Conservative Catholics back Cardinal Sarah -- but African theologians aren't buying it

Some African theologians are pushing back as Catholic conservatives around the globe rally behind outspoken Cardinal Robert Sarah, casting the Guinea prelate as their ideal pope and a hero of the culture war as cardinals gather Wednesday to choose the next head of the Catholic Church.

In the days since Pope Francis’ death on Easter Monday, Cardinal Sarah’s name has surged on conservative Catholic social media.

MAGA influencer Nick Sortor declared online: “Wow! One of the frontrunners for pope, Cardinal Robert Sarah, is a hardliner against mass migration.” 

A viral video clip shows the Guinean cardinal warning that “the West is dying” and being “invaded” by other cultures, illustrating his hardline stance against migration — one cause controversially championed by Francis.

Popular accounts such as African Hub said, “Catholics worldwide want Cardinal Robert Sarah to be the next pope,” while one conservative Indian Catholic influencer, Sachin Jose Ettiyil, with 200,000 followers, has repeatedly listed him as the top candidate for the papacy.

But many African Catholic thinkers reject the Western narrative of Cardinal Sarah as a singularly conservative champion.

“In Africa and in Catholicism, there’s no one strand of conservatism,” said SimonMary Asese Aihiokhai, a Nigerian-born theologian and associate professor at the University of Portland in Oregon. “What some American Catholics see as Sarah being their kind of conservative doesn’t reflect the full picture of who he is or the world he comes from.”

Cardinal Sarah’s record does fuel conservative enthusiasm: He has defended the Latin Mass, denounced same-sex blessings and warned about secularism, migration and Islam in the West. He once called liberalizing Church documents the work of the “Divider,” a reference to Satan.

Yet his relationship with Africa is more complicated. In a 2024 speech, he praised African bishops as “heralds of divine truth” while condemning Western bishops for “practical atheism.” 

However, months earlier, the Black cardinal sparked outrage by saying African liturgies were “too ordinary and too noisy, too African and not Christian enough.”

“If you read Cardinal Sarah’s views, sometimes some of his shared views outside of the context [of] his own social world, the Church in Guinea and all that stuff, you might get it wrong,” Mr. Aihiokhai said. “But if you go to the context from which his faith arises … it’s quite a different reality altogether.”

Dominik Tarczynski, a Polish member of the European Parliament with the nationalist Law and Justice Party, has added his voice to the chorus of praise for Cardinal Sarah, hailing him as “our hope” — a phrase that echoed like a rallying cry across Europe’s conservative Catholic base.

Father Emmanuel Katongole, a Ugandan Catholic priest and Notre Dame theology professor, warned that conservatives are projecting their own politics onto Cardinal Sarah. 

“I hope we don’t think about a pope who will help to fight our battles for us,” he said. “An African pope could be a very convenient tool … That Africa does not have an agenda of its own. It’s just usable, and once it’s fulfilled its usefulness, it becomes disposable.”

Cardinal Sarah himself said something similar to the press in 2019, noting that he was in no contest with Francis, a pontiff many saw as particularly progressive in his views.

“Those who place me in opposition to the Holy Father cannot present a single word of mine, a single phrase or a single attitude to support their absurd – and I would say, diabolical — affirmations,” he said at the time.

Father Katongole said in an email that the framing of Cardinal Sarah as a conservative champion plays into “the same tired categories (racial and regional) that can become a roadblock to the real work the Church needs to do.”

Father Stan Chu Ilo, a Nigerian Catholic priest and research professor of World Christianity, African Studies and Global Health at DePaul University, said Cardinal Sarah’s conservative tendencies simply aren’t able to be compared to conservatism worldwide. But supporters should be careful who they cheer for. 

“It’s not enough just to dismiss these tendencies,” he said. “We must also ask ourselves fundamental questions … There is something that has settled within Africa that is not simply the result of a recent resurgence of conservatism or reactionary traditionalism in Catholicism.”

African Catholicism, he says, is not one thing, and conservatives should be hesitant to fully embrace something they don’t understand.

“[Sarah] represents something of African Catholicism that is very strong in Africa — even pre–Vatican II — that is anti-contextualization, anti-inculturation, that believes there is an archetypical Church,” Fr. Ilo warned.

Instead of focusing on personalities, Fr. Katongole said Catholics should focus on, and celebrate, the African church’s growing significance. 

“Africa has over 23% of the Catholic population today, and by 2050 that number could reach one-third,” he told The Washington Times. “But the numbers only tell part of the story. The vibrance, the vocations, the missionary energy — those are just as important.”

He noted how African priests now serve in dioceses across the West and how African Catholic culture spills beyond Sunday worship: “Anybody who has been on the continent cannot but be amazed … The presence of God is everywhere: in shops, taxis, the streets.”

Richard Wood, a sociologist at the University of Southern California, told The Washington Times that the global Church tends to reduce African Catholicism to a stereotype, something Cardinal Sarah himself has endured.

“It’s often kind of caricatured as a conservative church,” Mr. Wood said. “But Africa is a big continent. It’s much more complex than it’s given credit for.”

He pointed to the rise of women theologians and grassroots movements across the continent. 

“That doesn’t get as much play when people think about Africa as a conservative form of Catholicism, but it’s important,” Mr. Wood added.

Mr. Wood also challenged the idea that African Catholicism is liturgically “traditional” in the way outside champions perceive it. 

“The African Church has embraced the Africanization of the liturgy — vestments that reflect African culture, music written in Africa,” he said. “The language of tradition misses the way Catholicism has always been an evolving tradition. That doesn’t mean it changes core doctrines.”

Michael Warren Davis, a prominent conservative Catholic writer in America, argued in a 2020 article in Crisis Magazine, a Catholic publication, that “Cardinal Sarah is most likely to succeed Pope Francis” on account of his doctrinal soundness and liturgical positions.

And while Cardinal Sarah’s odds have risen slightly in the conclave betting markets, most Vatican observers still see him as a long shot. But in American Catholic circles, he remains a symbol.

“People see something familiar in a figure like Sarah and try to claim him,” Mr. Aihiokhai said. “But when you simplify a person’s identity to fit your own narrative, you do injury to the truth.”

Luka Lawrence Ndenge, an emergency officer with Catholic group Caritas in Wau, South Sudan, put it simply to The Associated Press: “For us, it does not matter whether he is African, White or Black. What matters is having a good, holy pope who can unite Catholics across the world.”

Mr. Aihiokhai says those hoping for Cardinal Sarah to emerge from the conclave as pope might be surprised by the kind of pontiff he would become, anyway. 

“The office changes you. The office gives you a persona, whether you like it or not,” he said. “With any new pope, going to be a negotiation, a middle ground, and that’s where the surprise and also the beauty of each pontificate will reside.”

The conclave begins with the “Mass for the Election of the Roman Pontiff” at 10 a.m. Wednesday, celebrated by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the dean of the College of Cardinals, in St. Peter’s Basilica.

A two-thirds majority of the 133 cardinals attending the conclave, or 89 votes, is required to elect the new pope. If no candidate achieves that amount in the initial round, up to four ballots may be held daily until a successor is chosen.