Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday celebrated a special mass to open a month-long synod of African bishops to discuss their continent's conflicts, social injustice and grinding poverty.Saint Peter's Basilica swelled to the strains of a hymn in the Congolese language Lingala, while prayers were also said in Swahili, Portuguese, Amharic, Hausa, Kikongo and Arabic to start the synod, which will run through October 25.
Benedict prayed that the synod of 197 Roman Catholic bishops from Africa's 53 states would "renew and reinvigorate (Africa's) Church, the sign and instrument of reconciliation, justice and peace."
The synod will build on the last such meeting, convened in 1994 by Benedict's predecessor John Paul II, said Monsignor Nikola Eterovic, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, on Friday.
He said evangelisation was "urgent" in Africa, which counted some 146 million Roman Catholics as of 2007.
Africa is second only to Oceania in the rate of growth of the Catholic population, from 12 percent of Africans in 1978 to 17 percent in 2006.
A planning document for the talks, released in March during the pope's tour to Cameroon and Angola, warns that "a process organised to destroy the African identity seems to be taking place under the pretext of modernity" leading to "moral laxity, corruption (and) materialism."
During his first official trip to Africa, the pope angered many AIDS activists by remarking that the use of condoms could "worsen" the problem.
The working paper suggests that training in the "promotion of moral social behaviour" was a key to combatting AIDS.
The document denounces the conflicts and wars ravaging the continent, as well as political and economic corruption, human rights violations, the plight of women -- citing polygamy and sexual mutilation -- and the exploitation of children in warfare or prostitution.
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SIC: AFP