By AXJ. Bosco
Vijayawada: Pope Francis October 23 appointed 13 new cardinals, including the first Afro American, a ground breaking news for the American Church.
The 13 will be officially elevated to the cardinal’s rank during the ceremony to be held November 25, in Rome.
Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a statement, “By naming Archbishop Wilton Gregory as a cardinal, Pope Francis is sending a powerful message of hope and inclusion to the Church in the United States. The naming of the first African-American cardinal from the United States gives us an opportunity to pause and offer thanks for the many gifts African American Catholics have given the Church.”
Afro American community is a marginalized community, discriminated on the basis of colour and race, a discrimination based on descent. The Blacks have gone through terrible humiliations, insults, violence and suffering, in the hands of the Whites. About a million Blacks were forcefully transported to America in the first half of the nineteenth century. The Blacks were sold and bought like animals in the slave markets.
It is a long journey of courage and determined struggle that made the Blacks reclaim their dignity and equality; the brutal killing of George Floyd by the police on May 25, in Minneapolis, only shows that the oppression of the Blacks and the struggle for the civil rights continues even today.
In the Catholic Church, the blacks were systematically excluded from priesthood. Augustus Tonton, the first Catholic priest form the Afro-American Catholic community was ordained in 1886. It is now 130 years since he was ordained. There are 3 million Afro American Catholics (5.9 percent) out of 51 million Catholics in the USA. Out of the 37,300 priests only 250 (0.7 percent) are Afro-American priests.
Reynold Verret, president of Xavier University of Louisiana, the country’s only historically Black and Catholic university, said that racial discrimination is our great sin and he added “The Vatican is leading us in a new direction, and I think Pope Francis is showing a new opening for us as a church, that we are one church.”
Shannen Dee Williams, assistant professor of history at Villanova University, told the newspaper that Archbishop Gregory’s appointment is the “culmination of a longstanding Black Catholic freedom struggle against racism, slavery, segregation and exclusion within the U.S. church.”
As we rejoice in the appointment of the first Afro American and consider the plight of the Afro Americans in USA, we are reminded of the plight of the Tribals and Dalits in India. In 1913, for the first time, four tribal young men were sent from Ranchi by the Bishop of Kolkata to join the Papal Seminary in Candy, Sri Lanka.
They were sent back by the Papal Delegate, saying that the Tribals will take a hundred years to learn about Christ and Christianity. The Tribal community, concentrated in Jharkhand struggled to grow and blossom into a great Christian community with bishops and archbishops. Finally, it got a cardinal in 2003, in the person of Archbishop Telesphore Toppo,who said the title of cardinal was a “mark of distinction for the tribal Church in India and recognition of its growth.”
As for the Dalits who are more than 65 percent of the Catholic Community in India, unfortunately the growth was slower as they are dispersed all over India and they are considered untouchable. There was a time when Dalits were not allowed to enter the seminaries. Even now, only 4 percent among the priests are Dalits (1200 out of 30,300).
The first Dalit BishopJohn Molagada, was consecrated in 1977. Now, India has 12 Dalit among 194 bishops in the country. The first Archbishop Marmpudi Joji was appointed in 2000. In Tamil Nadu where the Dalits form more than 70 percent in of Catholics, no Dalit bishops has been appointed for the last 16 years.
This indicates a deliberate attempt from the cast minded Church leaders to block the empowerment of the Dalits. It is good news that on November 19, Bishop Anthony Poola, a bishop from the Dalit community, has been promoted as the Archbishop of Hyderabad.
The recent event of rape and murder of a Dalit youngster in Uttar Pradesh has brought to awareness how the terrible monster caste continues in India. It has stirred millions of people of good to rise up. The practices of discriminations based on caste continue in the Church and in society and Dalits continue their struggle to reclaim their dignity and affirm their equality.
At this time, a Dalit cardinal may be a fitting gift to the Dalit Catholic community in India by Pope Francis whose determination is to include the marginalised and affirm them as children of God equal to others; this will bring in hope and be a new opening towards the empowerment of the Dalits.
(Jesuit Father AXJ Bosco is the counsellor, Sanjeevan Niwas, Andhra Loyola College, Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh)