Word: za
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...tortoises and wild boars. During a motorcade through the city of Salvador on Brazil's coast, crowds threw flowers, danced sambas and fired off skyrockets. Some Brazilians spent hours in drenching rain or under a blazing sun just for a glimpse of Pope John Paul II. As in Zaïre last May, the papal pandemonium also produced tragedy; three people were trampled to death and 30 injured during a stampede into a stadium in Fortaleza...
...beginning. The Pope had been asked to visit 30 African nations. In the end, though, only a visit to six of them seemed possible, and that involved a demanding 11,250-mile, eleven-day tour by plane, car, boat, helicopter and LandRover, which will take John Paul to Zaïre, Congo, Kenya, Ghana, Upper Volta and the Ivory Coast. The itinerary was confined to Africa's middle, south of the vast Sahara region, which is dominated by Islam, and well north of the agonizing problems of racist South Africa, in which the Roman Catholic Church in 1977 demanded...
...people barely practice it at all. Quite the contrary: in the words of one missionary, many an African's esteem is measured by how many children he has rather than by how many books he writes. But what is John Paul to do about a country like Zaïre, where many priests are living with concubines? In some dioceses it is difficult to find a truly celibate priest to become bishop. Polygamy is also widely practiced, and there has been discussion about the possibility of admitting polygamous men to full membership in the church. But John Paul does...
Catholics in Zaïre are also "Africanizing" the liturgy in ways marked by high church attendance and great zeal. At a typical Mass the young priest dons a zebra's mane headdress while assistants, men and women alike, clap and shuffle around the altar to the throbbing of drums and an occasional shrill scream of religious ecstasy. The congregation swings, sings lustily and sways with the rhythms. "The Latin rite is too impersonal for Africans," the priest explains. "The Zaïreans' Mass comes from the heart." Clergy were chilled a bit when John Paul insisted...
...They are thriving precisely because they are free from overseas restriction and remote form, and because they do not worry about ritual backsliding into tribal practices. Along with wild and colorful services, they usually emphasize healings and personalized visions and prophecies. Some, including the largest independent church of all, Zaïre's Church of Jesus Christ on Earth by the Prophet Simon Kimbangu, more closely resemble orthodox Protestantism. The movement was founded in 1921. It prospered because the colonial Belgian government considered Kimbangu a troublemaker and martyred him by throwing him into prison, where he later died. Many...