There is, indeed, radical contingency. Who would have known that a ruling Pope will be the ultimate nemesis of false emperors and professional dictators across the world?
Well, in less than a year in office, Pope Leo XIV has made a statement in moral warfare against usurpation and psychotic fear of the Other, war and despoilation.
It is interesting that he sent the most piercing verbal missiles while in Africa both to his country man – Donald Trump – and to Africa’s heavy share of presidents leading their countries either into division, disunity and war or creating conditions for such.
Academically, the Pope is a bad news for all essentialists around the world. He has told them in few words that essentialism is always an invitation to danger. Notions of fixed identity are all dangerous: we are the best, we are God’s own people, our country is the best, we are superior and so on, from the kindred to the global level. Those are the rigid notions of identity destroying the world and the Pope is on warpath against that essentialist attitude. Those who cannot read his lips will still not be able to escape his anti-essentialism by his practices of meeting and mixing with Others, breaking barriers and closing boundaries.
The world was waiting for Pope Leo, coming after drumbeats of ‘Clash of Civilisations’ at a time the world was actually experiencing convergence of civilisations manifest in convergence of Hinduism, Confucianism, Catholicism/Christianity and the Orthodox Church in BRICS, the election of Barack Obama in 2008 and the convergence of all civilisations on African natural resources since the end of the Cold War.
Lastly, Intervention cannot forget what Pope Leo’s predecessor said in January 2023 in the DRC – kicking against the savagery of colonialism in that country, followed by vicious wars engineered by profiteers, all accounting for unspeakable suffering.
With what Pope Leo has said and done across Africa in the past week, it is up to the civil society to amplify him and set in motion a counter-hegemonic ‘wind of change’
