La preghiera-sfida di Traoré a papa Leone XIV…
See more
The prayer-challenge of Traore to Pope Leo XIV
A
“liberation counter-homely” from Africa that raises its head
His Holiness Pope Robert Francis
I am not writing them from a palace, nor from the comforts of foreign embassies, but from the soil of my homeland, the land of Burkina Faso, where the dust is mixed with the blood of our martyrs and the echoes of revolution are louder than the buzz of foreign drones over our heads.
I don’t write them as a man looking for approval, nor as someone wrapped in diplomatic conventions. I write them as a son of Africa, bold, wounded, untamed.
Now she is the spiritual father of over a billion souls including millions here in Africa. She inherits not just a church but a mission. And in this moment of transition, while white smoke still lingers on the roofs of the Vatican, I must send this letter across seas and deserts, beyond guards and erased, straight to her heart, because history demands it, because truth demands it, because Africa, wounded and in rebellion, is there watching.
Holiness we african know the power of the cross. We know the hymns, prayers, litans. We have built churches with clumsy hands and we have defended our faith with our blood.
But we also know another truth, a truth that too many have preferred to bury: that the Church sometimes walked alongside colonizers, that while missionaries prayed for our souls, soldiers desecrated our lands, that while you predecessors spoke of heaven, our ancestors were chained on earth.
And even now, in this so-called modern era, we still suffer the chains not of iron, but of silence. Of the indifference of geopolitical games that take place in sacred darkness.
So I ask, in the name of the mothers who pray on the beaten ground floors and the children who attend Sunday school with an empty stomach: will their pap be any different?
Will she be the Pope who sees Africa not as a suburbs but as a prophetic centre? Maybe the Pope doesn’t just visit the barracks for photos, but who dares to speak with anger against the forces that make those barracks permanent?
See, Holiness, I am a man forged by war, not by wealth. I have not been corrupted by western institutions for political use. They didn't teach me diplomacy in Paris. I learned leadership in the trenches, among the people, where pain is teacher and hope is resistance.
I lead a nation that has been marginalized from the world until we refused to be silent. We were told we were too poor to be independent, too weak to be sovereign, too unstable to resist. But I tell them with the thunder of the ancestors in my voice: we have stopped asking for permission to exist.
We’ve stopped begging validation from powers that exploit our minerals while preaching morality. And we have stopped, absolutely stopped, accepting that global spiritual leaders look away from the cries of Africa because politics is uncomfortable.
Holiness, [not] I speak now only for Burkina Faso, but for a continent that has been dominated for too long. Africa is not a continent to pity, we are a continent of prophets. Prophets who were imprisoned, exiled and murdered for daring to challenge the empire.
And she, now that she wears the ring of St. Peter as a symbol, will she follow the path of the prophets? Or will she also be a prisoner of politics?
We don't need any more triviality. We need no more wishes and prayers as the western multinationals extract uranium from Niger, and gold from Congo, under armed stock.
We don't need diplomatic neutrality while young Africans are drowning in the Mediterranean fleeing wars they didn't start, with weapons they didn't manufacture.
We don't need no sublime statements while African sovereignty is auctioned behind closed doors in Brussels, Washington and Geneva.
What we need is a Pope to appoint a modern-day Herod, who thunders against economic empires with the same boldness the Church once thundered against communism.
A Pope blatantly saying it’s a sin for nations to profit off of Africa’s destruction.
She knows the teachings of Christ. He knows He toppled the exchange tables. He knows that He said “Blessed are the peacemakers” but He never said “Blessed are peacemakers”.
So I ask her personally: will she speak out against the silence of France and her secret operations in the Sahel?
Will he condemn arms trafficking that fuel wars for proxy in our deserts and forests? Will it expose the greed that amassed by charity? Diplomacy that masks imperialism with peace talks, because we see it happening, we live it.
Your Holiness, I don't ask you to be African.
I ask you to be human, to be moral, to be brave, because courage, real courage, is not blessing the powerful. Defending the weak while paying the price.
Allow me to speak the truth. The Vatican has unimaginable riches, priceless art, access beyond all borders. But real power isn’t measured in treasures hidden behind marble walls, real power is measured in the courage to face injustice.
Even when he shows up dressed in a tailor-made dress, with diplomatic credentials and smiling despite his sins, His Holiness, the world is on the brink of a precipice and Africa, this martyred and beautiful continent, is not limited to looking down: we are rising.
We are bleeding, we are rising and we dare to ask questions that echo louder than canon law.
Where was the Church when our presidents were overthrown by mercenaries scattered abroad?
Where was the Church when our young people were kidnapped and indoctrinated into wars financed by nations claiming to be forces of peace?
Where was the Church when our currencies collapsed, when the International Monetary Fund suffocated our economies?
When have our leaders been punished for choosing sovereignty over submission?
Don't tell us to forgive while the whip is still in the hands of the butcher.
Don't tell us to pray while our prayers are being answered with drone strikes. Don't talk of peace without naming the profiteers of war.
Because silence, Holiness, is no longer holy and neutrality is no longer noble.
If she must shepherd this global flock, then hear this cry from the dust of Uagadugu.
We also are his sheep. But we don’t graze quietly in the fields, we march on the streets, we die on the front lines.
We rise from the ashes with fire in our bones and scriptures on our tongue.
We don't ask for charity, we demand justice. And justice must begin with truth.
The truth is that Christianity in Africa has been both a balm and a sword. The truth is that the Church has been feeding our spirits without being able to protect our bodies.
The truth is redemption without acknowledgement is half-truth and half-truths have never healed the nations.
Holiness, now she sits in the chair of St. Peter.
Remember, Peter denied Christ three times before the rooster sang. Don't allow History to write that the Church has denied Africa once again.
Let the rooster sing loud and clear in the Vatican. Awaken the consciousness of cardinals and kings.
That echo in the corridors of power, where men in suits and men in uniform trade silence with influence.
May you herald a new dawn, not only for the Church, but for the world.
Because here in Africa we don’t fear the sunrises, we create them.
We are sons and daughters of Sankara, Lumumba, Nkrumah and Biko.
We carry the Scriptures in one hand and honor, the memory of the revolutionaries in the other.
We have learned to pray and protest in the same breath.
And we ask: will his dad walk with us? Will she meet us in our pain, not only in the pews of our churches? Will God recognize in our hunger? Christ in our chaos, the Holy Spirit in our struggles?
Because if this is not the time, it is the time of Judas, and if the Church continues to preach peace ignoring the machine of oppression, in which Good News are we supposed to believe? I am not saying this out of anger, but with great urgency.
We are a people at a crossroads between prophecy and politics, and Africa’s time is not coming, it’s here. We are rewriting the narrative, reshaping the future, reclaiming the dignity that has been denied to us by centuries of foreign domination and spiritual manipulation.
And the Church has to decide which side to stand: with the strong powers here, or with the bleeding people.
I do not write this letter to condemn. I write this to invite you, Holiness, to a deeper solidarity, to a solidarity that walks barefoot with the poor, to dare to tell the truth in Rome with the same boldness that he does in Rwanda, to remember the saints not only for miracles, but for the their commitment to justice.
We wait for your voices, not from balconies, but from trenches and favelas. From refugee camps, from behind bars of political prisons where the truth is imprisoned.
Because only that voice, your voice, can redeem the silence. And if you dare to speak it, not only Africa will listen to you, but the whole world.
Burkina Faso, son of Africa, servant o
Is the Roman Catholic Church what it purports to be -
or something more sinister?
The Paul VI Audience Hall
Pope Benedict XVI sits in front of the sculpture on Nov. 9, 2008. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
The following article by Justin McLellan from
It explains the artist's and Vatican's interpretation of the work. However to me it bears little sembance to Christian teaching or theology but rather has a sinister and demonic vibe. Interestingly it is 66 feet wide and 23 feet tall. Looking towards the front, the space has a quite 'spooky' look, rather like an extra-terrestrial with two oval eyes or is my imagination running away with me? Presumably this was all intentional - but far removed from Jesus Christ and his teachings. Rather like the Catholic Church in practice, I have to say - a sentiment embedded in the article above.
Over the pope's shoulder: An 'explosion' of spirituality in bronze by Justin McLellan
"When the popes hold their weekly general audiences indoors, a massive bronze statue looms over them. It gets mixed reviews, but a Rome museum has an exhibit underway explaining the history and meaning of the piece.
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Through five pontificates, popes have instructed the faithful at their weekly general audiences, condemned war, called for peace and even celebrated birthdays in the Vatican audience hall under the gaze of a giant bronze sculpture of Jesus.
The massive sculpture, nearly 66 feet wide and 23 feet tall, is the largest project realized by a single artist in the Vatican since Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel in the 16th century.
Millions of pilgrims traveling to Rome have seen what Father Timothy Verdon, a prominent art historian, called "the best-known post-conciliar work" in the Vatican, but it solicits mixed reviews.
When a photo of the sculpture was posted in online art forums earlier this year, some commentors responded that the piece looked "creepy" and "demonic." In 2022, a viral tweet depicting the sculpture asked: "Is this a normal thing the pope stands in front of?"
The sculpture, titled "Resurrection," was partially inspired by the violence and chaos of the 1945 nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. The artist believed depicting a nuclear explosion would represent a powerful testimony of Christ's victory over even the most extreme forms of death and destruction as well as the moment when the material, through its annihilation, becomes immaterial.
The story of how Pericle Fazzini (Ed. 1913 - 1987) the sculptor, came to create such a striking work is told in an exhibit at Rome's Carlo Bilotti Museum to mark the 110th anniversary of Fazzini's birth.
After the Second World War, Fazzini's work combined his spiritual inclination with a strong sense of civic duty.
"Executed," completed in 1946, represents an Italian resistance fighter killed by a firing squad; the fighter's sinking body evokes that of Jesus in Michelangelo's "Pietà."
"His anti-fascism came from his Catholicism," said Alessandro Masi, an art historian and curator of the Rome exhibit. "He never fought with the resistance, but as an artist he represented (resistance fighters) not as war heroes, but as martyrs killed by the Nazis and fascists, as new Christs."
As his work gained notice, its spiritual dimension was recognized, and the sculptor began producing pieces for the Vatican, such as the tabernacle for the chapel of the Secretariat of State, and a basin for the blessing of holy water in St. Peter's Basilica.
The sculptor eventually developed a "deep friendship "with St. Paul VI, who would invite artists to the Vatican for dinner, Masi told Catholic News Service. The pope was "deeply convinced that that the mission of artists in the modern era was an evangelical one, and that the power of imagery could help in this mission."
That conviction led the pope to search for an artist to build a work for the Vatican audience hall, which he commissioned in 1964. The following year, Fazzini was in talks with the Vatican about creating a large sculpture for the audience hall, although its architect, Pier Luigi Nervi, protested any additions that would alter the space within his building.
It wasn't until the pope personally intervened in 1972 that Fazzini received the commission and began work on the piece. The resulting sculpture, "Resurrection," would become the "synthesis of his life's work," said Masi.
In his personal notes, Fazzini wrote that it was while waiting for a meeting at the Vatican to discuss the sculpture that he had an idea of "resurrecting Christ from a Garden of Gethsemane rocked by a nuclear explosion."
It is precisely that "explosion" and the "decomposition" of substance surrounding the Risen Christ that demonstrates Fazzini's "search for spirit in the material," Masi said.
"To him, the material world is not just material, but God is there," he said, "and the more the material world breaks down and becomes minute, the more one can see God in the particular."
While "Resurrection" attempts to convey Christ embedded in the universe, "it is a universe that is turning into stardust," noted Masi.
St. John XXIII published his encyclical "Pacem in Terris" ("Peace on Earth"), calling for the banning of nuclear weapons, less than 10 years before Fazzini began work on "Resurrection." Fazzini was not making a political statement with the sculpture, Massi said, but chose to depict a nuclear explosion since it is in that moment that the material world "erupts" and "becomes atomized."
"His question was, how to atomize faith? How can I show that faith participates in the material of the universe? Because God is the material of the universe," he said.
The exhibit in Rome showcases early sketches and models of the bronze sculpture that stands today in the Paul VI audience hall, named after the saint who commissioned the hall and the artwork that adorns it. Fazzini's drawings and small busts in the exhibit demonstrate that, for the artist, the main objective of the sculpture was to emphasize Christ's victory over death and God's intertwined relationship with the physical world he created.
The sculpture was inaugurated shortly after St. Paul VI's birthday in 1977.
"Finally," Masi said, Fazzini had a "work that represented his lifelong aspiration of representing Christ."
"And this Christ, who is he? He is part of the universe that decomposes and returns to a more mystic essence that exists before the material world," he said.
Creating a full-sized model of the sculpture to then be fused with bronze was a challenge for Fazzini. Plaster and clay were too heavy for the sculpture's intricate forms and wax was too brittle. So, the artist used polystyrene, a then-experimental plastic which, when heated, sent toxic microplastics into the air.
Creating the model of "Resurrection" gave Fazzini lung poisoning, which led to the artist's death a decade after the sculpture was completed." END.
Our lives are very dull and pointless arn't they? I'm glad you still have family and friend connections in Pensford and a reason to drive there. I bet the countryside is looking beautiful at the moment. I never fail to be impressed with the greenery when I come back. I can understand why Starmer and the present lot set you off again. We are an island with a lot of people on it still trying to come to terms with the loss of empire and being the 'workshop of the world'. Somehow we have adapted and survived but as it is with individuals so it is with the state. We have to survive somehow economically. Which American President said of election success or failure, "It's the economy stupid." The current 'tranactional' American President seems to have got it, however callous and selfish it seems. It is what fires his 'America Great Again' slogan. The thing is 'Little Britain' is stuck between two major trading blocks and needs to charm both. It's called 'diplomacy' and 'soft power' and Britain has been pretty good at it over the years. We have spent a fortune on Europe to wedge the door open and abandoned our principles to keep the US on side. The few raw materials and manufacturing skills that we had have been either abandoned or sold off to the highest bidder. At some point we shall have nothing left worth selling and what then? I've just read an article on how amazingly Enoch Powell still haunts the corridores of power including the Labour Party. Note Starmer's recent reference to 'Strangers in our own country'. But Starmer may have bigger problems approaching from behind with the revelations that it was an Ukrainian 'male model' who set fire to two properties and a car with links to the PM and his mate Lord Alli, the motivations for which can only be imagined! I hope you and everyone have a very enjoyable Tuesday.
