c. 1999 Religion News Service

EZIOWELLE, Nigeria _ Beside a rutted road of red clay in this rural farming village, a single-story house with a tin roof and no electricity or running water speaks to the humility of a man who could be the first black pope in modern history.

Cardinal Francis Arinze was born here Nov. 1, 1932, rose through the missionary Catholic school system to study in Rome, came back to serve as archbishop during the Biafran civil war and is now one of the highest-ranking members of the international church.

As an ailing Pope John Paul II moves wearily toward his goal of ushering in the year 2000, there is growing speculation about his successor. Arinze, who is one of those on a short list of “papabili,” or those considered suitable to be pope, would be one of the more earth-shattering choices.

As the first pope chosen from the developing world, a representative of a fast-growing and faithful segment of the church once considered mission territory, Arinze would rock modern Catholicism. As a black man, he would startle American and European societies, where Catholicism is still considered a “white church.”

But Catholicism is undergoing a demographic sea change. Two-thirds of the world’s 1 billion Catholics live in developing nations, 10 percent of them in Africa.

“I think the reaction in the pews would be quite positive,” said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, editor of the Jesuit magazine America, who counts Arinze among the top five candidates for the papacy. “People have been hearing about racial justice from the pulpit, and it’s quite clear where the church stands on racial equality. Anyone who is a confirmed racist has probably left the church unhappy by now.”

Reese conceded there would, nonetheless, be surprise, much as there was surprise when Pope John Paul II was elected the first Polish pontiff and the first non-Italian in 450 years.

“It would seem to me that people would respond so positively to Cardinal Arinze’s personality that they would quickly see him not as a black pope but simply as a person,” Reese added. “They would get beyond racial identity and see his warmth, his personality, his intelligence and, sooner or later, his faults.”

Politically, Arinze follows the conservative mold of John Paul II, a fact that sends shivers through the ranks of liberal priests, theologians and reformers in the American church, but he shares other traits with the man most agree has advanced Catholicism in a tumultuous time.

Arinze is charismatic and relaxed before the media spotlight. He is an outspoken voice for the world’s poor and has had his hatred of ethnic violence shaped by a brutal war. As president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Arinze would be well qualified to continue the historic conversations initiated by John Paul II with Jews and Muslims.

From the traffic-choked streets of Onitsha, where he served as archbishop for 20 years, to the rural village that is his hometown, faithful Nigerian Catholics say the choice is up to God. When pressed, they concede they are praying that Arinze will be chosen.

“We will be happy if he remains a cardinal, and we will be happy if he becomes pope,” Igwe Michael Ugorji Okonkwo Etusi, traditional ruler of Eziowelle, said from atop a red-felt throne in his palace, a leopard skin stretched on the wall behind him.

“You do not jostle for the job of pope. For us, though, he is good material for anything God wishes. He is intelligent, approachable and very open-minded.”

Arinze has become so disturbed by public speculation on his chances for being the next pope that he rarely grants interviews, even then declining any questions about the papacy. He declined to be interviewed for this story.

Arinze was baptized at the age of 9 by Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi, beatified last year by John Paul during a trip to Nigeria and expected to become the first West African saint.

His father, Joseph Arinze Nwankwu, a local farmer, and his mother, Bernadette, were practitioners of traditional religion, although they would eventually follow their son to Catholicism.

Despite Arinze’s conservative bent, members of the Catholic Church in Onitsha and Eziowelle said he was progressive when it came to incorporating native dance and language into the worship service, a practice known in church terms as inculturation and a key reason the church has flourished in Africa.

Arinze’s family was Igbo, one of the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria and the one claiming the most adherents to Catholicism.

The Rev. Charles Okwumuo, pastor of St. Edward’s Church in Eziowelle, said people had trouble reconciling the connection between their archbishop and the simple family compound where Arinze still sleeps during annual visits.

“They were very surprised when they didn’t find a large house,” Okwumuo said. “It gave people a lot of reason for reflection.”

Arinze began his education at the parish school of St. Edward’s Church _ which at the time was simply a hut where a visiting priest celebrated Mass twice a month. Soon the boy moved to a boarding school in nearby Dunukofia, where Tansi was his teacher and the parish priest.

“He was very dutiful about attending the church and doing his domestic work,” recalled his younger sister, Victoria Onyekwelu, who still lives in Eziowelle where she works the fields and attends daily Mass at St. Edward’s. “Our parents were happy, because there were a lot of pagan parents whose children were attending the Catholic schools and it was good.”

Onyekwelu, a widow whose concrete-block house sits near the family compound, is one of four living siblings of the cardinal. His brother, Ifeanyi Arinze, is a professor at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn., and two other siblings live in and around Onitsha.

Sitting in the neighboring home of her brother-in-law, Louis, Onyekwelu spoke lovingly of the cardinal and of her surprise when he was elevated and moved to Rome.

“I felt overwhelming joy when he was made a cardinal,” she said. “I never knew there was any post higher than bishop.”

Asked how she would feel if Arinze were to be elected pope, Onyekwelu, who traveled to Rome to witness her brother’s elevation, smiled slightly and averted her eyes.

“I couldn’t explain what my reactions would be,” she said finally.

Her brother-in-law, who began the interview by marking the concrete floor with chalk as a sign of welcome and later split open a cloved cola nut and shared it as a sign of unity, expressed fond memories of the day Arinze began his rise in the church hierarchy.

“We had seen black bishops before by that time, but we were still surprised and happy, particularly because he was so young,” Louis Onyekwelu said.

Arinze had always been a good student, winning perfect marks to finish out his high school career, and it was no surprise when he took steps to become the first priest from his hometown. After a short teaching stint and three years of seminary in nearby Enugu, he was sent to Rome to study theology.

Ordained a priest there, he earned both a master’s degree and a doctorate of divinity. Returning to Nigeria in 1960, he lectured in the seminary and was an administrator of Catholic schools before being named archbishop in 1965 at the age of 32.

He was the first African bishop in the diocese, following two Irish missionaries, and he came of age just as more and more Africans were taking over leadership of the Catholic Church there.

Arinze was consecrated archbishop of Onitsha shortly before one of the most trying times in Nigerian history _ the Biafran civil war.

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The days of English colonialism ended in 1960, but almost immediately there were power struggles between the Igbo and two other major tribal groups, the Yoruba in the southwest and the Hausa-Fulani to the north.

Military coups and political intrigue sparked violence in the north _ a still-simmering conflict that occasionally flares up with bloody consequences _ and tens of thousands of Igbos were massacred. In 1967, weary of the persecution, Igbos went back to their traditional homeland in the East and declared an independent state.

The ensuing Biafran war, which produced lingering snapshots of starving refugee children, claimed 1 million lives and threatened to snuff out the Catholic Church.

Vincent Umeadi was one of the refugees who stayed alive by eating rations provided by the Catholic Church. He said it was Arinze’s administrative skills that kept the food lines moving.

“The war was concentrated in the big cities like Onitsha, and we were all in the country moving from place to place,” said Anthony Obida, an accountant who was born and raised near Arinze’s village. “Onitsha was a ghost town strewn with bodies. By the end of the war, the government soldiers had destroyed Holy Trinity Cathedral.”

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After the war was over, the government expelled all foreign missionaries from Nigeria, angered by relief efforts they believed had prolonged the fighting, and many believed Catholicism would die out.

Instead, the suffering seemed to ignite a new faithfulness, and the seminaries burst with young Nigerians.

“There was a sharp awareness of the danger of extinction,” said the Rev. Linus E.V. Edogwo, a visiting priest in Newark, N.J., who, as a seminarian, worked for Arinze as a public relations officer. “The few local clergy fueled that consciousness, and Cardinal Arinze was really preaching the need for priests and sisters. There was much praying for vocations.”

The result is one of the greatest success stories in the history of the church. Today the nine major seminaries in Nigeria are filled with thousands of young candidates for the priesthood, as the number of priests in America and Western Europe remains on a steep decline.

The Rev. Martin Onukwube, administrator of Holy Trinity Cathedral, which was restored during Arinze’s tenure as archbishop, said it is now home to 25,000 parishioners and boasts 10 Sunday Masses. About 65 percent of the 2.1 million people living in the Onitsha Archdiocese are Catholic.

As archbishop, Arinze did more than preach about vocations. He founded two religious orders, one of Benedictine nuns and the other of brothers.

He also spent time in the far-flung churches of his archdiocese, urging impoverished members of the flock to buck tradition and not overspend on funerals. He pressed men and women to be more active lay leaders, brought traditional music to the Mass and adopted some forms of traditional culture that missionaries had rejected as pagan.

“He made the church what it is in this part of the world,” said Etusi, the traditional ruler of Eziowelle. “He brought the church back to us and made it possible for the average Nigerian to really appreciate and understand the Eucharist.”

At the same time, there was no mistaking his conservatism. He preached about the evils of abortion and promiscuity, called for strict devotion to God and stressed the importance of moral training in education.

“His conduct was exemplary, and his preaching moved everybody,” said Obida, the former neighbor. “At Mass, he could preach for three hours. He is always to the point, and he speaks to you. They say he’s the best preacher among the cardinals.”

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As cardinal, Arinze, slight but trim from years of walking and playing tennis, speaks frequently in his thickly accented English of the need to maintain church traditions, but he spends the vast majority of his time focused on healing rifts between religions. One of the high points of Pope John Paul II’s 1998 trip to Nigeria was his meeting with top Muslim and Christian leaders in the capital city of Abuja, a sit-down engineered by Arinze.

“He is very much an optimist who never gives up on the notion of human relations and religious relations,” said Edogwo. “He also has very positive feelings about America.”

Arinze has strong contacts in many major cities in the United States, and he clearly has a better understanding of the culture than Pope John Paul II had when he was elected in 1978.

As pleasant and charismatic as Arinze can be on his American visits, however, experts said he would be unlikely to treat liberals much differently than has John Paul II. Nigerian church leaders often express dismay at the eroding faith in America and Western Europe, where they believe materialism and lax morals have hurt the church.

Some Catholics both in the States and overseas are skeptical, however, about whether the world is ready to accept a black pope. Gelasius I, whose reign ended in A.D. 496, was the last African pontiff, but history is silent as to his race.

“I think our people are realistic enough to say, `Wait a minute. If America is still unable to deal with the notion of a black president, if Britain doesn’t have a single black prime minister, and no black man has ever made it to the top in Italy or Sweden, what chance does he have?”’ said the Rev. Matthew Hassan-Kukah, general secretary of the Nigerian Catholic Secretariat.

Lagos Archbishop Anthony Okajobe also believes that it may take another generation before a black pope is elected, but he is less pessimistic about the situation.

“The church is universal, and that means the pope can be from any place,” he said. “It would be a credit to the developing world if an African were chosen. In the good old days, church leaders could scarcely believe there was a God in Africa. Today, things are changing. It means the church is growing.”

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