Frantz Fanon once wrote, “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.” For many African Catholics today, there is a growing sense that God has entrusted our continent with a vital mission—to lead the Church and Christianity into a new era. It’s true that the Pope is not African, and Africans do not…

When I left Nigeria to study in Rome in 2001, my parents gave me two requests. My mother asked me to bring her holy water from St. Peter’s Square. My father asked me to “learn everything the white man knows, add it to your African wisdom from our ancestors, and use this knowledge to lift Africa higher and higher.” I…