TalkAfrique

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI

COTONOU, Benin — Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday led tens of thousands of people in a panoply of African tongues during a Mass in Benin’s national soccer stadium, wrapping up a pilgrimage where he laid out his spiritual vision for Africa.

An estimated 80,000 people bowed their heads in prayer in the arena in Benin’s commercial capital of Cotonou as the pope blessed the crowd. Women who had not made it inside kneeled in the parking lot and prayed. People had formed a line outside starting at 3 a.m., said Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi.

The Mass reflected the potential for harmony in Africa, with the liturgy delivered in at least 10 African languages and simultaneously broadcast in St. Peter’s Square.

It included an acclamation in Congo’s principal language, Lingala, a prayer for peace in Nigeria’s Yoruba, followed by other parts of the liturgy in Ditamari, Mina, Bariba, Idaacha, and Lokpa – all languages spoken by Benin’s roughly 9 million people.

Nowhere is Catholicism growing more rapidly than on this continent of a thousand tongues which has helped breathe life into a church that has seen a steep decline in numbers of active faithful in Europe.

The pope’s vision of the continent, formally delivered on Sunday to Africa’s bishops in the form of an 87-page document known as a treatise, has been called a “papal road map” for Africa.

It applies church doctrine to address the continent’s ills, especially the wars and conflicts caused by ethnic divisions. The strategy proposes a “sacrament of reconciliation,” using the church’s doctrine of forgiveness and the Christian concept of turning the other cheek in a bid to stem the cycle of retribution.

Sunday is the last day of the pope’s three-day trip, the second African voyage of his papacy after his 2009 journey to Cameroon and Angola. Benin is emblematic of the growth of Catholicism, with the congregation growing by half, adding over half-a-million new converts in the past decade.

At the offertory part of the Mass, in addition to the bread and the wine, African priests in white cassocks also brought baskets full of products representing the riches of the soil and the craftsmanship of its people.

The first basket was filled with root vegetables like manioc, which is ground into flour and used to make foufou, the basic starch in the Central African diet. Another basket had palm products, a tree that serves as the symbol of a political party in neighboring Togo because every part of the tree from its oil to its fronds to its fruit can be used.

Beninois priest Rev. Benoit Odoung, who heads a Catholic college in Cotonou, said that the pope has recognized Africa’s potential. The continent is poised to start sending more “reverse missionaries,” African priests who travel to Europe and North America to encourage conversions at a time when congregations in the Western hemisphere are declining.

“You know, Africa is the cradle of humanity. Then when the rest of the world evolved, we trailed behind,” Odoung said. “We are fundamentally religious. We have faith. And now as Christianity is declining over there, we stand to become ‘the spiritual lungs of humanity,'” he said, quoting Benedict to describe Africa in the just-released document.

Women might dream of tall, dark and handsome, but researchers are claiming that it is men of average height who are having the most children.

Scientists studying men in the US said those who were 178cm (5ft 10in) were the most reproductively successful.

Writing in the journal Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology, they said such men produced, on average, more than two-and-a-half children.

The authors said it might be due to men of average height marrying earlier.

There have been studies which suggest that women prefer a taller man, such as those looking at the choices made during speed or online dating.

Gert Stulp, one of the researchers at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands, said that in Western societies it had been thought that taller men also had the most children.

He reviewed previous studies on height and children as well as publishing new data from the Wisconsin Study, which followed school leavers in 1957 for the next 50 years. There was data on 3,578 men.

Most children

The peak number of children, 2.57, was found in men who were 177.79cm. Men who were 6cm taller or shorter (coming in at approximately 5ft 7in or 6ft) had 2.52 children. Going another 6cm away from the peak gave 2.36 children on average.

Mr Stulp told the BBC: “Contrary to popular belief, tall men do not have most reproductive success. It is average-height men who have the most reproductive success.”

In the study of US men, it seems one possible explanation is in the marriage data.

“It really seems average height men get a partner earlier than both shorter and taller men, so this is a possible mechanism.

“Even though preference studies seem to indicate that taller men are preferred, maybe in real life with actual partner choice, average height men have the most success. Basically they are able to marry at a younger age.”

However, the authors pointed out that: “The effect of height was modest, being almost three times smaller than the effect of income and 4.5 times smaller than the effect of education.”