The Church in Africa needs greater courage to engage with its own cultural realities, including polygamous marriages, without excluding families from the life of the Church. This was a central message at a regional workshop on inculturation organised by the Inter-Regional Meeting of the Bishops of Southern Africa (IMBISA).
The gathering brought together theologians from South Africa, Lesotho, Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe at the Padre Pio Spirituality Centre in Pretoria from November 2-6, under the theme “Embracing inculturation, traditional beliefs, and synodality for a liberating Church in IMBISA”.
The workshop was led by Sr Estér Lucas José Maria, a Mozambican member of the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul and a participant in the Synod on Synodality, and Fr Ian Mberikwazwo Chitambo, a Zimbabwean Oblate of Mary Immaculate who lectures at St Joseph’s Theological Institute in Cedara, KwaZulu-Natal.
Sr Estér, who co-authored the final report of the Synod’s Study Group 10 on polygamy, gave participants an account of the group’s work and the pastoral questions it raised. Drawing on studies conducted in different parts of Africa, as well as personal experiences of growing up in polygamous families, she highlighted the difficulties faced by families in such situations.
Historically, the Church often baptised a husband and his first wife while leaving subsequent wives and their children outside sacramental life. This, she explained, created serious pastoral injustices. Keeping second or third wives in a permanent state of catechumenate, without access to the sacraments, also deprived them of the healing and grace of a sacramental life.
Sr Estér stressed that the study group’s final report did not represent the last word on the subject. Rather, it called for further theological and pastoral reflection, particularly in sacramental theology and canon law, informed by listening to and accompanying affected families.
Such an approach, she argued, must seek to avoid excluding anyone. Pastoral workers must also understand the circumstances and reasons that lead families into polygamous marriages.
“It calls for courage,” she said, following group discussions using the Synod’s Conversation in the Spirit method. She noted that African Catholics often feared how the wider Church would respond to discussions of African cultural practices. This had contributed to a reluctance to examine their own traditions and a lack of confidence in their identity as Africans.
Fr Chitambo likewise challenged the tendency to measure African expressions of Christianity against inherited European standards. “We so much want to be part of the universal Church, that we want to fit in and fit in correctly,” he said.
He argued that inculturation must engage seriously with what he called the “African condition”, rather than treating African culture as something that needs to be justified before it can contribute to the universal Church.
The implementation phase of the Synod on Synodality, he suggested, offers an opportunity for local Churches to exchange gifts while respecting legitimate diversity. However, he warned that African Churches sometimes feared that embracing their cultural particularities might weaken their communion with the wider Church.
Participants also raised fundamental questions about who determines what constitutes authentic African culture, which traditions are considered compatible with Christianity, and why European Christianity so often appears to be the universal theological standard.
The workshop concluded with participants recognising the need to continue this conversation, particularly by asking which people have been left out of pastoral discussions. They agreed to work towards a publication to assist pastoral workers in the region with inculturation and the ministry to families living in polygamous situations.
- African Church must face issues of polygamy - November 10, 2026
- Archbishop Sipuka Marks 40 Years of Neocatechumenal Way in Cape Town - November 10, 2026
- Pope in Uruguay: The bridge, the palm groves and mate drink - November 8, 2026
