Pope Pius XII Foreign Relations After World War II - Africa and Asia

Africa and Asia

For more than a hundred years, the Church has been building up infrastructures for education and health services in large parts of their African and Asian missions, including basic health stations but also specialized hospitals and universities. WWII had been a disaster for Catholic missions, educational and health institutes in Asia and Africa. In Europe, the houses of various orders and congregations, which prepare candidates for work oversees, were emptying. Priests and lay brothers, teachers and nurses, were called home from oversees to participate in military duty. Missionaries with the “wrong” passport were interned or expelled from the countries they worked in. After Japan declared war, much of Asia including the Philippines and Indochina became battlefields. Catholic churches, hospitals and schools were destroyed or closed. Under Japanese occupation, many missionaries were living in concentration camps and were mistreated. After the war, Pius helped rebuild the institutional presence and accelerated the pace of turning over control to local authorities. His encyclicals, Evangelii Praecones and Fidei Donum, issued on June 2, 1951 and April 21, 1957, respectively, increased the local decision-making of Catholic missions and recognition of local culture, especially in Africa. Continuing the line of his predecessors, Pius supported the establishment of local administration and a reduction of colonial influence in Church affairs: In 1950, the hierarchy of Western Africa became independent, 1951 Southern Africa and 1953 in British Eastern Africa. Finland, Burma and French Africa became independent dioceses in 1955. They remained financially dependent, however, from Western resources.