By Mboneko Munyaga
David Willey (93), a veteran former BBC Reporter from Rome, believes there is a strong possibility that the next Pope could come from Asia or Africa, depending on whether the Church shall want “to restore the past or look to the future.” This writer also believes that in Pope Francis’ death, announced on April 21, 2025, the Roman Catholic Church has come to the brink of a moral compass to re-examine its universality.
Although said to be led and guided by the Holy Spirit in the selection of a new pope, a book on papal secrets released after Pope Benedict XVI resigned on February 28, 2013, detailed the Vatican as a corrupt hotbed of jealousy, intrigue and underhanded factional fighting, casting the Church as a normal human institution and not an angelic Holy See on earth.
The papal seat has for centuries been dominated by pontiffs from the West, or Italians to be precise, 213 out of the previous 266 popes. The late Pope Francis was the first to come from the Americas at a time when the Church was reeling from a plethora of scandals involving corruption at the Vatican Bank and a raft of sexual abuse charges by clerics globally, including sodomy, which the Bible calls an abomination.
To reposition the Church, Pope Francis opted to be an apostle to the poor and marginalised, vocal on the war in Gaza and extremely sympathetic to Africa, telling “exploiters” to get their hands off the continent because it was not a field “to be mined or land to be plundered.” Yet, Pope Francis was also “modern,” embracing the blessing of same-sex marriages on a “case by case basis,” which put him at odds with African prelates, who reject homosexuality as not being part of “our” culture.
Thus, an African Pope won’t be about Africa per se but rather an act of both spiritual and physical inclusivity in a global Church facing many challenges, yet determined to be seen as a beacon of moral clarity, tradition and authority. Secondly, Africa is where the Roman Catholic Church is growing the fastest in the world, according to figures released by the Vatican last month. Overall, the continent is home to more than 20 percent of all Catholic faithful around the world.
In addition, an African Pope would be clear testimony on earth and Heaven that after more than 100 years of evangelisation, the efforts had given birth to worthy fruit, comparable in spiritual harvest, to the canonisation of Uganda’s Martyrs, who laid down their lives defending their newly found faith at the advent of Christianity in Africa.
There are four Cardinals, including two Africans, tipped to succeed Pope Francis. They include, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin (70), who was the Vatican’s Secretary of State and therefore the de facto deputy Pope, Cardinal Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle (67) from the Philippines, Ghana’s Cardinal Peter Appiah Turkson (76) and the Archbishop of Kinshasa for seven years, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu (65). Barring hattricks, the next pope is most likely to come from one of them.
Cardinal Turkson has been murmured for over a decade as someone fit for papal material but he is one man who lives by a very high degree of self-denial. “I’m not sure whether anyone does aspire to become the pope,” he told the BBC in 2013. Also, he is not demagogic, such as being swayed by statistics, like the fast expansion of the church in Africa. “Those types of considerations tend to muddy the waters,” he told an interviewer.
Cardinal Besungu on the other hand, is seen both as a conservative, who opposes same-sex marriages, but also as a liberal who believes in the plurality of individual creed, something that hardliners view as “not quite in line” with Catholic Dogma. The Caretaker or “Camerlengo,” Irish-American Cardinal Kevin Farrell should also not be written off. He too could become the next Pope as it has happened twice in Church history, Pope Leo XIII (Cardinal Gioacchino Pecci) in 1878, and Pope Pius XII (Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli) in 1939.
There has been no Italian pope in 40 years, which could make some feel a strong urge to re-steer the Church back to Europe. But whatever happens, Pope Francis’ death has ushered in a strong case and dawn for an African Pope.
