Catholic Church in South Africa

The Catholic Church in South Africa is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, which is composed of the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches. The South African church is under the spiritual leadership of the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference and the pope in Rome. It is made up of 26 dioceses and archdioceses plus an apostolic vicariate.

In 1996, there were approximately 3.3 million Catholics in South Africa,[1] making up 6% of the total South African population. In 2016 there were 3.8 million Catholics.[2] 2.7 million are of various black African ethnic groups, such as Zulu, Xhosa, and Sotho. Coloured and white South Africans each account for roughly 300,000.

Catholic evangelisation efforts have traditionally focused on Black South Africans. In the 1950s, however, an effort began to evangelise Afrikaans-speakers, who had previously been ignored by Catholic missionaries. Success in the Afrikaans Apostolate remained minimal until the death throes of apartheid during the mid- to late 1980s. As Catholic texts began to be translated into Afrikaans, sympathetic Dutch Reformed pastors, who were defying the traditional anti-Catholicism of their Church, assisted in correcting linguistic errors. By 1996, the majority of Afrikaans-speaking Catholics came from the Coloured community, with a smaller number of Afrikaner converts, most of whom were from professional backgrounds.[3]

Most White South African Catholics are English-speakers, and the majority are descended from Irish immigrants. Many others are Portuguese South Africans, many of whom emigrated from Angola and Mozambique after these countries became independent and disintegrated into civil war during the 1970s. Others are descended from immigrants from other European countries, such as South Africa's Italian community. The proportion of Catholics among the predominantly Calvinist white Afrikaans speakers, or Asian South Africans who are mainly Hindus or Protestant of Indian descent, is extremely small.

Organisation

Jurisdictions

The Catholic Church in South Africa consists of five Archdioceses (Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, and Pretoria), 22 Dioceses, 2 Vicariates Apostolic and a Military Ordinariate. The five Ecclesiastical provinces are:

Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference

The Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference is a collegial body approved by the Holy See and has as its stated aim:

to provide the bishops of the territories mentioned above with facilities for consultation and united action in such matters of common interest to the Church as consultation and co-operation with other hierarchies; the fostering of priestly and religious vocations; the doctrinal, apostolic and pastoral formation of the clergy, religious and laity; the promotion of missionary activity, catechetics, liturgy, lay apostolate, ecumenism, development, justice and reconciliation, social welfare, schools, hospitals, the apostolate of the press, radio, television, and other means of social communication; and any other necessary activity.

Apostolic Nuncio

Archbishop Henryk Mieczysław Jagodziński was appointed Apostolic Nuncio to South Africa on 16 April 2024, and also became the Apostolic Nuncio to Botswana, Lesotho, eSwatini and Namibia.

Catholic Church and apartheid

Denis Hurley is Archbishop of Durban and a member of the Central Preparatory Committee of Vatican II. He was appointed bishop at the age of 31 and was a leader in opposing the apartheid regime. Many other officials within the Catholic Church in South Africa opposed apartheid, but a group of white Catholics formed the South African Catholic Defence League with the purposes of condemning the church's political involvement and, in particular, denouncing school integration.[5]

People

Education

See also

References

  1. ^ "South Africa Census 96 -Table 1 - Province by Population group for Person weighted, Roman Catholic Church". Statistics South Africa. Archived from the original on 9 November 2020.
  2. ^ GCatholic.org
  3. ^ Afrikaans-Speaking Catholics in the Rainbow Republic, Catholic World News, 14 November 1996.
  4. ^ https://sacbc.org.za/pope-francis-appoints-the-auxiliary-bishop-of-the-archdiocese-of-durban/
  5. ^ Country Studies. "Religion and apartheid". Source: Rita M. Byrnes, ed. South Africa: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1996.

Sources

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