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South Africans hope for non-European

BY ERIK HOLM | SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

April 18, 2005

DURBAN, South Africa - With voices that lifted the roof off the 100-year-old cathedral and drowned out the cries of taxi drivers shouting their destinations just outside its doors, a thousand worshipers sang hymns that few Catholics outside this country would recognize. They were singing in Zulu, asking in improvised harmonies for God to be with them, making the Catholic Mass their own.

Two hours after it began, the parishioners emerged from Emmanuel Cathedral yesterday into the hot autumn afternoon to buy popsicles for a church fund-raiser, load a truck with donated food for the poor and discuss the news that a man they knew, their own archbishop, was in Rome to choose the next pope.

Cardinal Wilfrid Napier has even made it on some lists as a contender to head the church, an idea many here said they considered unlikely, even if they hoped it would happen.

"Can you imagine that? We would all go to Rome," said one woman, Gugu Mncwabe, at the idea of Napier becoming pope. "We would bring our choir and sing like they've never heard before."

But she said that whomever the cardinals selected, it would be the right choice. "It is God who touches the person who will lead us, and he is the one who decides," she said. "If it is Wilfrid's turn to be touched in that way, it would be great. But in such matters, we should leave things to God."

The congregation at Emmanuel Cathedral, the seat of Napier's Durban archdiocese, mirrors much of the rest of South Africa. It is largely poor, with about 30 percent of the congregation unemployed and many unable to put more than two or three Rand -- the equivalent of 50 cents -- into the collection box. Some deposit far less.

During several Masses yesterday, attended by about 3,500 people in all, priests led the overwhelmingly black congregation in a prayer asking God to guide the cardinals, including Napier, in selecting a new leader for the world's 1.1 billion Catholics. It included a request that the new pope be "as compassionate as you, as wise as you, and as willing as you are to suffer for your kingdom."

"May he be not only your voice to us Catholics," they prayed with heads bowed, some with their hands raised to their faces, "but to all our brothers and sisters around the world."

Afterward, most of those interviewed said it was time for a pope to come from outside Europe, from Latin America or Africa, even if their own cardinal was not the man selected. They wondered, though, if the Catholic world was ready to be led by a black pope.

"I don't see it as a great probability," said Francis Mbina, 68, head of the parish council. "I don't think the rest of the world associates African beliefs with Christian beliefs. I think they believe Africans are not ready for this type of leadership."

But race was not the criterion by which many of the parishioners said they would judge the next pontiff.

"What is most important," said Edith Ngonini, 65, "is that they find a pope who is going to lead properly, whether he is an African pope, an Italian, or whatever."

And Napier?

"I would still like him as a cardinal," said an Augustinian nun named Sister Dudu. "In the end, God will decide."