The Catholic Church has since moved on leaving a trail of unfounded narratives, imaginations, machinations and very vast opinions behind, especially rooting from we the Africans on who- or why a black pope was not selected, considered, promoted or elected. This begs a huge question of identity bias, denial of history, sense of entitlement and a very dangerous gallop into our collective future even as a race or people.
While it is very “reasonable” in some quotas for the Catholic Church to “appear” as a melting pot of the faith, leader of an ancient belief system and a common ground for all its faithful, let us always ponder on history and find meaning as to how the evolution of man and society has led to even the system of preserving same.
As expected and appreciated, the black race will always push for her own in a renewed quest for global identity. A very painful insult to the memory of our ancient past when the Africans led the charge for the earliest education world over. The invension of the paper upon which most of history is written and destroyed came from Africa. The ideology of the original numeric and alphabetical systems came from Africa. The advent of technology and sea (water) exploration came from Africa. Egypt is regarded the cradle of civilization where the Nile river sits pretty! Astrophysicists, inventors, ancient scholars, philosophers, mathematicians, surgeons, architects and all of what was discovered, stolen, destroyed and harnessed, came from Africa.
Socrates, Pathogoras, Aristotle, Plato and all of the ancient philosophers and thinkers acknowledged and learnt from African studies. The earliest and oldest University system started in Africa (the Sankore University in Timbuktu) in what is known today as Mali in West Africa during the medieval times (over 800 years ago), an ideology of the great Mansa Musa who is considered the wealthiest man to have ever lived. The idea emerged as a center of Islamic studies that trained up to about 25,000 students at the outset.
Hundreds of millions of manuscripts of original thoughts and learning were over the centuries destroyed and today an African still seeks a validation based on race to prove our identity?????? No now!!!!
This form of identity deficit and imposed mental timidity has to stop! We don’t have to be elected as Pope of the Catholic Church before we are recognized in the universal scheme of things. Even the Cardinals of African descent know all of these and we can’t from a distance, dictate how the Church functions or preserves its traditions, pedigree, history and future when we failed to do same for ours. We were collaborators in destroying our own heritage and whenever the discussion of “colonialism” comes, I am of the firm belief that the aggressors were successful only because they had collaborators within our own folk! (That’s topic for another day)
Those who know history so well will and cannot be part of this discussion because if the true African heritage was guarded, honored and preserved the way the Catholic Church has done for centuries, each of us Africans would have been Kings and Queens living in flamboyant empires ruling the entire world from the comfort of our gardens while using gold to pluck down apples and grapes from ancient trees. It is not a question of struggling to be noticed as head of one faith but the true conviction that extends its roots in the wealth of our collective heritage.
Now centuries have passed and our identities have been conflicted. We are strangers to each other and are reduced to plots of land and bodies of water. We are now called tribes and regions. We are classified under physical features and geography. Ethnicity runs supreme and religion is a vehicle to self preservation and survival. Since when??? Our histories have been erased and we are now begging for a place on foreign tables! No now!!!
I am a Roman Catholic by faith and birth but by soul and spirit, I am African (Nubian) first. I have sought essential knowledge and I know the texture of blood that runs through my veins. We are not excluded in the global scheme of things. In fact, we provided the foundations that any other knowledge sprang from. We are royalty! We are gods!
So for anyone who could likely come to suggest to you even in passing that you are less than yourself, remind them that the faith does not count on race or class alone. It is a cultural preservation that has been kept for lots of centuries and the Catholic Church should remind we Africans of what we should have done ourselves going back to centuries before now. The division amongst us has and have always remained artificial. The Roman Empire share similarities with the Empires of Mali, Ethiopia, Egypt and even our very own Kanem-Bornu Empire, Benin Empire etc. We ran a course of history even since biblical records. Africans were regarded loosely in the book of Isaiah as the sailors and ambassadors who arrived on boats with wings from the Nubian embassy and were tall and polished who stretched from the upper end of the Nile river. That is aside the unwritten accounts and destroyed history. Left to some bitter authors, they might have as well proclaimed that Mansa Musa was a white explorer who only toured through Mali in ancient times. In his travels, Mansa Musa gave gifts of gold to people along his way to a point that each settlement he visited became so wealthy that even the poor no longer go to their farmlands any more due to general wealth (as told).
AFRICAN QUEENS;
Knowledge, they say, is power and those who seek to acquire same are liberated from the mind. We know of the tales of great African Queens as well who have carved their marks in history. We learnt about the Queen of Sheba in the Bible (1 Kings 10:1-12 and 2 Chronicles 9:1-13). It scripted how from the lands of Ethiopia, she was fascinated by the wisdom of King Solomon and how she sailed across the seas and through land to visit his court to test his wisdom. She went bearing gifts of gold, jewelries and spices. Other accounts claim that it was he who came visiting her kingdom. Facts have been twisted and records, destroyed.
Other accounts in history also told of Queen Cleopatra of Egypt and her reign. We also learnt of Queen Amina of Zazzau amongst many other majestic stories of conquests and crusades. Africa has for centuries, led the chart of history and have defined the evolution of mankind. If the Catholic Church has records of the popes from around 2000 years ago, how come we are confined to distorted history to believe we came from apes, baboons and chimpanzees? That’s wrong!
CLOSING;
Therefore, today, we can not limit our own history by being appendages to the history and traditions of others. Ours was deliberately ruined and we became subverted to the history according to others. As much as there are accounts of the Babylonian times, Mesopotamia, the Persian civilization, the Greek civilization, the Arabian dynasties, the Roman civilization that later broke into enclaves of Germania (Germany), Spain, France, Spain, the Great Britain and other parts of Europe and across the world, we as Africans definitely had our great origins that was harvested, exploited, stolen and desecrated. Had the African Traditional religion thrived to this day, why will an African even travel far to aspire to become a Pope of the Catholic Church?
There is a lot hidden in the past and unless we seek to find out our true pride of place, we will continue to struggle in futility. Given this spate of loose opinions, it therefore means that one day in the farthest future, an African may seek to become the King or Queen of England.
In another sense, with all the mighty armor, military, savagery and ruthlessness of the white man when they came to West Africa in areas around what is now called Nigeria, they had all the “force” and “power” that exported our ancestors into cotton fields and coal mines but never did any of them aspire to become the Ooni of Ife, Oba of Benin, Obi of Onitsha or Gbong Gwom Jos. They knew well enough how centuries of history can not just easily be entirely grabbed out of motivation or affection. They met Kings and Queens all over Africa whose history predated their own agenda so they limited their scope to exploitation of natural resources, slave trade (that was even existent in Africa all the way back to when Joseph was sold by his brothers to the slave market in Egypt).
One day and maybe one day, there may be an African Pope and until then, let’s learn from the African Americans who merely believed that the emergence of Barack Obama into the White House could immediately or miraculously heal of their woes and misfortunes. It did not. Obama was a member of an establishment who benefitted from the struggle of many people through history who didn’t even live to witness his emergence.
Pope John Paul II was from Poland, Pope Benedict XVI was from Germany, Pope Francis I was from Argentina. How did their origin even translate to a miraculous shift in the affairs of those nations? The position of the Pope is not merely a political one that translates into leading the church to the immediate success of other sovereign nations. It is a leadership of the church and the faith. It can at best promote the need for political leaders of the nations of the world to imitate the teachings of their own faith to the benefit of those they lead. So how do we think that the possibility of having an African Pope can even ameliorate the realities of our continent.
MAY THE LIGHT CONTINUE TO SHINE ON THE GREATNESS OF AFRICA ON ITS OWN! Amen.
May Deus permanere in unum hominem!
Arc Fentah Bankat
10/05/2025.
