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Shun witchcraft, pope tells Angolan Catholics
Sat Mar 21, 2009 9:47am EDT
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By Philip Pullella
LUANDA (Reuters) - Pope Benedict on Saturday urged Catholics in Angola, where a belief in spirits and sorcerers has led many to abandon the Church for self-styled sects, to shun witchcraft and woo back those who have left.
The 81-year-old pope, showing signs of fatigue in the sweltering and humid heat, said a mass for several thousand people inside a church as thousands followed the service outside.
In his homily, he urged his listeners to reach out to those Angolans who believe in witchcraft and spirits.
"So many of them are living in fear of spirits, of malign and threatening powers. In their bewilderment they even end up condemning street children and the elderly as alleged sorcerers," he said.
Last year, police rescued 40 children who had been held in a house by two religious sects after being accused by their own families of witchcraft. The sects' leaders were later arrested.
Jonas Savimbi, the charismatic guerrilla fighter who led the opposition party UNITA in its war against the government, fought alongside a woman whose magic he believed would protect him from enemy fire.
But belief in spirits in Angola runs beyond evangelical sects. Human rights groups say many abandoned children have been accused of being witches, particularly in rural areas, because they are believed to be possessed by malign spirits.
The flourishing of evangelical sects has been a big problem for the Catholic Church since the end of the 27-year-old civil war in 2002.
EXODUS FROM CHURCH
The number of diversified sects in the former Portuguese colony has jumped to 900 from just 50 in 1992 -- the year the government abandoned Marxism, according to Angola's national institute on religion.
Experts say they are attractive to Angolans because their rituals are very intense, blend in traditional African beliefs, and some promise an immediate end to suffering in a country where the majority of the population is still very poor.
In his homily, the pope urged Catholic to try to convince those who had left the Church that "Christ has triumphed over death and all those occult powers."
Corruption on the African continent has been one of the themes of the trip, which began in Cameroon last Tuesday.
In an address to Angolan leaders and diplomats in Luanda on Friday night, he urged Africans rid their countries of the scourges of corruption and violence and support a free media if they wanted to truly transform the continent.
Many African countries have huge mineral and hydrocarbon deposits whose value is, in theory, enough to finance infrastructure projects, create jobs and raise living standards. Continued...
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