Church growth in Africa ‘phenomenal’

Sydney
17 August 2003

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Church growth in Africa ‘phenomenal’

By Chris Lindsay

The tremendous growth of the Catholic Church in Africa and Asia in the past 15 years has been phenomenal, says the former director of Catholic Mission in England and Wales, Mons John Corcoran (pictured).

“In Africa the number of Catholics has increased from 50 million to 117 million,” he says.

“And there has been similar growth in Asia.”

The monsignor, who was in Sydney briefly to renew acquaintance with the Australian head of Catholic Mission, Fry Terry Bell, said: “There has also been an amazing growth in local vocations, both to the priesthood and to religious life.

“In Africa, there are three times as many priests now being ordained as there were 20 years ago.

“Major seminaries in mission dioceses in Africa and Asia had 9000 seminarians 20 years ago - now there are 23,000. Catholic Mission has difficulty in keeping up with the demand to look after them.

“All the money now is going to feed and support the seminarians; there is none for new seminaries or extensions.

“It is a huge drain on our resources - we are victims of our own success.

“And the revitalisation of the Church in these areas is not just in priests and religious, but also in lay people.

“There is lots of lay leadership now.”

Before heading Catholic Mission, Mons Corcoran served as a missionary in Kenya in 1975-81 and 1986-88, on loan from his diocese in north-western England to the Kisumi diocese on Lake Victoria where he worked with the Luo people.

“There were about one million Luo in 1975, but there would be many more now - and 25 per cent of the people of Kenya are Catholic,” he says.

After Kenya it was “home to do Catholic Mission in England”, he says.

“Catholic Mission in England covered ‘everywhere’, the 1077 mission dioceses worldwide, which basically means all of Africa and Asia, but excludes Latin America and the Philippines, as these are established dioceses. (There are more than 3000 Catholic dioceses worldwide).

“During my time as director I visited 14 or 15 countries in Africa and many places in Asia, including Vietnam, Burma, China, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Borneo and Malaysia. I was there to look at needs and check on the expenditure on projects.”

On his visit to the then heavily-restricted Burma in 1997 his ‘cover’ was that of a teacher on holidays, but he was there to see what was happening with the fledgling Catholic community.

“The Burma authorities declared 1997 to be the Year of Tourism and are now attracting tourists in greater numbers because they are desperate for hard currency,” the monsignor says.

“But I was the first outside priest to go there since the missionaries were expelled in the mid 60s.

“The local Burmese Catholics were so excited when they found out I was a priest that they collected money and gave it to me. They were so grateful to have a priest from the outside.

“Catholics everywhere have a sense of belonging to a worldwide family - it is one if the attractions of Catholicism.

But these people in Burma had a sense of being cut off. My presence helped rectify that for a short while.”

Mons Corcoran’s major plan in Australia was to travel to Perth on the Indian Pacific to visit his brother.

“Our father was a railway driver in the days of steam trains, so that is a connection,” he said.

“When I finished as director of Catholic Mission, people were very kind to me, so now I have the money to do this.”

Before coming to Australia Mons Corcoran completed the third oldest Christian pilgrimage in the world - after the Holy Land and Rome - the Camino del Santiago del Compostela.

He walked from the French side of the Pyrenees to Santiago in north-west Spain, the reputed burial place of St James - although Mons Corcoran is not convinced the evidence of this is compelling.

“It was a distance of 754km and I then walked on to the ‘end of the earth’, the westernmost part of Europe, making a total of 864km,” he said.

“It took me six weeks.

“There were little refuges along the way where you could get a bunk bed and a shower - of course, you took your own sleeping bag.

“This pilgrimage affects everyone who does it. There is plenty of time for thinking and praying. More and more people are now doing it, even New Age people.”

Mons Corcoran said the Church could do a lot more to help people on this pilgrimage.

“Benedictine monks have set up a small monastery, with three monks, and some local priests offer support to people who are making the pilgrimage because of personal problems,” he says. “But more could be done to help these people who are searching for help spiritually.”

After the trip to Perth and a few weeks with his brother, the former missionary priest will attend a centre established in Jerusalem for people from different Christian denominations to study scripture together.

Then it is back to his home diocese of Salford, in Lancashire, to await re-assignment.

After eight and a half years in Kenya and then a long period running Catholic Mission, what is he looking for next?

“Being a parish priest in the Salford diocese, that is what I am looking forward to,” he said.