Eric Wamanji
Another diplomatic boom for Kenya looms in the skylines. It’s just a matter of weeks before the pontiff lands a chartered Alitalia in Nairobi. This hands Kenya extra silvery occasion to showcase the country to the world soon after Air Force One lifted off from Nairobi.
It is interesting that the pontiff chose Kenya – a country of entrenched vanity and naked materialism as his first stop on the African soil. This is what Christ would have done and taught anyway. Kenya needs a divine tweak.
The papal African sojourn is overdue. Save for South America, Africa is home to a solid base of Catholics 136,000,325 or 16 % of the population. The general Christian population is fairly wide, yet ours is also a totem of a church in destruction savagely battered by false evangelism, persecutions and raw capitalism.
That is why his coming is of great significance to give hope to a people the church has conveniently forsaken. Where the poor are helpless pawns in the Church Inc. political and corporate chessboards.
Of course Nairobi will be electrified as it cheerily receives the pope. Tens of thousands will fish out their smartphones to snap this historic visit. Social media will pulsate. Radio and TV will host rounds of panel discussions and live streaming of the visit. Trumpets and hosannas will rent the air. Take all these with a pinch of salt. That’s how the mid-class here act. The cheer will be ephemeral; Kenya will retreat to its old seedy deeds.
Indeed, this is a visit to treacherous milieu whose people and leaders have elected to worship what the pope would poetically call the “golden calf.” The materialistic motor that is driving this nation has turned man to beast.
Further, ours is a dangerously gullible society so illiterate in consuming religion. It is this naivety, snubbing even the classic Pauline postulation of faith and work that has also sparked a mass exodus from Catholic parishes and Sees in the guise of searching for ‘spiritual fulfillment’. Yet we know souls are in frenetic rush for miracle riches conveniently lied by charlatans at the pulpits.
Yes, it is this pursuit for materialism that has spawned the thriving and lucrative prosperity gospel bonanza sweeping this country like a hurricane.
This reality is a stark contrast of Pope Francis philosophy.
“Whenever material things, money, worldliness, become the center of our lives, they take hold of us, they possess us; we lose our very identity as human beings,” the pope told a congregation recently at the St. Peters Square.
This of course has been his mantra since assuming office. Yet Kenya is chewing itself from this materialistic penchant and voracious rush and crush for wealth.
Materialism and greed has sired widespread social injustice. We consume for the sake of it, and we seek meaning in material things. Greed amongst the populations and leaderships has seen children robbed of their right to live because medication has been squandered, while others have their school grounds stolen; massive populations are robbed of their property because they belong to the wrong tribe, while almost every individual is robbed of dignity either by the state or government in a social contract that has been trashed.
The pope is coming to a Kenya where everyday, people are determined to “finish” each other in the Cain vs Abel design. It appears to be an acceptable lifestyle to sit at restaurants or bars, to scheme of how to fix a rival here, a rival there. Envy and hatred have clouded the hearts of this nation such that when combined with the raw pursuit of materials, you have a world teetering toward anarchy. It’s a beastly jungle this where sound values are non-existent and frowned at, and models to emulate are elusive like apparitions.
Apart from runaway ethnicity and plunder of public resources, the corporate world in concert with the political squad has connived to squeeze every single blood cell from the peasant. As if that is not enough, some, ranging form Members of the County Assembly (MCA) are tiny deities demanding worshiping from the subjects.
The madness here doesn’t end there. In fact, the Pope in his Franciscan desire of poverty and modesty will easily get a heart attack if he learns the filth of wealth the so-called men and even women of cloth spool in.
Never mind, this obscene wealth is a direct theft from the purses and wallets of gullible souls who are in the desire to attain – you guessed right – material riches. And so, in this pursuit, the Church of Christ here has become a multi-billion dollar enterprise explaining the bare-knuckled gang fights to control this fortune among the clergy. It explains why when you are poor, Christians here would not touch you.
Yet, the pope is loved across the divide. International press call him a rockstar pope. Therefore, though his may be viewed as a religious sojourn, the Holy See is also a state enjoying diplomatic ties with Kenya. In this respect, the pope is also a head of state. No army of his own, but he commands an empire transcending cultures and political boundaries. So, will he use his soft power to afflict the comfortable in Kenya and Africa?
Thus the pope needs to leverage on his greatest resource – soft power- to vouch for social justice in our society. He has to petition for empathy from government and the corporate world and to demand that his Bishops regain their mojo as the voices of the voiceless.
Indeed, we know that this is a revolutionary Pope. He has clinically overhauled the Curia (his cabinet) firing some of the most influential and ingrained personalities; he has elected to live in poverty and not in the papal palace. Will he also demand of the same of African governments? Can he also tell our politicians and clergy to stop dalliances with evil and instead extent the hand of love and compassion to the subject? In any case, the days of lethargy and see no evil in states of the Holy See are long gone.
The African church must crush the dark glasses of purgatory where it has retreated to stand for the peasant, the exploited and the victimised. Today, the pulpit lacks in intellectual and prophetic rigor. It has lost its high ground as a conscience of this ratty society.
Mr. Wamanji is a Media and Communications advisor wamanji@rococo.co.ke @manjis