The Rhine Does Not Flow into the Volta

If the recent Roman reminder of the impossibility of blessing same-sex unions has sparked the ire of some German and Austrian Catholics, including within the episcopate, in Africa, an inverse movement has been produced.

Should this be seen as a sign of the times? While Catholicism in Europe continues to decline, and the (too) rare reminders of the faith of Rome divide a largely secularized opinion, it is on the African continent, where Catholicism is growing—as shown in the latest edition of the Statistical Yearbook of the Church—that a revolt of a new, more traditional, kind is taking place.

Thus, on April 3, 2021, in his homily delivered on the occasion of the celebration of the Easter vigil, Cardinal Philippe Ouédraogo, Archbishop of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, invited Christians to protest against all forms of homosexual unions.

The high Burkinabe prelate exhorted African Christian families to oppose legislative projects that are gradually emerging in various countries of the continent, supported, according to him, by “lobbies” who want to impose same-sex marriage.

“If they can adopt certain positive points brought by modernity, Christian families must on the contrary stand up against the imperialism of certain lobbies and associations which support and want to impose same-sex marriage as well as libertinism,” affirms the Archbishop of Ouagadougou.

Msgr. Ouédraogo also took the opportunity to once again condemn polygamy and adultery—widespread in Africa—explaining that the “indissolubility” of Christian marriage remains a “fixed point” for the Church and the Magisterium: a reminder that is not unnecessary in the confusion which reigns on this subject since the last Synod on the Family.

Finally, the Burkinabe cardinal deplored “the insidious imposition of anti-natalist contraceptive methods” on women and young girls: “every Christian must, like Saint Joseph, welcome human life, be available there and protect it,” he exhorted, affirming that at Easter, the human family, “disintegrated by sin, is reconstituted in its unity by the redemptive power of the death and resurrection of Christ.”

A firm and courageous stance from the point of view of faith, which is not isolated. On several occasions in the past, African episcopates have expressed reservations and concerns about various bills aimed at decriminalizing same-sex unions.