News & Features

Where the Catholic press thrives
archived from: 2007-09-10
by: C.T. Maier

A little smaller than the state of Pennsylvania, the country of Benin lies on the coast of West Africa sandwiched between Togo on the west and Nigeria on the east. Culturally and geographically, it’s about as far away from Pittsburgh as anyone can get.

Yet, Catholics in Pittsburgh have a strong connection to the Catholic Church in Benin through Father Andre Quenum, a 40-year-old Beninese priest who studied at Duquesne University for several years. During that time, he lived at St. Mary of Mercy Parish in Downtown Pittsburgh and celebrated Mass there on occasion.

After graduating from Duquesne with a doctorate in rhetoric in 2004, he has been using the insights he gained from his time in Pittsburgh as the director for communications for the Archdiocese of Cotonou, where he edits the archdiocesan newspaper, La Croix du Benin.

Father Quenum returns to Pittsburgh occasionally, and when he does he tells a remarkable and inspiring story of the church’s ministry in Benin and the importance of the Catholic press in the faith and life of a developing country.

“A neutral voice”

Catholicism in Benin is a minority religion. In recent years, though, the church has become more influential than its numbers suggest, not only in African Catholicism but also in Beninese politics, where the church has emerged as a driving force for democracy.

Benin, like many nearby countries, began its modern history as a French colony. For the first 12 years after gaining its independence in 1960, Benin was the most unstable government in Africa. Rival parties based on regional and ethnic loyalties clashed repeatedly in a series of coups, ending with the imposition of socialist rule in 1972.

The years of socialist dictatorship were difficult. Father Quenum’s uncle, also a priest, was imprisoned for 10 years for preaching against the regime.

But when the socialist government finally fell along with the Soviet Bloc in 1989, the country was faced with the difficulty of mediating the old conflicts between ethnic factions, ideologies and political interests that drove the country to chaos in its early years. As leaders of the various political parties gathered in the national conference that would found the democracy, few knew whether the country would return to its tumultuous past or forge a new path.

Then something unexpected happened. In a country where more people practice voodoo than worship Christ, the people of Benin asked Archbishop Isidore de Souza of the Archdiocese of Cotonou to chair the national conference.

The people of Benin, Father Quenum said, had remembered how the church was always on the side of the poor during the years of dictatorship, how the country’s leaders had been educated in Catholic schools and how Benin’s Catholic hospitals provided essential health care. Through years of strife and oppression, the Catholic Church had created the foundation for peace.

Just as the church’s institutions tied the nation together, Archbishop de Souza, who sent Father Quenum to Pittsburgh to study communications, provided a sense of trust among the delegates.

“He was a godsend,” Father Quenum said. “He was able to manage the opposition and the anger, even for those who had been jailed.”

In a country that could have dissolved into violence, the archbishop led the way to democracy. And before his death in 1999, Archbishop de Souza had created a new role for the church.

“The people trusted the church to be a neutral voice. Since then the church has always played a role of moral authority,” he said. “Whenever there is a major national event, people expect a message from the church.”

And in Benin, that message comes from the Catholic press.

“A moral priority”

Cotonou, a coastal city of 761,000 people, is the economic heart of a country that thrusts about 350 miles northward into the African jungle. The name of the archdiocese’s French-language newspaper, La Croix, reflects not only its Christian mission but its purpose. In addition to bringing the Good News, its area of publication literally “crosses” the entire country of Benin.

Of course, La Croix’s status as a nationwide newspaper is relative. In a country where the literacy rate is less than 40 percent, the mail system is expensive and unreliable, and French is only one of about 40 tribal languages, its circulation is only 4,500.

Even so, it has been in continuous publication since 1946, making it the oldest paper in West Africa in continuous publication and the voice of Beninese democracy.

In many ways, La Croix is just like a Catholic newspaper in the United States. Written from the heart of the church, it contains many items that one would expect from a Catholic publication, like catechetical articles, homilies, papal statements and local Catholic news. But it also contains things that one may not expect to find.

In the July 27 issue, for instance, alongside the pope’s message for World Youth Day, it provided political news about the Beninese president’s anti-corruption campaign, stories on economic development and even an item on prostate health.

Father Quenum said these articles, while strange from an American Catholic perspective, are vital for a country like Benin, where media are so preoccupied by politics that they simply don’t report anything else. Important articles on rudimentary health care and economic issues are simply ignored by mainstream media.

“We enjoy freedom of expression, and we have 20 daily papers, but the weakness of these papers is that because of the scarcity of resources people can easily buy them and make them mouthpieces of particular factions,” he said. “Speaking from a neutral position becomes a moral priority for us.”

La Croix provides an important link for the Catholic Church in Benin. From February to July, Father Quenum traveled more than 3,700 miles in Benin to report on each of the country’s 10 dioceses. In a country with only two paved highways, he said, many people, including some bishops, have noted how much they learned about their fellow countrymen in La Croix.

Daily, he says, he draws upon the education he received in Pittsburgh, where he completed his dissertation on the role of communication in the founding of Beninese democracy. Many programs can provide tools and techniques, he said, but Duquesne’s rhetoric program helped him to understand the deeper problems in his country and find new solutions.

Practical help

Catholics in Pittsburgh are helping in more practical ways as well. Through friendships forged in Pittsburgh, Father Quenum keeps the newspaper going. The organization Service for the Love of God, headquartered in Pittsburgh, raises money to help meet the paper’s $30,000 budget and helps in other ways, like providing used computers for the paper to write and design its pages.

“I am also particularly grateful for the support I have received from the Diocese of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Catholic in producing our newspaper,” Father Quenum said.

Robert Lockwood, general manager of the Pittsburgh Catholic, said the paper will work closely with La Croix and plans to report to readers regularly on developments with the Benin newspaper.

Despite the challenges, Father Quenum continues to work tirelessly for the people of Benin, a task he believes will bear fruit around the world.

“We don’t have oil. We don’t have gold,” he said. “But we have a great history with the church. From the point of view of the church on the continent, from the point of view of democracy, Benin has played an important role.”

Father Quenum’s newspaper, La Croix, can be read online at http://www.lacroixdubenin.com. Visit the Service for the Love of God homepage at http://www.helpcatholiccharities.org to help.

 

 

 

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