Request for white bishop sparks outrage and debate in Angola
The letter has prompted fierce debate in the local Church.
Catholics in the African nation of Angola are locked in a controversy centered on a historically significant diocese for the country, which claims to have been the see of the first black Catholic bishops appointed in sub-Saharan Africa.
The controversy stems from an anonymous July 2 letter to Pope Leo XIV — seemingly leaked from within the country’s apostolic nunciature — which has spread across social media in Angola, and which requests that the pontiff appoint a “white bishop” to replace Bishop Vicente Kiazuku, the 69-year-old Angolan leader of the Mbanza-Kongo diocese.
While some experts say the letter is a pointed political move focused on a singular situation, it has prompted fierce debate about the state of the Church, the role of missionaries, and the Church’s response to the nation’s government.
“With deep respect, filial obedience and in full communion with the Universal Church, we, the Catholic faithful of the Diocese of Mbanza Kongo, Province of Zaire, Angola – home to the historic Church of Kulumbimbi, considered to be the first church in sub-Saharan Africa, and the birthplace of Nsaku Ne Vunda, the first African ambassador to the Holy See, whose remains rest in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, humbly submit to Your Holiness our sincere request regarding the need for a White Bishop for our particular Church, to succeed the current one,” the letter’s first paragraph says.
The text added that Bishop Kiazuka has suffered from health problems that have caused a leadership gap in the diocese, which is home to nearly 400,000 Catholics, but only 20 diocesan priests and fewer than 15 religious priests.
“The Diocese of Mbanza Kongo is currently facing many difficulties due to the health issues of His Excellency, the Most Reverend Vicente Carlos Kiaziku. This situation has given rise, amongst the clergy, religious and laity, to a desire for pastoral leadership capable of guiding, inspiring and strengthening the Church’s evangelizing mission in this region, while responding to the challenges and legitimate aspirations of the people of God,” the letter argued.
And the letter insisted that its call for a “white bishop” was not an example of racial prejudice — but is instead rooted in a historical assessment of the Church in Angola.
“This is not a matter of prejudice or racial discrimination, but rather of past experience. This diocese has already had three bishops from our own background, but it has not seen the progress it deserved. We therefore believe that the Holy Spirit does not see the color of one’s skin; thus, a white bishop may also be called to lead this diocese.”
The letter was sent in early July to the apostolic nuncio in Luanda, Angola’s capital city.
Soon after it was sent, photographs of the text, and a cover page bearing a reference number and stamp from the nunciature began circulating online, leading to heated debate, especially because the nunciature’s stamp on the photographed text suggests an internal leak of the letter and its content.
Within a week, the diocese responded in a statement posted on the Facebook page of its cathedral. The statement aimed to distance the letter writers from diocesan officials.
“Information has been circulating on social media claiming that the Diocese of Mbanza Kongo is seeking a white bishop. This information is false and does not reflect the views or position of the Catholic faithful of the Diocese,” the statement said.
“For the Catholic faithful, skin color has never been, nor will it ever be, a criterion for the exercise of the episcopal ministry. In the Catholic Church, all are brothers and sisters in Christ, regardless of race, ethnicity or nationality. The Church’s mission is to proclaim the Gospel, promote unity and guide the people of God along the path of faith,” the diocesan statement added.
The letter’s request would be unusual in any situation, especially in a country of almost 35 million people — roughly half of whom are Catholic — with less than one percent of the population ethnically Portuguese or otherwise European.
But the letter is especially significant in Mbanza-Kongo, the territory of the ancient Kingdom of the Kongo, which is widely held to have seen the appointment of the first black Catholic bishop in sub-Saharan Africa, in 1518.
That bishop, Henrique of Kongo, was a son of the Christian king of Kongo, whose father had been converted by Portuguese missionaries. While King Afonoso dreamed of a native clergy and episcopal hierarchy in his territory — and saw his own son be elevated to the episcopate — Portuguese missionaries undercut Henrique’s authority, and eventually secured control over the Church in the region.
But one expert on the region told The Pillar that the letter reflected contemporary trends and issues in Angolan Catholic life, not the region’s more ancient history.
The territory of the Mbanza Kongo was for much of the 20th century overseen by Italian Capuchin Franciscan missionaries. Since the diocese was erected by Pope St. John Paul II, it has seen three Angolan Capuchin Franciscans serve as bishop, with the incumbent — Kiazuku — suffering from ill health, and mostly living abroad for treatment in recent years.
And at least some locals have said that the letter is mostly meant to express concern about Kiazuku’s leadership of the diocese.
Paulo Viana, a prominent Angolan Catholic lay commentator, and a former seminarian who did pastoral work in Mbanza-Kongo, told The Pillar that: “The main purpose of the letter is to ask for Bishop Vicente to be removed. Currently it is already as if the diocese were vacant.”
“Mbanza-Kongo is the birthplace of Christianity in Angola, it is a point of pride for the entire country, but it has been completely abandoned. And the two previous bishops, who were also black, left much to be desired, they did not develop the diocese,” he said — suggesting that the letter was meant to call for a return to the leadership of the Italian Capuchins prominent in the area before it was erected as a diocese.
But that narrative was disputed by Fr. Pedro Sampaio, a priest from the diocese who is completing doctoral studies in Rome.
“For centuries the region was administered by Italian Capuchins, who were all white. What did they leave behind? Nothing. All the parish structure that exists at the moment was set up by our first bishop, [the Angolan] Afonso Nteka. Our current bishop has, instead, been investing in the formation of the clergy. At the moment 80% of our priests have university degrees,” said Sampaio.
Sampaio also rejected the idea that the diocese has been abandoned while its bishop has suffered medical care.
“That doesn’t keep the diocese from working, because it still has its priests, and it has a vicar general. The priests keep the parishes running. If the priests have become too relaxed because of the absence of the bishop, that is another thing altogether, but you can’t blame the bishop for that.”
The priest said he found offensive the suggestion that his diocese would fare better under the leadership of a non-African bishop.
“A white bishop is not a guarantee of competence. Besides, how many Africans are diocesan bishops in Europe? None. So why should white men be bishops here if we are not bishops in Europe? The authors of this letter seem to imply that we should continue to be dominated by white men, as if we wanted the return of slavery, and to be trampled by our colonizers.”
“It is false, and unfair to denigrate the African bishops we have had and to say that
they didn’t do anything for the diocese,” he added.
Political rivalries
Angola was a Portuguese colony until 1974.
In the 1960s an armed struggle began, with three different groups fighting for independence. As in many other countries at the time, this struggle fell into the logic of the Cold War, with the USSR and Cuba supporting Marxist MPLA, and the United States and other regional and western countries supporting UNITA in the south, or the FNLA in the north.
The northern province of Zaire was the main power center for the FNLA, which was defeated by the MPLA shortly after the country gained independence. UNITA and MPLA fought a bloody civil war for decades after that, but MPLA has since consolidated its full control over the state.
This political background plays an important part in the story, said Paulo Viana.
“In all the provinces in Angola that have natural resources, development has stalled. Not even the schools work properly. This is the government’s strategy; they want to keep people ignorant and poor so that they can be manipulated. They exploit the resources but that is not reflected in the life of the people.”
The province of Zaire is Angola’s largest producer of oil.
Fr Pedro Sampaio agreed that the region is discriminated against by the central government in Luanda, and the priest has been openly critical of the MPLA, which he labels a new colonial power.
“If this letter had called out the social inequalities, that would have been a different story,” he told The Pillar.
The priest complained that widespread disregard for the region also affects the Church, pointing out that no pope has ever visited the cradle of Christianity in West Africa, despite three papal visits to Angola.
But Paulo Viana believes that local Church hierarchs are complicit in discrimination against the region, and that is why the letter takes aim at the bishops. “The Church should act differently, but it doesn’t. The Church is called to proclaim the Gospel, and denounce injustice. But that doesn’t happen in Mbanza Kongo.”
The letter’s authors could be working under the impression that a non-African bishop would have more freedom to speak out against injustice, he said.
That is why Viana believes that the final goal of the letter might not be about race after all, but about pushing one particular episcopal candidate out of consideration.
“The three bishops of Mbanza-Kongo have been Franciscan Capuchins. Currently, there is an auxiliary in Luanda, Bishop António Lungieki Bengui, who recently became a third order Franciscan, and is therefore within the Franciscan spiritual family, and there have been rumors that he will succeed Bishop Vicente. The letter may be a preemptive attempt to derail that appointment.”
Bishop António Bengui is a Bakongo, the majority ethnic group in the Diocese of Mbanza-Kongo, but Viana says he is also seen as someone who will not upset the status quo or criticize the country’s government.
The Catholic activist said that some Angolans think his recent profession as a third order Franciscan could have been a calculated move to increase his prospects of succeeding Bishop Vicente.
“The government wants a bishop who would not denounce social injustice, and the difficulties the people endure,” Viana told The Pillar.
Whodunnit?
As the letter is fiercely debated in Angola’s ecclesiastical circles, one question has become the most common: Who wrote the letter?
According to Paulo Viana, the quality of the prose, the historical and theological knowledge and the understanding of the inner workings of the Church make it most likely that the author is a priest, or perhaps a group of priests.
“I don’t believe that Mbanza Kongo has laypeople who are capable” of writing such a letter, he told The Pillar.
Fr. Sampaio, however, disagreed strongly.
“Any priest would know that a letter like this is completely inconsequential. The fact that it is anonymous guarantees that it will not be taken into consideration by the nunciature, let alone by the pope. What is more, when you write a letter like this you don’t go and spread it on social media. The whole thing is childish, and I don’t believe that it was written by a priest,” he said
But Viana says that it is understandable that critics would be afraid to speak out openly.
“There is a very strong culture of fear in Angola,” he said.
For now, Angolans are divided over whether the letter makes more or less likely the appointment of a European missionary for the diocese, rather than a local, like Bengui.
But the letter has continued to prompt debate about the state of one of the region’s most historically influential dioceses, and made prominent concerns about the health of its current bishop.