What would an African pope mean for the continent?

The Catholic Church's conclave to select the next pope will begin May 7, with some wondering if the church will continue down the path of non-European pontiffs by electing an African pope. This speculation opens up new questions of how a pope from Africa could change the continent.

The church has never elected an African pope in its modern history. If it did, it would likely indicate a continuing trend of increased focus on African and Asian church members, who make up a large percentage of the world's Catholics. But it could affect Africa in larger ways, too.

What did the commentators say?

The "question of how Africa's rising Catholic population might shape the next papacy and the church's future has become more timely than ever," said The New York Times. The recently deceased Pope Francis was the first non-European pope in over 1,000 years. The election of an African pope could "usher in an era of conservatism, in line with the traditional views of many African Catholics."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

About 280 million Africans, or a fifth of the continent's population, are Catholic, making up 20% of the world's Catholics. The "elevation of an African pope would be not only symbolic but also reflective of the church's evolving global demographic footprint," said Newsweek. It could also help to change perceptions of Africa and African people, as a Black pope would "revive the Christian faith in Africa and change people's views of Africa, by showing that an African can hold this office," said Charles Yapi, a Catholic priest in the Ivory Coast, to Reuters.

But even in a mostly conservative continent, the "elevation of an African cardinal to the papal throne would be widely interpreted as a continuation of Francis' track record of standing up for the poor and oppressed, migrants and civilians fleeing war," said Reuters. However, Vatican analysts are "skeptical that any of them have a realistic chance of becoming pope, partly because none have been subjected to the same level of public scrutiny as most Western cardinals."

Even if the next pope isn't African, as the continent "fast becomes a main population centre for the church," African Catholics will be expecting more "frequent visits" and "speeches from their new leader," said Tafi Mhaka at Al Jazeera. The Catholic Church has "inflicted unimaginable horrors on Africans," and the next pope "must address the role the Catholic Church played in the transatlantic slave trade and the colonization of the continent."

What next?

Some of the African candidates considered potential popes are Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, the archbishop of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo; Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana; Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea; and Cardinal Ignace Bessi Dogbo, the archbishop of Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Turkson holds mostly liberal views, while Besungu, Sarah and Dogbo are mostly conservative.

But conclaves are hard to predict, so it's unclear if any of these candidates have a real chance. Pope Francis' focus on "advancing and choosing more and more people from Asia and Africa" does "feed these distinct probabilities or possibilities," said Bruce Morrill, the chair of Roman Catholic studies and a professor of theology at Vanderbilt University, to ABC News. But "there really is no way to make any solid prediction."