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.
Reporting from the Kigali Convention Center – July 31, 2025 Kigali — At the Regina Pacis Church in Kigali, under the gaze of Mary, Queen of Peace, the 20th Plenary Assembly of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) opened with a solemn Mass presided over by Cardinal Peter Appiah Turkson, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academies of…
This week marks a historic gathering as African bishops convene in Kigali, Rwanda, for the 20th Plenary Assembly of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM). Over 250 participants including presidents of 54 national episcopal conferences, theologians, and global partners are taking part in this landmark assembly. The expectations from God’s people in Africa are high on…
This past week, at an Ecclesial Project gathering, someone asked me where Africans find hope amid all the troubles there. I reminded her: there is no such things as African hope or American hope. We all need hope today, just as our ancestors needed to live in hope amidst the challenges they faced in their own day. Each generation faces…
President Buhari died the way he lived: shrouded in mystery, from a sickness he refused to disclose, leaving a nation to speculate. Even in death, he remains an enigma. Many Nigerians still believe he died years ago and that an impostor ruled in his place. While I reject that fantasy, it speaks volumes about our country: no one knows who…
Recently, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, President of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), published an essay in The Wall Street Journal titled “Africa Needs American Generosity; the Aid You Send Us Isn’t Wasted.” He expressed Africa’s gratitude to the American government for supporting the continent’s path toward self-reliance. He rightly rejected aid that promotes abortion, population control,…
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…
What do you call a group that drags neighbors from their homes, stones them, and burns them alive—witch hunters, or political thugs? In Burundi, the line has all but disappeared. According to Radio France Internationale (RFI), “a group of armed young men broke into the homes of around ten people late on Monday evening and dragged them out by force.…
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…
Pope Leo’s recent appointment of five Africans to the Vatican’s Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life brought joy and hope to many across the continent. In the Holy See Press Office bulletin of Tuesday, June 24, the Holy Father named Cristóbal Cardinal López Romero of Rabat (Morocco), Archbishop Jude Thaddaeus Ruwa’ichi of Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzania), Bishop…