The Church in Ethiopia Today

Extract

The triumphal re-entry of the Emperor Haile Selassie I into his capital of Addis Ababa on May 5, 1941, marked the beginning of a new era for the Catholic Church in Ethiopia. As in many countries today in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, the Church in Ethiopia has to prove that it is truly a supranational and independent body, notwithstanding its spiritual allegiance to the Holy Sec. The Italian missionaries who followed in the wake of Mussolini’s armies in 1935 could not but help to identify the Catholic faith with the Italian religion in the eyes of the invaded Abyssinians, and not least because French Catholic missionaries who had laboured for years in this territory’ were politely but firmly shown the way out of the country during the Duce’s occupation. As could be predicted, the return of the Negus and the allied armies led to the expulsion of the Italian missionaries from Ethiopia. Not a single one was allowed to remain and the Apostolic Delegate, Mgr Castellani, himself an Italian Franciscan, was conducted out of the country by English officers. To this day, no Italian missionary is allowed inside the Emperor’s dominions.

A knowledge of the history of Christianity in Ethiopia, essential for an understanding of the situation today, can be briefly summarized. The Church was established in the fourth century by St Frumentius who was consecrated first Bishop of Aksum by the great Doctor of the Church, St Athanasius of Alexandria. The Church in Ethiopia unhappily fell away into the monophysite heresy, gradually cutting all links with Rome and Constantinople but maintaining important relations with what became the dissident Coptic Church of Alexandria. The national Church of Ethiopia, comprising about seven and a half million adherents, remains monophysite in doctrine to this day, although it can be reasonably argued that Ethiopian monophysitism is more nominal than real.