(With special reference to the Roman Catholic Church)
by Father Austin Flannery, O.P.
Racial discrimination and racial exploitation are totally at variance with Christianity. Christians, however, have been the most persistent and ruthless offenders in recent centuries. The main reason for this chilling anomaly is that since the commencement of European colonial expansion to the Americas and to Africa the countries of Christian Europe have been faced with massive opportunities for the exploitation of peoples less powerful and technically less advanced than themselves; and they grasped their opportunities.
How eagerly they did so may be gleaned from the blood conquests of the two Americas, the enslavement of the American Indians by Spanish, Portuguese and British settlers, the virtual annihilation of the North American Indians, and the barbaric African slave trade.
It is only comparatively recently that the majority of Europeans and Americans have begun to see that era of exploitation and mass murder for what it was. In its hey-day, empire building was seen by its beneficiaries as a great and glorious and even benevolent enterprise. Then, as now, self-interest was the most persuasive of arguments.
Looking back over those centuries, one recalls the often vigorous protests and criticisms of Christian leaders like the Dominican Bartolome de las Casas, of theologians like the Jesuit Francisco Suarez; one recalls the Jesuits and their slave-free colony in Paraguay. The Quaker, William Penn, abolished slavery in Pennsylvania and the evangelical William Wilberforce contributed greatly towards the abolition of the slave trade. One can cite many condemnations of the slave trade by successive Popes: Pius II in 1462, Paul III in 1537, Urban VIII in 1639, Benedict XIV in 1741 and Gregory XVI in 1839.
But there is the other side of the picture. If these names stand out, it is because at the time they were exceptions. The New Catholic Encyclopedia, commenting on papal condemnations of slavery (2) said:
"They were hardly effective, but they may have reduced the participation of Catholics in the trade. The Church did not interfere with slavery as a customary institution. It was, however, as a result of the opposition of the outspoken Dominican, Bartolome de las Casas, that the colonial regimes of Spain and Portugal officially rejected the notion of essential racial inferiority and declared that the conquered people of the New World, however strange their culture and notwithstanding their non-Christian condition, were fully entitled to all fundamental human rights."
Slavery is not identical with racism. People have been guilty of slavery who were not necessarily also guilty of racism, as the above quotation would appear to indicate. However, a racist attitude is the readiest salve for the conscience of the exploiter. If a group are believed to be of their very nature and ineradicably inferior and incapable of advancement, it is easier to justify the disparity between their poverty and degradation and the wealth and splendour of those who exploit them. Justification becomes easier still if the exploited people are popularly believed to possess the characteristics which make them the exact opposites, the mirror-images, of those who exploit them - if, in other words, they are popularly believed to be lazy, unreliable, dishonest.
F. Ashley-Montagu has noted that as long as the slave trade was not questioned "the slaves, though treated as chattels, were nonetheless conceded to be human in every sense but that of social status..." It was only later, when influential people began to attack the slave trade on moral grounds, that its supporters began to look for other arguments to counteract the arguments of their opponents. (3)
Ashley-Montagu explained:
"The difference in physical appearance provided the convenient peg upon which to hang the argument that this represented the external sign of the ineradicable mental and moral inferiorities. It was an easily grasped mode of reasoning and in this way the obvious differences in social status, in caste status, was equated with the obvious difference in physical appearance, which in turn was taken to indicate a fundamental biological difference." (4)
It is apposite to remark that today`s racist exploitation in South Africa, Southern Rhodesia and - at any rate until the recent coup d`etat - in the Portuguese colonies, is of a piece with all that is most shameful in those dark pages of Europe`s history. This is why the matter cannot but be of special concern to Europeans. It has its roots in our history and the exploiters are our own kith and kin. And whether we like it or not, most European countries have economic and political links with the exploiters. It is to a large extent our money and our support which provide the sinews and the will-power for this twentieth century version of the slave-trade.
To us in Europe who are Christians, the matter is of still greater concern, for the Portuguese and the rulers of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia do not merely, and to a greater extent than most European countries, claim to be Christians: they also claim a convergence between their values and Christian values and that their policies are helping to preserve Western Christian civilisation. Indeed they sometimes go so far as to claim Christian sanction for them.
In this context, one ought also to recall that the Christians who today raise their voice in protest against oppression in South Africa, the Portuguese colonies and Southern Rhodesia, are heirs to a long ad proud tradition. Not all their co-religionists recognise this. Indeed, they have frequently been the object of particularly bitter attack by the more conservative of their co-religionists. But the climate of opinion has been changing enormously in the past few years. The majority of Christians have learned to listen with a new respect to protests against apartheid and other forms of racial discrimination.
The attitudes of Christians to racism are far from uniform, as may be inferred from the preceding paragraph. In attempting to assess them it will be helpful to examine them at two levels: the level of official statements and actions, on the one hand, and the level of day-to-day attitudes and reactions of the ordinary Christian, clerical and lay, on the other.
It must however be borne in mind that official attitudes to racism and the attitudes of the ordinary Christians do interact on each other. Official statements purport, in varying degrees, to be normative. This is more true of the Roman Catholic Church than of other Christian churches, since it is more centralised and more authoritarian.
At the same time, for the Roman Catholic Church no less than for the other churches, it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of official statements, especially in the matter of race and exploitation. As has already been mentioned, the New Catholic Encyclopedia said of successive papal condemnations of slavery over the centuries: "they were hardly effective." In his paper on "Church and Race in South Africa", the Reverend Kenneth N. Carstens writes: "The Catholic Church is not unlike the other English-speaking churches in that the practical application of its pronouncements is hardly perceptible and often contradictory." (5)
Later I shall put forward some reasons for the gap between theory and practice in the Christian churches, but I shall also attempt to show that the gap has been narrowing considerably in very recent times, as is evidenced by the increasing number of Christian ministers of religion who have been expelled from South Africa, Southern Rhodesia and the Portuguese colonies, have been imprisoned there, or have chosen voluntary exile as a protest.
Bearing in mind what has been said about the gaps that exist between theory and practice in the Christian Churches, we can go on to examine official statements on racism. I shall concentrate mainly on the Roman Catholic Church, this being the church to which I have the honour to belong and, naturally, the one I know best. I shall also concentrate on racism in the context of South Africa, Southern Rhodesia and the Portuguese colonies, this being of greatest concern to me, as a European and a Christian, for the reasons already put forward.
The most authoritative, most representative, statement of the Roman Catholic Church`s position on a wide variety of topics and problems in the modern world are the documents of the Second Vatican Council. These documents touch on the problem of racial injustice fifteen times. They condemn racism. To set this in perspective one should bear two facts mind. The first is that most of the council`s documents might be described as introspective: they are concerned with the Church`s own problems, its theology, its renewal. The need for a more out-going approach to the world as a whole and to its problems did not begin to be felt until the council had run much of its four-year course. The fact that the problem of race figures fifteen times in the documents is evidence of a deepening concern.
The second point which might be made is that condemnation is very rare in the documents of the Second Vatican Council. In fact, it was expressly eschewed. As one commentary on the Council documents put it:
"This Council wished to avoid anathemas. It did however resort to severe language when speaking of the moral scourges of our time. It condemned vigorously the crimes which detract from man`s dignity... One meets the same severe language when there is question of `all forms of discrimination in the matter of fundamental rights, whether on the basis of sex, race, colour, social condition, language or religion.` (Church in the Modern World, no. 29, para. 2) In this disclosure of the tragic evils of our time we find, in short, the only anathemas of the Council, if one might use the expression." (6)
The Second Vatican Council did not treat of the race question in isolation from other moral problems, nor did it deal with it in detail or extensively. What it did have to say, however, leaves one in no doubt that it saw racism as totally inimical to the basic tenets of Christianity. By way of commentary and introduction to what the Council said, the following passage from The Catholic Church and the Race Question, (7) written some ten years previously by Father Yves Congar, O.P. is apposite:
"What is racism? It is the dividing and grading of human beings into groups, and then the effecting of discrimination against some of them, on the ground that their human qualities or characteristics are genetically determined. Racism refuses to see man outside a system of classification based on genetic factors (real or supposed). In its view, it is these factors that radically and decisively qualify, unite or separate men.
"This standpoint is incompatible with the tenets of the Christian faith as regards (a) the unity and (b) the dignity of human nature, and also with Christian spirituality. Racism is a pseudo religion; it has disastrous results which attack Christianity at it roots." (p. 13)
Later in the same treatise, Father Congar wrote:
"Pope Pius XI proclaimed... that by transposing the great premises of Christianity into terms of race, racism was profoundly perverting them and becoming itself a pseudo-religion... If there is in Christianity the idea of a mystery of blood, it is that, not of a race opposed to other races, but of the unity of all men in the heritage of sin, derived from our first father, and in a heritage of redemption purchased by the blood of Christ."(p. 21)
The documents of Vatican II treat of race in two main contexts: (a) in statements about the nature of the church and about its life and worship; and (b) in statements about injustice. What they have to say might usefully be seen against the background of the racist ideas which Father Congar describes and which had a certain currency in Europe, during the Nazi period especially. Father Congar recalls (writing in 1953) that the racist theories of people like A. Rosenberg and W. Hauer had been distilled in pithy sayings which were still fresh in his memory: "Art is always the product of a specific race." "All true culture is the conscious form taken by the growing life-force of a race." "Faith is closely dependent upon race." (p. 18)
In contrast, the Constitution on the Church, the major document of Vatican II, sees all members of the Church as "a single people" (No. 9) and "one people of God" (No. 11). It asserts that all have "a common dignity" and says "in the Church there is no inequality arising from race or nationality, social condition or sex" (No. 31). Another document, the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, makes it clear that there can be no question of exclusiveness about church membership: "the Church has been sent to all races and nations and, therefore, is not tied exclusively and indissolubly to any race or nation." (No. 58). For this reason, the "Church has no wish to impose a rigid uniformity in worship... She respects and fosters the spiritual riches and gifts of the different races and peoples..." (8)
For "the Church transcends every particularity of race or nation..(9)
Since today`s worst racial problems exist in southern Africa, where many Europeans work as missionaries, it is particularly relevant that the Decree on the missions should speak of racial prejudice. The decree bids Christians to follow the legitimate customs of the countries in which they live, to "practice true and effective patriotism", since the church does not have political institutions of its own. However, it draws the line at collaboration in racial discrimination:
"At the same time, let them altogether avoid racial prejudice and exaggerated nationalism, fostering instead a universal love for men." (10)
When the Council documents turn to the larger issues of justice and peace in the world, they note the continued persistence of "racial antagonisms" (11)
and of "great inequalities between races." They call on all men to put an end to inter-racial conflict and assert that all peace-making is doomed to failure so long as inter-racial hostility persists.
In the light of this, it is not surprising to find the Council taking a wholly uncompromising stand on racial discrimination, which it sees as diametrically opposed to the Christian spirit:
"With respect to the fundamental rights of the person, every type of discrimination, whether social or cultural, whether based on sex, race, colour, social condition, language or religion, is to be overcome and eradicated as contrary to God`s intent." (12)
"We cannot in truthfulness call upon God who is the Father of all if we refuse to act in a brotherly way towards certain men, created though they be in God`s image. A man`s relationship with God the Father and his relationship with his brother men are so linked together that Scripture says: `He who does not love does not know God.'" (13)
"The ground is, therefore, removed from every theory or practice which leads to a distinction between men or peoples in the matter of human dignity and the rights which flow from it.
"In consequence, the Church rejects as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, colour, condition of life, or religion." (14)
In similar vein, the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World asserts that the ultimate purpose of economic production is the betterment of all men, "no matter what their status or race . . ." (No. 64)
The other great source for the teaching of the central authority of the Roman Catholic Church are papal encyclicals. Since the publication of the encyclical, Rerum Novarum, in 1891, by Pope Leo III, there have been a number of encyclicals on social problems. The most notable of these have been Pius XI`s Quadragesimo Anno (1931), John XXIII`s Mater et Magistra (1961), and Pope Paul VI`s Populorum Progressio (1967) and Octogesima Adveniens (1971).
An examination of these documents shows that the present race question has impinged comparatively lately on the consciousness of the universal church. Only in the last two of these documents is it dealt with, and even there only comparatively briefly. One reason for this is that it is only comparatively recently that Europeans have begun to shed a paternalism with regard to Africans. The emergence of the new African nations, coupled with their influence at the United Nations and in bodies like the World Council of Churches, have helped us to see the race question in clearer perspective.
Populorum Progressio speaks of racism as "a cause of division and hatred within countries whenever individuals and families see the inviolable rights of the human person held in scorn, as they themselves are unjustly subjected to a regime of discrimination because of their race or their colour" (No. 63). Little more than four years later, Octogesima Adveniens lists - as did the Second Vatican Council - racial discrimination as one of several forms of discrimination, but then goes on to single racial discrimination out for special comment and special condemnation:
"Racial discrimination possesses at the moment a character of very great relevance by reason of the tension which it stirs up both within certain countries and on the international level. Men rightly consider unjustifiable and reject as inadmissible the tendency to maintain or introduce legislation or behaviour systematically inspired by racialist prejudice. The members of mankind share the same basic rights and duties, as well as the same supernatural destiny. Within a country which belongs to each one, all should be equal before the law, find equal admittance to economic, cultural, civic and social life and benefit from a fair sharing of the nation`s riches." (No. 16).
One hopes that the next step will be a full-scale document on the evils of racism treated on its own.
The other source of official comment by the Churches are statements by leaders of the local churches. These have been well covered, in the case of South Africa, by the paper written for the United Nations Unit on Apartheid by the Reverend Kenneth N. Carstens, in 1971. He showed that while the Dutch Reformed Churches are pro-apartheid, on the whole, the official policy of the English-language churches is opposed to apartheid. He adds, however:
"The practice... does not match the professed principles..." (p.15)
The remarkable joint pastoral letter published by the bishops of South Africa in 1972 bears out Mr. Carstens on this point. The bishops point out that they have on several occasions addressed their people on social and interracial justice and then add: "Regrettably there has been very little significant response. But we can try again." They go on to speak of legislation and convention dividing people of different colours; they condemn the evils caused by migratory labour: "around half the main African male labour force are obliged to live more or less permanently separated from their families." They speak of the deep frustration of the Africans, deprived of sufficient opportunity for education: "Deep frustration begins with half-education." They assert that it is wrong to deprive a person of promotion because of the colour of his skin. They go on:
"In many ways the poorest members of our mixed population are the least protected. There is no unemployment insurance required by law for those who earn least. Pensions are below the subsistence level. There is a lack of care for the aged, the deprived and the handicapped... Resettlement camps have shown how people are uprooted and moved in a heartless manner."
Later they say:
"We are deeply troubled by the memory of the many people who have been detained, banned, silenced or restricted, without public trial, or who have become the object of suspicion and harassment because of their Christian concern for neighbours of a different race. All that we know of many them is their struggle and protest on behalf of the voiceless who suffer under discriminatory legislation and way of life and this deserves our sympathy and praise." (15)
In Southern Rhodesia the problem is of more recent origin and from the beginning the attitude of the Roman Catholic hierarchy has been uncompromisingly on the side of justice. In January of this year they published the most recent of their statements on the problem and in the course of the document they say:
"Half measures and token gestures will provide no solution. The real issues must be faced; discrimination based on race must be eliminated, equality of opportunity must be guaranteed; there must be proper parliamentary representation, job reservation must go, land reform must be seriously tackled with more equitable distribution and appropriate control. These are reasonable demands. They are the demands of simple justice."
The Rhodesian bishops also speak of the use of police State techniques by the government:
"... the summary arrest, restriction or imprisonment without trial of people who have at heart the welfare of Rhodesia but who are known to oppose the present government. The widespread use of informers has a demoralising effect. Among the African people especially, all these things have resulted in a growing lack of confidence in the impartiality of law and order." (16)
When we turn to the Portuguese colonies, the picture begins to change considerably. True, Mozambique has in common with South Africa an increasing number of priests and religious who have made their opposition to racist government policies known in no uncertain terms. This, indeed, has been one of the most significant developments in colonial and southern Africa in recent years. The Governments of South Africa and the authorities in Southern Rhodesia and the Portuguese colonies have found themselves increasingly in conflict with ministers of religion, with nuns and brothers. The number of ministers and religious imprisoned or deported from these territories is now very considerable.
The hierarchy of Mozambique, until very recently, appeared to be totally behind the Government. Indeed, they would seem to be committed to this by the Concordat with the Vatican - a document which, one hopes, will soon be abrogated. Roman Catholics find themselves in a different position in Mozambique than they do in South Africa or Southern Rhodesia. In Mozambique they are officially identified with the colonial regime. Roman Catholic priests are paid by the regime, and are regarded as collaborators in colonial government. In this situation, the White Fathers, a missionary congregation, decided to leave Mozambique altogether, an unparalleled decision.
In a lengthy testimony Venticinque anni di presenza in Mozambique: Twenty-five years in Mozambique (Africa, 3, Rome), Father Cesare Bertulli, Superior of the White Fathers in Mozambique, recalls a statement drawn up in 1961 by the then Archbishop of Laurenco Marques, Dom Custodio Alvim Pereira. He added that it would still be regarded as normative. Among the principles which the Archbishop put forward for the guidance of his clergy were the following: (1) Independence is a good thing for a population only when certain cultural and geographical facts are justified. It is taken for granted that this does not obtain in Mozambique. (2) Until such conditions are verified, it is contrary to nature to take part in a movement for independence. (3) Even when the conditions shall have been verified, the Mother Country has the right to oppose independence, so long as liberty and rights are respected and she seeks the well-being and the civil and religious progress of all. (4) All terrorist movements are contrary to natural law because independence, as a good, ought to be achieved by peaceful means. (7) The native African peoples have the obligation to thank the colonists for all the benefits they have received from them. (8) Educated people have the obligation to disabuse the less well-educated of the illusion, the mirage of independence. (9) Almost everywhere that independence has been achieved in Africa, this has been accompanied by revolution and communism. Such movements ought not, therefore, to be supported. The teaching of the Holy See is quite clear on communism and revolution.
In another section the Archbishop says that the slogan "Africa for the Africans" is "a false philosophy and an act of defiance to the Christian civilisation. In fact, recent events show that it is communism and Islam which want to impose their civilisation on Africa." (Author`s translation)
Father Bertulli, who said that such was still the thinking of the hierarchy of Mozambique, remarked that it was no wonder that African seminarians could not accept such ideas and that the best of them were leaving the seminaries.
It is no wonder too that, in the light of what has since become known of the brutality of the Portuguese regime, many more priests, religious and lay-folk should have begun to protest. The most recent and the most significant protest came to light last March.
For the first time ever, a Mozambique bishop has criticised the Government. He is Mgr. Vieira Pinto, bishop of Nampula. Mgr. Pinto said in a pastoral letter, dated last January, but which has only recently come to public knowledge outside Mozambique, that "African self-determination is a natural right and is essential to true development." He added: "To promote full development is to promote and defend the right of the people of Mozambique to their own identity, their right to the freedom to formulate their own aspirations and to construct their own history... The right to self-determination involves the right of an emergent people to choose freely their own political institutions, their cultural, social and economic institutions... Mozambique is at the time for decision... a time for men worthy of the name of men."
A second remarkable document has since then come to light. It is a statement addressed to the hierarchy of Mozambique and signed by Mgr. Pinto, 34 priests, 14 religious men and 14 religious women. It said: "The Church in Mozambique is on the side of the oppressor"; it "does not defend men`s rights"; it "lacks the courage to say how the peoples of Mozambique have been despoiled of what is rightfully theirs"; it "follows the Government`s directives, without bothering to discover whether or not this war is an attempt by the people of Mozambique to achieve their independence".
The statement accuses the hierarchy of not having clearly and firmly denounced the massacres and says that "some members of the hierarchy have even gone so far, out of servility towards the Government, as to deny publicly facts that are absolutely certain and known to all". Lastly, tied by a concordat and a missionary statute which are totally at odds with its true mission, the Church in Mozambique, it says, has become "an accomplice of a regime which is leading to the cultural genocide of the people". The signatories announce that they will not in future accept Government subsidies paid to missionaries, nor will they teach in the primary schools.
The reaction of the white colonists was strong. As has been widely reported in the world`s press, a white mob attacked Bishop Pinto and six priests at the airport at Lourenco Marques, whither they had been hidden for interrogation. The immediate provocation on that occasion was a homily which the bishop had preached shortly before at Mass. (17)
The tensions thus revealed within the church itself in Mozambique exist also in Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. One important difference is that the majority of the bishops in both South Africa and Southern Rhodesia would seem to be on the side of justice - at least they have all signed the joint statements on racism. As we have seen, the last two statements from each hierarchy were quite categorical, their most trenchant statements to date. In Mozambique, however, the hierarchy has always been - publicly at any rate - on the side of the Government. Mgr. Pinto has been the first to break ranks. One hopes that the recent coup in Portugal might encourage others to put justice before their brand of patriotism. One hopes too that the coup might be taken as a suitable occasion to abolish the present concordat.
In all the churches in Africa at the present time an increasing number of clergy and laity are seeing clearly that the present regimes are evil and that justice will have to be done: that therein lies the only hope for the future in Africa. Increasingly also the governments are adopting repressive measures against them and against others who do not share their religious convictions but do share their humanitarian concern. This has been noted by the statements issued by the Southern Rhodesian and South African hierarchies and has been regularly reported in the world`s press. Information has also become available that the Portuguese authorities were planning to step up their campaign against priests and religious who oppose their views.
But it is not only the governments who oppose the liberal Christians who put justice and truth first. They are also bitterly opposed by those who enjoy the fruits of white supremacy. It is such as they - in this case the Portuguese pieds noirs - who attacked the bishop and priests at Lourenco Marques airport; it is such as they who have given such little significant response to the South African hierarchy`s appeals. It is such as they who can make their views known in no uncertain terms to a bishop at a Saint Patrick`s Day dinner in Salisbury.
But, on the part of many of the clergy, there is a temptation to a kind of ecclesiastical self-interest, a feeling that one must not rock the boat and that one will thus be left free to get on with the Church`s business. In an interview published last year in Informations Catholiques Interationales (April 15, 1973), Archbishop Denis Hurley of Durban said that that situation could not last: "I believe that all the churches in South Africa... will become more and more involved in the struggle for justice and equality. This will create great tension between the churches and the State in the years to come. It is inevitable and we shall simply have to face it. Most Christians accept that Christianity has no hope and no meaning unless it is on the side of justice."
Many white Christians in Africa and many Europeans and Americans - especially if they are over forty - share other attitudes and prejudices which blind them to the true situation in Africa and inhibit them from giving the help that is so desperately needed by black Africans and the liberal whites who live there. First of these is a tendency to accept the lawfulness of the actions of any government - except, of course, a Communist government. Allied to this is a tendency to bracket any protest group - including, especially, anti-apartheid movements - with all those "lefties" and anarchists who seek to overthrow society, or are alleged to. The South African Government`s propaganda machine is not remiss in fostering such obfuscation mythology.
Allied to this latter attitude, and at times reinforced by it, is a tendency to portray the role of a Christian clergyman or religious in terms of a false antithesis, an either-or choice between "spiritual matters" and "social matters". The Christian clergyman, it is urged, should concentrate on "spiritual matters", especially since - it is sometimes urged in addition - concern about social justice is suspect, hence the domain of communists and atheists. Such unthinking obfuscation is not at all uncommon. I was surprised, however, to find it in a statement by the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Evangelisation (the congregation in charge of the missions), Cardinal Rossi. It was in a message for the end of the centenary of the birth of St. Therese of Lisieux and was addressed to the Carmelites of Lisieux. It was published in an English translation in the Osservatore Romano. In the course of it he said:
"I ask you, then, to pray that the coming Synod of Bishops may not be turned aside from its aim, `the evangelisation of the modern world', to the benefit of purely socio-cultural aims, promoted by currents of thought that are fundamentally atheistic and materialistic."
One returns with relief to the sober and stark realism of Archbishop Hurley of Durban: "Christianity has no hope and no meaning unless it is on the side of justice."
One last point which must be made is that the Christian churches in Europe could do a great deal more to show their solidarity with and support for their co-religionists in southern Africa who are working to achieve a more just society here. That support is desperately needed and will be needed much more in the future, as the governments step up their campaign against the churches. The World Council of Churches has set a magnificent example by giving financial support, for humanitarian purposes, to the liberation movements. Would that individual member churches and the Roman Catholic Church were as forthcoming.
(1) From "Notes and Documents", No. 11/74, May 1974
(2) Article on "Racism", Volume 12, p. 54
(3) Man's Most dangerous myth: The Fallacy of Race, 4th edition, Cleveland, 1964, and Catholic Encyclopedia, article on "Racism", vol. 12, p. 56.
(5) United Nations Unit on Apartheid, "Notes and Documents", No. 23/71
(6) Concile Oecumenique Vatican II; Document Conciliaires, vol. 3, pp.75-76, Editions du Centurion, Paris, 1966: author's translation.
(7) Published by UNESCO, Paris, 1953
(8)Constitution on the Liturgy, No. 37
(9) Decree on the Missions, No. 8
(11) Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Nos. 3, 4, 42, 82
(15) Text in Osservatore Romano, March 9, 1972
(16) Text in Osservatore Romano, February 21, 1921
(17) Account from Informations Catholique Internationales, April 14, 1974