2

THE DIOCESE OF SÃO SALVADOR:

CONGO AND ANGOLA

2.5 The Capuchins in Congo

Garcia II (1641-60)

King Álvaro VI died in 1641 and was suceeded by his brother Garcia II Nkanga a Lukeni. When the Dutch took Luanda, Garcia’s ambassadors signed a treaty with them at Luanda in 1642. Garcia’s friendship with the Dutch extended to giving them slaves and apologizing that they were so few,^[1] although just a few weeks later in a letter to the Jesuits of Luanda he lamented the evil of the slave trade.^[2] Nevertheless he refused to have a Dutch ambasador resident in São Salvador. He also continually refused to have Protestant preachers and burned the Calvinist literature the Dutch distributed. When the Capuchins came they found an independent Congo still very much attached to Catholicism.

The first group of five Italian Capuchins sent by Propaganda Fide in 1641 were turned back at Lisbon. Some Spanish Capuchins later joined them and a group of twelve led by Bonaventura d’Alessano left for Congo by way of Spain in 1645. They escaped the Dutch coast guard and were jubilantly welcomed by the Mani of Sonyo. One of the first accomplishments of the Cappuchins was to arrange peace between the Mani of Sonyo and Garcia II. The Mani then restored Garcia’s captive son and some of the Capuchins moved to São Salvador. There they engaged in praching and conducting a school for 600 students. Fr. Bonaventura da Sardegna wrote a Kikongo grammar.

Four other Capuchins led by Bonaventura da Taggia left for Congo by way of Lisbon and Brazil and landed at Caqpe Ledo, just south of Luanda, in 1646. They tried to make their way to the Portuguese outpost of Massangano but were captured by the Dutch on the way and sent back to Europe just before Garcia’s ambassadors arrived in Luanda to try to gain their release.

In the meantime one of the first group of Capuchins, the Spaniard Fancisco de Pamplona, went back to Rome in 1646 to obtain more Capuchins. He tried to restrict the mission to Spaniards in order to keep Congo within the king of Spain’s sphere of influence,^[3] since Garcia himself expressed support for a Spanish take-over of Angola, to the exclusion of the Portuguese.^[4] But the General of the Capuchins assinged six Spaniards and eight Italians to Congo. They arrived in 1648. Some of the first group had died or returned home, and many of the older and newer arrivals were sick. Nevertheless they set to work and in twenty years evangelized and baptized hundreds of thousands in the areas of São Salvador, Mbamba (Bembe), Mbata, Mpenda and Nsundi.

In 1648 Garcia II sent two Capuchins, Giovanni Francesco da Roma and Angel de Valencia, as his ambassadors to Rome, asking for forty more Capuchins along with three bishops.^[5] Garcia had already asked Pope Innocent X for a bishop in 1646,^[6] but no bishops were to come as long as João IV of Portugal refused any kind of appointment which did not give full recognition to his right of padroado, and Philip IV of Spain threatened to invade the papal states if the Pope did comply with Portugal’s wishes. All the Pope’s attempts to find a loophole and make a compromise appointment were squashed by Portugal’s agents in Rome Nuno da Cunha SJ and Manuel Pacheco OSA and by the zealot cardinal-protector of Spain Gil Carillo Albornoz. By the middle of 1648 forty-five Capuchins were assembled in Spain, thirty-one waiting to go to Congo and fourteen to Benin. In August, however, the Portuguese retook Luanda and, while the Capuchins ministered to plague victims in Spain waiting for the king’s permission to depart, Garcia sent the Capuchin Bonaventura da Sorrento to negotiate peace with the new masters of Luanda. Bonaventura and Garcia accepted the stipulation that any new Capuchins must come to Congo through Lisbon and no Spaniard would be accepted. Propaganda Fide accepted the new conditions and in July 1650 instructed the Capuchins not to depart from Spain. Many of them gave up and went home, but Giovanni Francesco da Roma wrote back on 10 Octovber saying that his group was all ready to leave for Congo and since the need was critical he would depart unless he received a contrary order. The papal nuncio to Spain, Giulio Rospigliosi, gave full approval to this procedure and on 13 February 1651 eighteen Italian and Belgian Capuchins sailed from Sapin for Congo. On 19 February the letters of Propaganda Fide arrived in Spain strictly forbidding the departure. The nuncio never informed Rome of his responsibility for the departure, and a letter censuring Giovanni Francesco followed. He was able to explalin himself convincingly when he returned to Rome in 1654, and was then sent to Benin.

Carcia II in 1650 had sent Bonaventura da Sorrento to Rome as his ambassador. He was to return the next year through Lisbon but the Portuguese turned him back. He went instead through Spain in 1653, but when another group of fourteen Capuchins sent by Propaganda Fide arrived in Luanda the next year, the Capuchins residing in the city since 1649 could persuade the Portuguese to let them land only by letting Bonaventura da Sorrento be sent back to Italy.

These were difficult times for the Capuchins. In 1651 the Portuguese, through the cathedral chapter of São Salvador and António do Couto SJ, stirred up Garcia II against them.^[7] Garcia nevertheless warned the provincial chiefs to respect the Capuchins after George de Geel’s martyrdom. This Belgian Capuchin was killed in 1652 after burning down a pagan shrine which some of his Christians were attending. Pagan worship was proscribed by the King, and in 1653 Serafino da Cortona had some pagan priests arrested and sent to the Inquisition in Brazil.^[8] Strong arm tactics, however, were not reserved for followers of traditional religion only. A Franciscan in Luanda accused the Capuchins of not being religious at all but agents of Spain. Serafino da Cortona complained to Propaganda Fide in 1655 that the Jesuits had turned Garcia against them; he also asserts that the Jesuits owned 2,000 slaves.^[9] Manuel de Matos SJ wrote at the same time complaining that the Capuchin schools were competing with the Jesuit ones and that the Capuchins were running farms with slave labour.^[10]

In spite of these harrassments and deficiencies the Capuchins’ work of evangelization had a massive popular impact which no other group came near to equalling. They spread into Matamba as a result of Queen Nzinga’s raid on Congo in 1648 when she took two Capuchins prisoners. Releasing them, she asked for mor Capuchins to return. They did so after peace was made with the Portuguese in 1656. She returned to the Christian faith she had professed in 1622, abolishing official human sacrifices, but was constrained to offer the Portuguese 200 slaves. This brave queen died in 1663 at the age of about 82 after an exemplary reign which drew the recognition of Pope Alexander VII. Her immediate successors returned to huan sacrifices and cannibalism, outlawing Christianity, but a coup permitted the return of Christianity in 1676.

In Congo Giacinto da Vetralla’s report of 1658 points out that of sixty Capuchins who came only twenty-six were still alive nad working. Among other problems he noted that the Congolese feared that the preachers may be paving the way for domination by the continuingly aggressive Portuguese. Garcia II also caused harm by rigorously collecting church tithes and keeping them for his own use. The King was also afraid that by education and agricultural development his subjects would lose respect for his authority. The rival claims of Portugal and Spain permitted very few more missionasries to come, and in 1660 Propaganda Fide ordered the Capuchins to give first priority to foundign a seminary for the Caongolese, since the Jesuits who had been given the task never carried it out. The Capuchins began training some seminarians, but circustances in Congo prevented the project from maturing.

António I (1661-5) and the period of anarchy (1665-1709)

António Vita a Nkanga, the son of Garicia, began his reign by oppoosing the Capuchins except for the one indigenous Capuchin Francisco Robredo de São Salvador. Some disaffected chiefs finally turned against António and with the help of the Portuguese, defeated and killed him in the province of Ambuila in 1665. One king then took over in São Salvador, another in Bula to the north, and a third to the south on the Ambrisi (M’Bridge) river. In the civil wars that followed São Salvador itself was burned and abandoned in 1678 and not reoccupied until after 1710.^[11] During this time the Capuchins carried on the best they could. The peace treaty between Spain and Portugal in 1669 opened theflow of missionaries once more, but the anarchy of the country and a high mortality rate reduced their effectiveness. Between 1672 and 1700 approximately 100 Capuchins came, but of these and those who came previously 64 died, 38 returned home, and in 1700 only 5 remained. One of the noteworthy writings of this period is the historical, geographical and ethnographical study by Giovanni-Antonio Cavazzi, entitled Istorica descrizione de tre regni Congo, Matamba e Angola, which he wrote after leaving for Italy in 1668.

The Spanish-Portuguese peace permitted the appointemnt of a bishop for São Salvador in 1671, but the man died before ordination. Another was ordained in 1673 but died in Luanda a month after his arrival. A Franciscan bishop, Manuel de Natividade (16786-85), transferred the headquarters of the diocese to Luanda because of the destruction of São Salvador and only set eyes on Congo in the year of his death. His successors were equally out of contact with the African interior.

The St. Anthony movement of 1703-6 typified the political and religious frustration felt in Congo in this period of decline. Two Capuchins remained in Congo doing what work they could while observing neutrality between the rival claimants to the throne. According to their description a 20 year old prophetess named Kimpa Vita claimed to be a reincarnation of St. Anthony of Padua, while her husband claimed to be St. John. Her message was that the king, Pedro IV, must move to São Salvador for the Congo kingdom to be restored. If he did not he would be punished by God. She also was reputed to have worked many wonders which gained her a large following. She burned both crosses and items of pagan worship while she included the belief that Jesus was born in São Salvador. Bernardo da Gallo, one of the Capuchins, urged Pedro IV to stop her, but her following was by then so great that the king dared not oppose her. Only when she made a royal crown for herself did the King feel obliged to step in and, on the advice of Bernardo, had her and her husband burned at the stake in 1706. The St. Anthony movement, however, continued to exist until 1709 when Pedro defeated and killed Pedro Constantino Kibenga, his rival to the throne.

The dark years (18th and 19th centuries)

Dynastic struggles in Congo came to an end mainly becuase the office of king was no longer worth contending for. He had little power and wealth, and each chief went his own way. Capuchins kept coming, but their number hovered around a precarious average of five. Diocesan priests held most of the town parishes, while catechists kept alive the faith, worship and educational level of the masses of the people. While the diocesan priests, mostly black or mulattoes, came under the bishop and the padroado of the Portuguese kings, the Capuchins were under their prefect appointed by Propaganda Fide. Jurisdictional disputes often arose and Propaganda Fide bound the Capuchins to refrain from any ministry within five miles of a diocesan parish church. Practical considerations also made them concede the right of the bishop to send diocesan priests into posts the Capuchins had abandoned for want of numbers. The bishop ordained candidates as he saw fit, often without proper training. Propaganda Fide pushed for a seminary again in 1743, but without success.

Complaints had always been lodged against diocesan priests for concubinage, avarice and slave trading,^[12] but the Capuchins’ spirit also declined in these years. The harsh life of Africa diverted most of them to the Americas, while of those who came few stayed more than one assignment of seven years and fewer still learned the language and became anything more than sacrament dispensers, tallying up so many thousands of baptisms, marriages and confessions. What is more, the Capuchin hospices were maintained by slaves. Granted they were given to the Capuchins, not bought, and were well treated, so much so that there are cases when they stayed and took care of stations abandoed by the Capuchins; but they were still slaves. In the 18th century approximately 50,000 slaves were exported annually afrom Congo and the Zaïre river mouth area.^[13] It was only too easy for some people to accept and then participate in such a system. When the Capuchin Pietro Paolo da Bene visited Congo in 1819 the king gave him some slaves which he sold to finance his trip to Brazil. Propaganda Fide corrected him in very severe words. The Capuchin wrote back that Roman bureaucrats could well talk about the evil of slavery but they did not understand Africa. He signed his letter “Slave of the slaves of St. Anthony”. When he died in 1829 in his pocket were found two checks, of 1,5600,000 and 134,000 réis, in payment for consignments of slaves.^[14]

This may have been an isolated example showing one side of the picture, because the same king of São Salvador, Garcia V, sent his son to Luanda to be ordained a pirest. The latter returned and served in São Salvador until 1836.^[15] Likewise French diocesan priests in 1766 began working with great sacrifice in Luango and Kakongo to the north of the Zaïre river to revive the faith planted there a century before. Sickness and death forced the ten or so priests and several laymen to abandon their work in the field as well as their project for a seminary. The French revolution prevented a resumption of the task.^[16]

The tree planted long ago in Congo and Angola was not bearing fruit and was hardly keeping alive. It was time for God’s providence to stop everything and start afresh. In 1834 the revolution in Portugal put an end to all religous orders and missionary work. Even Luanda, which had always been well provided for, was without a bishop for twenty years after 1826.

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^[11]Filesi (1972b), 17, note 12; Bontinck (1970), xlvi.

^[12]MMA XI, 520 (the year 1655); Metzler (1973), 899 (the year 1718).