Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) May 20, 2023: Recently, I discussed the Nigerian Jesuit theologian A. E Orobator's views on Vatican II in Africa in my OEN article "A. E. Orobator, S.J., on Vatican II in Africa" (dated May 13, 2023):
I now want to discuss Father Orobator's 2018 book Religion and Faith in Africa: Confessions of an Animist (Orbis Books). Yes, he is a convert to Catholicism. Yes, English is his second language. Yes, starting on August 15, 2023, he will serve as the new dean of the Jesuit School of Theology (JST) in Berkeley that is affiliated with Santa Clara University (SCU) in Santa Clara, California, and so it is referred to as JST-SCU.
A brief sketch of Nigerian Jesuit theologian A. E. Orobator's life and formal education is in order. According to information in his 2018 book Religion and Faith in Africa: Confessions of an Animist, he was not a cradle Catholic, but a convert to Catholicism. He was born in 1967 (p. 15). He was baptized a Catholic in 1983 (p. 169). According to information about Father Orobator that Deborah Lohse posted online at Santa Clara University in the May 2023 press release about his appointment as the new dean of the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley (now known as JST-SCU), he joined the Jesuits in 1986, the year in which he turned nineteen, and he was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1998, the year in which he turned thirty-one. He served a term as the Jesuit provincial of the Eastern Africa Province (2009-2014) and is currently serving as the president of the Jesuit Conference of Africa and Madagascar. He will turn fifty-six in 2023, the year in which he becomes the new JST-SCU dean.
Father Orobator's formal education was extensive. He received a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the Institut de Philosophie Saint Pierre Canisius in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1991; a bachelor's degree in theology from Hekima College in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1997; a licentiate in sacred theology (S.T.L.) from the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley in 1998, the year in which he was ordained a Jesuit priest; a Ph.D. in theology and religious studies from the University of Leeds in England in 2004, the year in which he turned thirty-seven; and an M.B.A. from Georgetown University in 2016.
Father Orobator's conversion to Catholicism was but one of many conversions to Catholicism in Africa that occurred after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Indeed, the extraordinary number of post-Vatican II conversions in Africa contributed to the recent prominence of the global south in the Roman Catholic Church. The global south's recent prominence in the church was symbolized in the 2013 election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina as Pope Francis (born in 1936).
Father Orobator's 2018 book Religion and Faith in Africa: Confessions of an Animist, the revised and expanded version of his Duffy Lectures in Global Christianity at Boston College in 2015-2016, contains the following seven chapters and an introductory and a concluding chapter:
"introduction" (pp. xv-xx);
Chapter !: "Faith of My Father, Spirit of My Mother" (pp. 1-23);
Chapter 2: "The Miracle of a Century" (pp. 25-50);
Chapter 3: "A Marketplace of Faiths" (pp. 51-76);
Chapter 4: "Pathological Performance and Prophetic Practice" (pp. 77-102);
Chapter 5: "Healing the Earth, Healing Humanity" (pp. 103-126);
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