Cardinal Sarah: Catholic Africa will resist any effort to change Church teaching
April 10, 2015
L’Espresso profiles Cardinal Robert Sarah, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, speculating that he could be the first Pope from black Africa.
Cardinal Sarah, a native of Guinea, was the world’s youngest bishop when he was first appointed by Pope Paul VI in 1978. As Archbishop of Conakry, the nation’s capital, he clashed with the President Ahmed Sekou Toure, and was at the top of a list of enemies that the brutal dictator planned to kill when Sekou Toure himself died suddenly in 1984.
Brought to Rome by St. John Paul II to become secretary of the Congregation for Evangelization, the African prelate was named president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, and raised to the College of Cardinals. Last November he was appointed prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship by Pope Francis.
A book-length interview with Cardinal Sarah, published in France as Dieu ou Rien, has raised his public profile and gained him new admirers. In the book the cardinal shows his devotion to Catholic teaching, and says that African Catholicism will cling to the deposit of the faith. He says: “I therefore solemnly affirm that the Church of Africa will firmly oppose any rebellion against the teaching of Jesus and the magisterium.”
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