The laborious indigenization of an international order: the Dominican Friars in sub-Saharan Africa

This paper deals with the history of the Dominican friars in sub-Saharan Africa. It presents the main findings of an inter-African research project which was initiated in 1996 and led to the publication of a book entitled Dominicans in Africa. A History of the Dominican Friars in sub-Saharan Africa. (1) Eleven authors participated in the project. Six of them are young black Dominicans; the others are Westerners who have lived in Africa for long periods of time.

The Catholic church, to which the Dominican order (also known as Order of Preachers) has belonged since its foundation in the 13th century, was global long before the word existed. We all know that its head is in Rome. But this does not mean that all decisions are made in Rome. In fact, the decision-making process is fairly decentralized. One of the Roman congregations, the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (also known as Propaganda (2)), coordinates the missionary enterprises of the Catholic church in the world. It establishes missionary territories (called prefectures or vicariates), appoints--jointly with the Congregation for the Bishops and the Secretariat of State--prefects, vicars or bishops and allocates mission territories to religious orders or congregations. (3) Once this is done, it the responsibility of the religious congregations, male or female, to find funding and personnel. This usually happens at the national level.

Two types of missionary congregations are involved in missionary work. Some, like the Benedictines, the Franciscans, the Dominicans or the Jesuits, were primarily founded to minister to the church in the West. Each has a specific task. The Dominicans' main Charism, for example, is preaching. For them missionary work (to non-Christian countries) is only one type of ministry among many others.

Other congregations were founded specifically for the missions. The majority of missionary congregations were established in the 19th and 20th centuries. In Africa, the most important ones are the Fathers of the Holy Spirit (Spiritans), who work mostly in West and Central Africa; the White Fathers, who are active in the Great Lakes region and in East Africa; and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, who amongst others are in South Africa, Namibia and Zambia.

The Dominican Order (4) has three levels of government. The friars live in communities called priories. The priories and houses constitute a province, the boundaries of which often (but not always) coincide with a national state. The province is headed by a provincial who is assisted by a provincial council. At the international level, the Order is governed by the master of the Order and his assistants, who together constitute the Dominican curia which is based in Rome.

The curia has relatively little authority over the friars. The real power resides in the provinces. There are currently 33 Dominican provinces worldwide (for a population of 5850 professed friars (5)). Smaller entities are called vice-provinces or general vicariates. The provinces, vice-provinces and general vicariates elect their leadership every four years at an assembly called provincial (or vicarial) chapter.

It is at the level of the provinces that the decision to establish a mission is made. In some cases, as in East Africa or in Ethiopia, the initiative to start a mission was taken by the Dominican curia in Rome but the responsibility of running the mission is then handed over to one of the provinces. (6)

Early history of the Dominican Order in Africa

Signs of a Dominican presence are attested in sub-Saharan Africa as early as the 16th century in present-day Congo and Angola and along the Indian Ocean, on the eastern side of the continent. In both areas, the friars belonged to the Portuguese province. As elsewhere in the Portuguese empire, evangelization was subject to the padroado system: the secular power, namely the king of Portugal, was responsible for the mission. As a result, colonial interest and apostolic concern became completely interdependent. In south-east Africa, the Roman Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, founded in 1622, never managed to correct this situation.

It was in south-east Africa that the Portuguese friars were the most active. (7) They were the main missionary order in this region. The Jesuits had been the first to penetrate into the interior but the tragic failure of Goncalo da Silveira's mission in 1561 dissuaded them from establishing a permanent mission in south-east Africa. The Dominicans opened their first house on the island of Mozambique in 1577. At the peak of their influence, in 1631, they had 18 mission stations, on the coast, along the Zambezi River and inside the Munhumutapa empire. Later on, their number decreased. When they finally left the region in 1835, they numbered only five. For lack of regular income, many friars resorted to trade. Numerous reports voiced concern about their immorality and their lack of missionary zeal. There have been zealous Dominican missionaries, of course, like Joao dos Santos, the author of Ethiopia Oriental (Evora, 1609), a remarkable study of ethnography and history, or Francisco de Trindade, who reorganized the mission at the end of the 17th century and published a catechism in the vernacular language.