Archbishop Sipuka Installed as New Archbishop of Cape Town

Archbishop Sithembele Sipuka installed as Archbishop of Cape Town on March 14. (Photo: Jason Scott)

By Jason Scott – On Saturday, 14th March, the Catholic Church installed its fifth Archbishop of Cape Town at a packed Grand Arena in Goodwood.

The Grand Arena in Goodwood does not feel like a church. It seats tens of thousands, its lights are stadium-bright, and the car park outside fills with gamblers as readily as pilgrims. And yet, on  Saturday 14th March, it became one. What filled it was not spectacle but faith, and the sense, sustained across nearly four hours of solemn liturgy, that something genuinely significant was taking place.

Bishop Sithembele Sipuka was installed as the eleventh Bishop and fifth Archbishop of Cape Town before a congregation that filled the venue entirely. Among those present were Anglican Archbishop Thabo  Makgoba, Greek Orthodox Archbishop Sergios Kikotis, Cape Town Mayor  Geordin Hill-Lewis, Deputy Minister Holomisa, and Provincial Minister Mirelle Wenger. Two cardinals graced the sanctuary: Stephen Brislin,  Sipuka’s immediate predecessor, and Wilfrid Napier, who has walked with the Southern African Church through its most turbulent decades.

The Ceremony

The ceremony opened with Auxiliary Bishop Sylvester David OMI reading the  Papal Bull of appointment. Pope Leo XIV’s letter formally entrusting  Cape Town’s flock to its new shepherd quoted St Gregory the Great’s  counsel to all good pastors: to be “particularly close to each person  with compassion, and be a companion to those who do well.”

Papal  Nuncio Archbishop Henryk Jagodzinski then addressed the congregation on the Holy Father’s behalf, conveying Pope Leo’s personal assurance to the new Archbishop of his prayers and closeness.

Then came the installation itself. Cardinal Brislin personally escorted Archbishop Sipuka to the cathedra and placed in his hands the crozier of Cardinal Owen McCann, the first Archbishop of Cape  Town. The fifth receiving what the first had carried. Sipuka accepted it  with the words: “With faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and with the love  of God in my heart, I accept the pastoral care of the people of God in  this Archdiocese of Cape Town.” The priests of the archdiocese pledged their loyalty, and the arena, as if exhaling, erupted in song.

Joy at the installation of Archbishop Sithembele Sipuka as archbishop of Cape Town. (Photo: Jason Scott)

The Homily

Cardinal  Brislin’s homily was characteristically direct. He reflected on the three tasks of a bishop, to teach, to sanctify, and to govern, and on the human frailty shared by every successor of the apostles. Peter was  impetuous, Thomas doubted, Matthew had, in Brislin’s dry phrase,  “crooked a number of people.” “It is perhaps well to remind ourselves,”  he said, “that in fact we are no different from them.” He then assured  the archdiocese that: “You are all in good hands.”

Archbishop  Makgoba, addressing the congregation as a longtime friend of Sipuka,  reached back to 1990, when Archbishop Desmond Tutu welcomed his Catholic counterpart, Archbishop Lawrence Henry, to Cape Town. The two men had, in  Tutu’s memorable phrase, “processed in church together in great  liturgies, swathed in incense, and also marched together, suffocating in  tear gas.” Invoking St Oscar Romero’s words, Makgoba urged the new  Archbishop: “Aspire not to have more, but to be more.” Then, directly:  “Let us walk together as we lead our sisters and brothers in your  archdiocese and mine.”

The Mass was richly multilingual throughout. Readings, hymns and prayers moved between  English, Afrikaans and Xhosa, a living enactment of the new Archbishop’s motto, United and Sent.

The Archbishop’s Address

Archbishop  Sipuka opened with warmth and self-deprecating humour. Thanking  Cardinal Brislin, he noted: “I’m staying in your house right now, and given your oversized feet, if I found your shoes there, I will courier them to you, because they will be of no use to me. But with God’s grace,  I will try to fill your shoes metaphorically.”

The core of his address, however, was a sustained and serious call to unity. He described a world increasingly prone to fragmentation and a  South Africa in which the spirit of the Mandela era is draining away.  “Old wounds are reopening. New resentments are festering. The social fabric is fraying,” he said. The remedy, he insisted, demands more than structural change: “We have changed the rules without transforming hearts. We have integrated bodies without facilitating a genuine  encounter.”

He called every person present to examine their conscience on wealth, poverty, identity, and crime, and named South Africa’s tradition of free speech as a genuine reason for hope: a “prophetic country” in which journalists, activists, judges,  trade unions and the electorate itself all have a role to play. He closed with words that served simultaneously as a charge and an invitation: “Let us not be managed by the dynamics. Let us be united in  love and sent on a mission.”

A New Chapter

Cape  Town now has its fifth Archbishop, and he arrived not with a blueprint but with a posture: open to learning, committed to listening, and clear-eyed about the difficulty of the work ahead. The crozier he carries belonged to the first man to hold his office. The city he has been asked to shepherd is as divided as it has ever been. Between those two facts lies his whole mission, and on Saturday, before a full arena that felt, for a few hours, like family, he accepted it without reservation.