ROME — The Vatican’s decision to allow priests to bless same-sex couples was seen as the imposition of Western practices on Africa, a form of “cultural colonization,” a leading African Cardinal has stated.
In a March 17 interview with the French-language Catholic television channel KTO, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, the president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), said that African Catholics still believe in the biblical prohibition of homosexual practice as an “abomination.”
On December 18, 2023, the Vatican’s doctrinal office issued a declaration titled Fiducia Supplicans reversing a longstanding ban on blessings for gay couples, a move that provoked widespread opposition among Africa’s Catholics.
“The African continent lived and experienced the document Fiducia Supplicans as cultural colonization, as a sort of Western imperialism on the cultural plane,” said Cardinal Ambongo, who is on Pope Francis team of nine advisors.
“The practices considered normal in the West were being imposed on another people, which explains the virulence of Africa’s reaction,” the cardinal said, noting that “our people felt wounded in their faith.”
“It was a form of cultural imperialism and the Africans saw behind Fiducia Supplicans the will to impose on Africa the practices of the West,” he added.
Congolese Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo (R) parades before attending a mass for peace in Goma, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, on January 28, 2024. A mass for peace in the Great Lakes region was organized by representatives of the Catholic churches of the DRC, Rwanda and Burundi, where Ambongo criticized the leaders of the three countries, accusing them of inciting “division and war”. (ALEXIS HUGUET/AFP via Getty Images)
“In Africa, homosexual practice is viewed as a deviance, an abomination, as the Bible calls it,” he said. “How could such a thing be blessed? It is not considered a normal practice.”
The cardinal also said that he has the impression that the West is losing its roots and risks “disappearing.”
“The roots of the West are the values that the West brought to us during colonization and we believed in these values,” he said. “But we realize that for the West today these values no longer exist. That disconcerts us and we ask ourselves: ‘Where is the West going?’”
“We have the impression that the West is no longer disposed to assume its own culture. Everything is relativized, everything is revisited, and that worries us,” he said.
“The West brought us Jesus Christ, the gospel, but today we get the sense that the West is beginning to distance itself from the gospel,” he declared.