-Natal, whose centenary of birth the local Church will observe in October, might join them among the 2000 or so cases before the Vaticans Congregation for Sainthood Causes.

A missionary territory like Southern Africa is a fertile breeding ground for holiness. Surely there have been many extraordinarily holy people serving the Church in this region. How wonderful it would be if we were to identify more of them, make known their heroic witness, and perhaps even obtain funding for the rigorous advancement of their causes.

In this we must be mindful that a beatification must be preceded by a miracle (except in the case of a martyr, so none is required for the beatification of Benedict Daswa).

The prohibitive cost of a canonisation process, of course, is a fundamental obstacle in having holy people from poorer regions formally elevated to the College of Saints. Another is the comparative absence of an entrenched and cohesive Catholic culture in South Africas society which might create a popular groundswell.

Nevertheless, a beatification would galvanise our Catholic community, and a beatification ceremony would present rich evangelical opportunities. With that in mind, the Congregation for Sainthood Causes might do well to explore further how the financial burden of a cause initiated by a poor diocese might be eased.

The local Church should also strive to host global Catholic events such as World Youth Day, for which the local Church has bid in the past, and international Eucharistic congresses. South Africa, as we saw in 2010, is eminently capable of staging big events.

Of course, such plans would have to be subject to contributions from public funding, but surely a strong case can be made that an event such as World Youth Day can produce economic benefits.

As we reported last week, the World Youth Day in Madrid next month is expected to generate revenue of almost R1 billion for Spain, against a total cost of R610 million. In Spain, none of the expenditure has come from public funds, though the state has provided logistic support and tax breaks for companies that work on the organisation of the event.

It is uncertain whether the Church in Southern Africa would be able to secure the required financing without assistance from the public sector. At the same time, the benefits to the country of a World Youth Day should suffice to secure some public funding and moderate secular concerns.

For the local Church, and the Church in Africa in general, hosting the worlds faithful in South Africa would have an electrifying and unifying effect that would do much to animate the faith, especially among the young.