Pope Benedict XVI - Apostolic Journey to Benin (November 18-20, 2011)

From the Vatican

• Program
• Africae Munus: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the Church in Africa in Service to Reconciliation, Justice and Peace (November 19, 2011)

Pope Benedict waves at the crowd as he arrives in his Popemobile to celebrate a mass at the Stade de l'Amitie (Friendship Stadium) in Benin's economic capital Cotonou November 20, 2011. Source: Reuters

Addresses of the Holy Father

• Meeting of His Holiness Benedict XVI with journalists during the flight to Benin (Papal Flight, 18 November 2011)
• Welcome Ceremony at Cardinal Bernardin Gantin International Airport of Cotonou (November 18, 2011)
• Visit to the Cathedral of Cotonou (November 18, 2011)
• Meeting with Government members, representatives of the Institutions of the Republic, Diplomatic Corps and representatives of the major religions gathered in the Presidential Palace of Cotonou (November 19, 2011)
• Meeting with priests, seminarians, men and women religious and lay faithful gathered in the Courtyard of St Gall Seminary (Ouidah, 19 November 2011)
• Visit at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception of Mary of Ouidah and signing of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation (November 19, 2011)
• Meeting with children at St. Rita Parish in Cotonou (November 19, 2011)
• Meeting with the Bishops of Benin at the Apostolic Nunciature of Cotonou (November 19, 2011)
• Holy Mass at the "Stade de l’amitié" of Cotonou (November 20, 2011)
• Consignment of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation to the Bishops of Africa at the "Stade de l’amitié" of Cotonou (November 20, 2011)
• Recitation of the Angelus Domini (Cotonou, 20 November 2011)
• Farewell ceremony at Cardinal Bernardin Gantin International Airport (Cotonou, 20 November 2011)

Pope Benedict XVI celebrates a mass at the 'Friendship Stadium' in Cotonou on November 20, 2011. Source: Getty Images

Commentary

Veteran papal journalist John Allen Jr. (National Catholic Reporter) accompanied the Pope -- and blogged the papal journey:

• From rumba to voodoo, subtext abounds on pope’s Africa trip 11/17/11.
  For anyone seeking an off-beat lens through which to see the journey, there’s almost an embarrassment of riches. From witchcraft to voodoo, from funky rumba music to politically incorrect comic books, subtext abounds – and that’s even without any new papal commentary on condoms, which was the sideshow that dominated Benedict’s last outing to Africa in 2009."
• Don't surrender to laws of market, pope says 11/18/11.
  On the heels of a controversial Vatican document blasting free-market ideologies and calling for a global authority to regulate the economy, Benedict XVI today warned the continent of Africa against an “unconditional surrender to the law of the market or that of finance,” in a speech opening his second African journey as pope.
• The political nerve of Catholicism in Africa 11/18/11.
  A core motive for Benedict XVI’s trip to Benin this weekend is to honor the late Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, yet it's actually another former Archbishop of Cotonou whose memory may be most helpful in grasping one key feature of African Catholicism: Its brazen disregard of Western notions of church/state separation.
• From a Eurocentric pope, a remarkably African message 11/19/11.
  If one were to survey African Catholic leaders about their most pressing social challenges, responses would likely focus on their struggles against corruption and religious intolerance. As it happens, those were precisely the two themes raised today by Pope Benedict XVI, in a highly anticipated speech to government and religious leaders at Benin’s Presidential Palace.
• In voodoo capital, Benedict blasts 'occultism and evil spirits' 11/19/11.
  In a West African city widely regarded as the spiritual capital of voodoo, Benedict XVI today urged Catholics to resist a “syncretism which deceives” and to uphold a Christian faith that “liberates from occultism” and “vanquishes evil spirits.”
• On AIDS, Benedict avoids the ‘C’ word 11/19/11.
  Heading into Pope Benedict XVI’s Nov. 18-20 trip to Benin, one bit of drama was whether this African outing, like the last one two years ago, would be engulfed by controversy over the pope’s stance on condoms and AIDS. That now seems unlikely, for a simple reason: The “C” word has not passed from the pope’s lips.
• Benedict’s Africa plan: Stay spiritual, and stay Catholic 11/19/11.
  Pope Benedict XVI came to Africa this weekend primarily to deliver his conclusions from a 2009 Synod of Bishops for Africa, representing a papal game plan for the faith in the region of its most explosive growth. He chose an evocative setting – the city of Ouidah on Benin’s Atlantic coast, a onetime slave port known as the spiritual capital of the Vodun religion, referred to in the West as voodoo.
• The lonely liberation theology of Benedict XVI 11/20/11.
  Anyone just tuning in now to Pope Benedict XVI, who doesn’t know much about him but somehow caught wind of his Nov. 18-20 trip to Benin, could be forgiven a bit of confusion about exactly what the pope came here to say about the political role of Catholicism in Africa. Understanding that a unique form of ‘liberation theology’ circulates in the pope’s intellectual and spiritual bloodstream can, perhaps, help make sense of things.
• Hard questions about Pope Benedict in Africa 11/23/11.
  It may seem counterintuitive that an 84-year-old German intellectual should be the Western leader most enthusiastic about Africa, yet it actually makes all the sense in the world. Spiritually speaking, Africa is a superpower -- both the world's largest manufacturer and consumer of religion. For a pope who has spent a lifetime lamenting the "death of God" in Europe, Africa can't help but seem an oasis of vibrant faith. Africans seemed to return the sentiment.