discovered lands, and gave her exclusive sovereingty." The political manipulation of religion in Portugal as illustrated earlier, led to corresponding
developments in the colonies. Though still retaining the basic image of "mission
and Holy Crusade" the content of Portuguese Catholic religious rationale has
been slightly modernised to fit into the context of the cold war, the"battle
of the free world" against Communist and Islamic expansion. Mosignor Custodio
Alvim Pereira, Archbishop of Lourenco Marques illustrates this very clearly
in a speech justifying the expulsion of a number of African students from his
seminary: "In almost every case contemporary African independence movements
carry the mark of communism and revolt.,, the doctrine of the Church concerning
atheist and revolutionary communism is clear. The true revolution is that of
the Gospel. The slogan of "Africa for the Africans" is a philosophical lie in
defiance cf Christian civilisation and the events of today prove that it is
communism and Islam who are seeking in this v/ay to impose their civilisations."
When the Pope visits Africa next month he will see countries v/here the African
peoples are free and independent, are running their own affairs in their own
interest. Perhaps when he sees these things, he might realise that one cannot
pray for "internal order inside nations" when some nations are not even allowed
to exist, but are brutally suppressed by foreigners. One cannot talk about the
eradication of injustice, pain and poverty in the same breath as "peace and
concord...among men" when the only way to eradicate these evils is by violence.
The church of which the Pope is the supreme head has weighty responsibilities
in the fight against social injustice, exploitation, and racism. It is therefore to be hoped that when he visits free Africa he will be conscious of the
necessity to take a strong stand against the root causes of these evils on this
continent - Portuguese colonialism and its allies in the South.
•|f  " I studied at the mission, but v/e v/eren't well taught. In the first
t]  place, they taught us only what they wanted us to learn - the cate-
p       chism; they didn't want us to learn other things. Thenevery morning    hi
h       we had to work on the mission land. They said our fathers didn't
.j.|  pay for our food or our school things ♦ The mission also received
money from the government, and our families paid them fees. After      }:;
K
1958 our parents even had to buy the hoes with which we cultivated
the mission land."
V- • ••*
GABRIEL MAURICIO NANTIMBO, £
FRELIMO guerrilla,
former pupil of IMBUHO Mission School.
y
1 tl
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