HOLY MAN OF AFRICA

 

“Lent, O Lord: Do not allow us to resort to broken cisterns (Jer 2:13), nor to imitate the unfaithful servant, the foolish virgin; do not allow the enjoyment of earthly goods to make our hearts insensitive to the lament of the poor, the sick, orphaned children, and the countless brothers and sisters of ours who still today lack the minimum necessary to eat, to cover their bare limbs, to gather the family under one roof” (Radio message of Pope St. John XXIII, Lent, 1963).

The latest to start on the road to canonization certainly lived these words. CARDINAL BERNARDIN GANTIN, whose prominence in the hierarchy of the Church was unprecedented for an African, has been equaled by few non-Italians.

His name, interestingly enough, means “tree of iron on African land”, which was fitting for this holy man as his people and his land were always present in his life. Benin is a French-speaking West African nation, and is the birthplace of the vodun (or “voodoo”) religion and home to the former Dahomey Kingdom from circa 1600–1900. It borders Nigeria and is one of the poorest countries in the world.  65 per cent of the population is under the age of 25. 

The first Christian missionaries arrived in 1861. The main Christian center was in the city of Ouidah, and from there it spread throughout the whole territory. A strong thrust toward Christianity came with the experience of many slaves deported from the country to the plantations of Latin America, the majority of whom upon their return to Africa were witness to the strength and hope they had received from the Gospel.

Son of a railroad official, he was born in 1922 in Toffo, French Dahomey, in what is today known as the People's Republic of Bénin. He entered the minor seminary in Ouidah at age fourteen and was ordained to the priesthood in 1951 in Lomé, Togo, by Archbishop Louis Parisot of Cotonou. He then fulfilled pastoral assignments while also teaching languages at the seminary. In 1953 he was sent to Rome where he studied at the Pontifical Urban University and then at the Pontifical Lateran University, where he earned his licentiate in theology and canon law.

In 1956 he was elected titular Bishop of Tipasa of Mauritania and Auxiliary of Cotonou and was consecrated on 3 February 1957.

On 5 January 1960, St. John XXIII promoted him to Archbishop of Cotonou when his old teacher, the ailing Archbishop Parisot, felt it was time to hand over his flock to the one who could take on the enormous work of the apostolate. His prowess as a pastor was demonstrated in a number of areas: he subdivided the diocese to adapt more effectively to individual situations; he promoted the founding of schools; he vigorously supported the activity of catechists and of indigenous sisters; and, particularly concerned with the problem of priestly vocations, he underwent many sacrifices in order to maintain seminarians and priests of the diocese in their studies.

 He held many important offices in his life, including President of the Episcopal Conference of the region that included seven countries (Dahomey, Togo, the Ivory Coast, Alto Volta, New Guinea, Senegal and Nigeria). He was called to Rome in 1971 as the adjunct secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, of which he became the secretary two years later.

From 1975 he was the Vice-President and then President of the Pontifical Commission of Justice and Peace and also Vice-President and then President of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum (1976-1984). In 1984 (until 1998) he was Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops and President of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.

In 1993 he was made Dean of the College of Cardinals. In 2002, the Holy Father accepted the request of Cardinal Gantin to be dispensed from the Office of Dean of the College of Cardinals and of the title of the suburbicarian see of Ostia, allowing him to return to his homeland, in Benin, which he had long longed for.

He was very close to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (soon t be Pope). As friends and colleagues alike, the bond between the Bavarian and the Beninese remains the stuff of legend in the famously-fractious Curial world. Both remained far more attached to their respective homelands than the cultural ambit of working at the Vatican. "Many personal memories bind me to this brother of ours," Benedict said in his homily at a 2008 Vatican Memorial Mass for Cardinal Gantin.

 Cardinal Gantin died at Pompidou Hospital in Paris after a long illness on  May 13 (the feast of our Lady of Fatima), 2008, less than a week after being transferred there from Benin and five days after his 86th birthday. The Beninese government declared three days of mourning for him, beginning on 14 May.

 Hailed among his own even today as the "Father of the Nation" -- even as Catholics comprise just a third of Benin's population -- such is Cardinal Gantin's legend at home that pop songs have been recorded in his honor.

 A constant love for the Eucharist, a source of personal holiness and sound ecclesial communion which finds its visible foundation in the Successor of Peter, came to the fore in Cardinal Gantin. And it was in this very same Basilica that in celebrating his last Holy Mass before leaving Rome he stressed the unity that the Eucharist creates in the Church. In his homily he cited the famous sentence of St Cyprian of Carthage, the African Bishop, which is engraved in the dome of St Peter's: "From here a single faith shines throughout the world; from here is born the unity of the priesthood". This could be the message we inherit from venerable Cardinal Gantin as his spiritual testament....

"His human and priestly personality was a marvellous synthesis of the characteristics of the African soul with those proper to the Christian spirit, of the African culture and identity and the Gospel values. He was the first African ecclesiastic to have eminently responsible roles in the Roman Curia and he always carried them out with his typical simple and humble style, whose secret is probably to be found in the wise words his mother chose to address to him when he became a Cardinal on 27 June 1977: "Never forget the little faraway village from which we come"...." Cardinal Ratzinger