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Zaire The Roman Catholic Church
The impact of the Roman Catholic Church in Zaire is
difficult
to overestimate. Schatzberg has called it "Zaire's only
truly
national institution apart from the state." Besides
involving over
40 percent of the population in its religious services,
its schools
have educated over 60 percent of the nation's primary
school
students and more than 40 percent of its secondary
students. The
church owns and manages an extensive network of hospitals,
schools,
and clinics, as well as many diocesan economic
enterprises,
including farms, ranches, stores, and artisans' shops.
The church's penetration of the country at large is a
product
of the colonial era
(see The
Apparatus of Control
, ch. 1).
The
Belgian colonial state authorized and subsidized the
predominantly
Belgian Roman Catholic missions to establish schools and
hospitals
throughout the colony; the church's function from the
perspective
of the state was to accomplish Belgium's "civilizing
mission" by
creating a healthy, literate, and disciplined work force,
one that
was obedient to the governing authorities. From the
perspective of
the church, evangelization was the primary goal, and the
number of
converts baptized was the measure of its success. Although
different in emphasis, church and state goals were
sufficiently
complementary that the state and church were perceived by
the
population as sharing the same purpose. As Joseph Cardinal
Malula,
who was for many years the head of the church in Zaire,
put it,
"For our people, the Church was the State, and the State
was the
Church." When independence came in 1960, the bill for
church
collaboration came due; Roman Catholic personnel were the
frequent
subjects of attacks by angry Congolese throughout the
country,
while Protestant missionaries and Kimbanguist personnel
were,
outside of Bas-Zaïre Region, largely spared.
The church's reversal of its role in relation to the
state
since independence has been striking. Formerly a reliable
ally, it
has increasingly become the state's most severe
institutional
critic
(see Interest
Groups
, ch. 4). Overt conflict first
erupted
in 1971 when the state, as part of its efforts to
centralize and
extend its authority, nationalized the country's three
universities, including the Catholic church's Lovanium
University
outside Kinshasa. State attempts to implant sections of
the
official party's youth movement, the Youth of the Popular
Revolutionary Movement (Jeunesse du Mouvement Populaire de
la
Révolution--JMPR), in Catholic seminaries were strongly
resisted.
The conflict intensified in 1972 when, as part of the
authenticity
campaign, all Zairians were ordered to drop their
Christian
baptismal names and adopt African ones. Cardinal Malula
protested
the decision and told his bishops to ignore it. The regime
retaliated by forcing the cardinal into exile for three
months and
by seizing his residence and converting it into JMPR
headquarters.
In addition, the state banned all religious publications
and youth
groups.
Following a brief thaw in 1973 and early 1974, during
which the
cardinal was permitted to return from exile, relations
between
church and state continued to deteriorate. The state
declared that
Christmas would no longer be a Zairian holiday, banned
religious
instruction from the schools, and ordered crucifixes and
pictures
of the pope removed from schools, hospitals, and public
buildings;
the removed items were replaced by pictures of President
Mobutu.
The president was characterized by the regime as a new
messiah, and
the state took over direct control of the nation's
schools. Courses
in Mobutism supplanted courses in religious instruction.
Students
in the former church schools found themselves
participating in
daily rallies led by JMPR members, during which they were
obliged
to chant "Mobutu awa, Mobutu kuna, Mobutu partout"
(Mobutu
here, Mobutu there, Mobutu everywhere).
The tables turned in late 1975 as the effects of
Zairianization
and the fall in copper prices resulted in a progressively
worsening
economy. As living standards fell, more and more state
officials
exploited their positions to steal from the citizenry.
Catholic
clergy issued public denunciations of these exactions.
Increasingly
pointed pastoral letters denouncing state corruption were
published
by all of Zaire's bishops in 1977 and 1978.
Meanwhile, although privately furious at such
criticism, Mobutu
was preoccupied with the deteriorating economy and the
invasions of
Shaba Region
(see External
Threats to Regime Stability
, ch. 1;
Shaba I
, ch. 5;
Shaba II,
ch. 5). In addition, the state's
lack of
managerial skills and resources had rendered its takeover
of the
education system a disaster. Faced with these realities,
the
president asked religious institutions to resume
responsibility for
church schools, which, by 1976, they had done. Courses on
religion
were once again integrated into the curriculum.
Tensions remained high throughout the 1980s and into
the 1990s.
The bishops' episcopal letter of June 1981, for example,
castigated
the regime for corruption, brutality, mismanagement, and
lack of
respect for human dignity. An angry Mobutu retaliated by
warning
the Catholic hierarchy to stay out of politics; he also
stationed
JMPR militants in all places of worship to monitor
priestly
homilies. Coincidentally, attacks and attempted attacks
were
launched during the following months by unknown parties
against
several highly placed Catholic clerics; Cardinal Malula's
home, for
example, was attacked and his night watchman killed. The
cardinal
advised Zairians before the 1984 presidential elections to
consult
their consciences before casting their ballots; his act
was
denounced by the government as religious zealotry.
Tensions would have been still greater but for
divisions within
the church and for the ambiguity of the church's role
relative to
the state. Conflict within the church exists between the
lower
clergy, who are in day-to-day contact with the population,
and the
higher clergy; the former argued for a more radical
structural
critique of the regime, while the latter prevailed in
arguing for
a more limited, moral criticism. Many bishops wished to
protect the
church's institutional position and to avoid the
retaliation that
a more militant attack on the state could well provoke.
Too sharp a structural critique could also expose
vulnerabilities in the church's position. High church
officials
enjoyed many of the economic and social privileges of
other
prominent Zairians, privileges that could easily be called
into
question. In addition, the church continued to depend on
grants
from foreign sources; as of 1976, none of Zaire's
forty-seven
dioceses was financially self-sufficient, a situation of
dependency
that appeared little changed by the early 1990s. The
dependence of
the largely Africanized church leadership on substantial
numbers of
expatriate priests, nuns, and brothers at lower and middle
staff
levels was another weakness. Finally, while church
officials
generally sided with the populace against the government
in labor
disputes, tax revolts, and individual cases of injustice,
they
sometimes made common cause with the regime; in its
management role
in Catholic schools, for example, the church found itself
siding
with the government against striking underpaid teachers in
the
early 1980s.
Data as of December 1993
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