The West used to send Africa the Gospel. Now, African Church leaders are warning that Western nations and individuals are spreading a far different message throughout the continent, in what they describe as a warped form of proselytization.
From Kenya to Cameroon, Ghana to Tanzania, local archbishops tell the Register that Western aid workers, government officials and even tourists are advancing secular understandings of sexuality and the human person that are incompatible not merely with African cultural values, but with the timeless teachings of the Catholic faith.
And while aspects of this push are consistent with what Pope Francis has criticized as “ideological colonization,” which involves Western governments pressuring less-developed nations to change public policies, African prelates warn that the advancement of secular causes like the normalization of homosexual activity is also being driven by far more personal, almost evangelistic efforts.
“It’s just like the missionaries who went all over to evangelize,” said Archbishop Renatus Leonard Nkwande of Mwanza, Tanzania. Except now, he said, the West is “sending us missionaries of evil.”
Examples of this ideological proselytization include everything from NGO (nongovernmental organization) workers promoting sexual ideologies in the classroom to activists recruiting African youth to gay sex parties.
Pro-LGBTQ organizations often deny these kinds of claims as fearmongering propagated by conservative Christians from the U.S.
But reports of on-the-ground effects are widespread among Africa’s Catholic episcopacy, with some local leaders citing their own experience of combating what they see as a dire moral and spiritual threat.
Among them is Archbishop Charles Palmer-Buckle of Cape Coast, Ghana. His archdiocese includes parts of the Gold Coast, where European missionaries came ashore 140 years ago to share the Catholic faith.
But now, Archbishop Palmer-Buckle says white tourists who come to Ghana’s beaches are promoting something far different among his people.
“They’ve come to enjoy themselves, and they are messing with our little boys on the beach,” he told the Register, “sexually abusing them for a little money.”
The Ghanian archbishop described this phenomenon, which he says takes advantage of locals’ financial need, as “far, far worse” than macro-level ideological colonization — and described those who participate in it as particularly twisted.
“They themselves are already warped,” he said. “And they are warping these [young people]. It’s like, sorry to say, the devil trying to get more disciples.”
Targeting Youth
Additionally, Archbishop Palmer-Buckle added that he has frequently dealt with foreign-aid workers promoting things like homosexuality in schools and other venues, despite such activism being prohibited by their charters.
When the Ghanaian archbishop, an important voice for orthodox sexual teaching in the universal Church, has confronted NGO leaders about these incidents, he says they have “abdicated” their responsibility.
“As a teacher, it is not your right to expose the child to that which is harmful to them in the long run, as if you are proselytizing,” he said.
Concerns about the sexual exploitation of youth, which can lead to long-lasting psychological and sexual disorders, led Tanzania’s Mwanza Archdiocese to set up an archdiocesan task force to instruct youth how to respond if confronted by people inviting them to participate in immoral sexual activity.
“We have decided to do it because we have seen a number of people coming, gathering young people, and entertaining them,” said Archbishop Nkwande. “At the end, they are like that.”
Archbishop Nkwande said that anxieties about Westerners promoting sexual deviancy are so widespread that “the first meeting with somebody from Europe,” whether a tourist or an NGO worker, “you just fear. You try to shy away.”
The Tanzanian archbishop also spoke of Western NGOs distributing lubricants used in gay sex in his archdiocese, an effort that he said was stopped during the Trump administration but has increased during nearly four years of U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration.
Under President Biden, the promotion of LGBTQ ideology abroad has become a “core part” of U.S. foreign policy, with the Biden administration spending more than $4 billion taxpayer dollars on related initiatives around the world.
Similar stories are shared in neighboring Kenya, where clergy tell the Register that personnel associated with NGOs promote homosexuality in the classroom and even provide financial support to young people who enter into a gay lifestyle, which in turn draws in other youths.
In Uganda, the government ordered a 2023 probe into NGO-run schools, which were described as LGBT “conscription centers” aimed at “distort[ing] the norms of African society.” Earlier this year, Kenyan religious leaders raised concerns about the presence of “LGBTQ content” in school textbooks.
And in 2017, activists from a South African initiative that is funded by Western organizations like the Ford Foundation and promotes homosexuality through “strategic litigation” were arrested in Tanzania’s capital, Dar es Salam, and deported for “promoting homosexuality.”
These efforts, local Church leaders say, are not isolated, but are part of a bigger, coordinated plan to normalize homosexual tendencies among African youth.
“We don’t speak about it openly, but it’s intentional,” said Archbishop Nkwande.
Social Media’s Impact
Secular values are also being imported into Africa via social media — especially in places like Kenya, where more than 60% of residents have a smartphone, a much higher rate than the average sub-Saharan country.
Archbishop Maurice Muhatia Makumba of Kisumu draws a sharp distinction between the message brought by outside evangelizers decades ago and the Western messages of secularization and hedonism promoted in Kenya by the social-media platforms of today.
“When the missionaries came, they came with the Good News,” said Archbishop Muhatia, who is president of the Kenyan Conference of Catholic Bishops. “Now, the culture coming through social media is not good news. It is bad news.”
In Obala, Cameroon, Bishop Sosthène Léopold Bayemi Matjei said that social-media content from countries like France, the central African country’s former colonizer, is leading to a dramatic remaking of values among Cameroonian youth.
In addition to changes in speech and dress, Bishop Bayemi said he is now aware of reports that young boys are organizing sex groups after being exposed to the idea through online videos.
“These are things that I’ve never dreamt of,” he said. “But now we see that they are arriving.”
Policy Pressure
Ideological proselytization in Africa at the personal and cultural level is moving in tandem with ideological colonization at the level of public policy, which Pope Francis has said “destroys the human personality.”
In Cameroon, for instance, abortion is illegal, but Bishop Bayemi said that the French embassy actively promoted it in March after France enshrined abortion as a “guaranteed freedom” in its constitution. Additionally, Western NGOs reportedly give grants to facilities in Cameroon to perform free abortions, which are tolerated by the local government.
Regarding homosexuality, several African nations have responded to the West’s ideological push by drafting stringent measures meant to curb the spread of LGBTQ ideology. Some of these bills make it illegal to publicly identify as gay, while others carry with them harsh sentences for gay sex.
In turn, the West has responded with hard-hitting economic sanctions. The U.S. sanctioned Uganda for passing a bill that makes homosexual activity a possible capital offense. And there is speculation that Ghana’s legislation restricting the spread of LGBTQ activism could lose the African country $3.8 billion from the International Monetary Fund.
In addition to criticizing ideological colonization, Pope Francis has spoken out against the criminalization of homosexuality in Africa.
Standing Strong
African archbishops see their resistance to secular ideologies as fidelity to the Gospel — not an attempt to protect merely cultural values, which some, including Pope Francis, suggested was what motivated the African episcopacy to push back against the Vatican’s December 2023 document that initially appeared to allow for blessings of same-sex couples.
“It’s a complete misunderstanding of the stance of the African bishops,” said Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya of the Bamenda Archdiocese in Cameroon, who said that when he was ordained, he made an oath to defend the Catholic faith, not African culture.
“We are keeping the tradition of our one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church,” he said. “And any objections that we raise are objections to defend our faith as we received from our forefathers. It has nothing to do with ‘defending the culture of Africa.’ The African bishops don’t defend African culture. We defend the Catholic faith.”
In Kenya, Archbishop Muhatia said he finds it ironic that African Catholics are criticized by Westerners for embracing the tenets of the very same faith that the West promoted in Africa within the past century.
“I always found it strange when people would just say, ‘Oh, African Catholics are responding this way just because of a cultural preference,’” the Kenyan archbishop told the Register. “It’s not a cultural problem. It’s the faith they were taught from the beginning, and they believe it’s the right thing to do.”
Archbishop Nkea, who said he spoke out against ideological colonization at the October 2023 session of the Synod on Synodality in Rome, approvingly noted that “most of our governments are rejecting this ideological colonization of Africa” even if it means losing out on grants.
But he insisted that Catholic leaders need to continue to urge civil authorities to stand strong.
“As a Church, we are trying to take positions that will make our government understand that they cannot sell our people for the sake of grants from the West,” said the president of the Cameroonian bishops’ conference.
In Tanzania, Archbishop Nkwande points to the witness of St. Charles Lwanga, one of the first sub-Saharan Africans canonized, as a witness for the present moment. The Uganda saint and his companions were martyred in 1886 after they resisted a king’s immoral sexual advances and then refused to renounce their Catholic faith.
Archbishop Nkwande acknowledged that African Catholics aren’t facing death for refusing to give into sexual immorality, like St. Charles Lwanga did. Instead, he said, they are facing enormous economic and political pressure — but can still draw inspiration from the African saint.
“We have to be strong and say, ‘No.’”
