Stan Chu Ilo is a senior research professor of world christianity, african studies, and global health at the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural theology, DePaul University, and the coordinating servant of the Pan-African Catholic Theology and Pastoral Network.
I stood among the concelebrating priests at Pope Leo’s Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square. There, I watched the choreography of solemn ritual, spiritual power, and papal presence unfold. What caught my attention, as a Black Catholic priest, was the quieter symbolism at the altar. Two African priests were among the principal masters of ceremony at the Mass, which…
Reading the recent threats issued on Truth Social by President Trump on Easter Sunday, and his public statements on Easter Monday, threats to completely destroy Iran by Easter Tuesday, to blow up bridges, to dismantle power plants, if the Strait of Hormuz is not opened by Iran, were not only disturbing; they were heartbreaking. It forces one to ask, with…
Why are people not thinking of hell anymore as they did in the past? Lent is the season when the Church insists that we look steadily at the truth: the truth about our fragility, sin, death, eternity, and God. Lent does not invite us into morbid fear; it invites us into conversion. It calls us back from a life lived…
The Foreign Minister of Ghana, Samuel Ablakwa, on a recent visit to Kiev, Ukraine, asked his Ukrainian counterpart to help secure the release of two Ghanaians held as prisoners of war. According to a report by the BBC, of the 272 Ghanaians said to be fighting in the war, more than 55 young men have been killed. Another investigation by…
President Trump is dragging the U.S. into an unnecessary war without any national conversation or the approval of Congress. This military operation is both ill-advised and wrong-headed. President Trump is going into it alone without the consent of any of America’s allies in the Middle East, the G20, NATO, or elsewhere, except Israel. Iran was already negotiating in good faith,…
After last week’s Ash Wednesday Mass, someone asked me whether I believe in the existence of hell—and whether hell is really the abode of the devil. I replied, “yes,” but I could not explain it further because many others were still lining up to greet me or receive ashes. The liturgy had been moving, almost searching. The sign of the…
The Holy See confirmed this week, through Cardinal Pietro Parolin, that it will not participate in U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed “Board of Peace” on Palestine, according to a Reuters report. The Vatican’s reason was simple and consistent with its diplomatic tradition: a crisis of this magnitude must be addressed through legitimate multilateral institutions, above all the United Nations. The…
“Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return. Repent and believe the Gospel.” The liturgy of Ash Wednesday places before the Church a truth that is at once sobering and profoundly liberating. “Remember that you are dust.” Humanity is dust—finite, vulnerable, radically dependent on God. Yet this incompleteness is not a defect in our humanity. It is…
The ongoing cultural debate that erupted at the Ghana–Zambia economic forum in Lusaka between Zambians and Ghanaians over the dress code for African politicians and public officials is both interesting and revealing. It is revealing not because of what people said, but because the debate exposed Africa’s unresolved relationship with identity, dress codes, modernity, and power. The debate was triggered…
The recent Lifetime Achievement Award given to the Father of Afrobeat, Nigeria’s Fela Anikulapo Kuti, calls for celebration and reflection on his enduring legacy. Fela is the first African to win this award, albeit posthumously. While many of his numerous admirers will wonder why he never received it while he was alive, or why it has taken nearly three decades…