Religion: A Sacred Safari for the Pope

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IT was the first time that a reigning Pontiff had ever visited Africa, and for Uganda, the host country, it was the biggest event since the nation won its independence from Britain in 1962. Roman Catholics number about 3,000,-000 in Uganda—one of Africa's most Christianized countries—but during the visit of Pope Paul VI last week, it seemed as if all of its 9,000,000 citizens had become instant Romans. There were Pope Paul coins, Pope Paul stamps and Pope Paul folk songs, including a pop calypso that likened the Pontiff's visit to "a shooting star in the dark of the night." Shop-door signs along the papal route proclaimed "Pepsi Welcomes the Pope."

The crowds began to gather at Entebbe airport half a day before the Pope was due: women in elegant, bright' ly patterned neck-to-ankle dresses, men toting six-foot cowhide horns, calypso singers and tribal dancers. Shouts went up when the East African Airways VC-10 appeared, flanked by four Fouga jet trainers: "There he is! He's coming, that good man." The Kampala police band, its drummers in leopardskin overalls, played the Uganda national anthem as President Milton Obote greeted the Pontiff. Heads of four other African states stood by in a LandRover: Tanzania's Julius Nyerere, Zambia's Kenneth Kaunda, Burundi's Michel Mi-combero and Rwanda's Gregoire Kayi-banda. Then the Pope was off, in an open Lincoln Continental, for the 28-mile ride into Kampala, past welcoming signs saying, "Papa from the Vatican" and "Holy Father, Bless Our House."

For all the rollicking cheer of his welcome, the Pope was in Africa on serious business. His uppermost concern, he declared even before leaving Rome, was the bitter, two-year civil war between Nigeria and Biafra, but the trip had first been planned around the Pope's dedication of a shrine to 22 African martyrs.* He also consecrated twelve new African bishops and offered a thoughtful analysis of the African Church's spiritual role before a pan-African conference of Catholic prelates that had been meeting all week. Above all, the visit reaffirmed the Pope's concern for the future of the church in Africa.

Growing Fast. The concern is justified. Within a changing Catholicism, the African church itself is changing, seeking to break its identification with the colonial past and to find its place within the emerging nations (see box, page 65). The Church is growing so fast that realistic estimates of its adherents range from 30 million to 40 million—by far the largest Christian body in Africa. As Rome has turned over control of missionaries to some 320 local dioceses and 28 episcopal conferences, the church in Africa has become more autonomous. But it must still depend heavily on outside financial support.