LIBERIA. - I. GEOGRAPHY. - It is the smallest (from 95,000 to 120,000 sq. km.) of the three independent states of Africa. It was founded in 1822 by American philanthropists who settled there a number of families of liberated Black slaves (whence the name).
It comprises the so-called Pepper Coast (Guinea) between Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast, and the hinterland as far as the Nimba massif. The interior is little known, and of the coastal region itself, deprived of swamps, only small areas around the capital and the small coastal centers are under cultivation: palm nuts and palm oil, piassava, coffee, rice, maize, potato, cassava. A little gold is extracted from the river sands; the substantial forest reserve is still almost untouched.
The population (from 1.5 to 2.5 million inhabitants) consists of Black people, of whom barely 60,000 are civilized. The economy and administration are in fact in the hands of the United States, which have given considerable impetus to the improvement of the country. Liberia is a democratic Republic with bicameral representation. The capital is Monrovia (10,000-15,000 inhabitants).
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Giuseppe Caraci
II. EVANGELIZATION
In the territory of Liberia there lived few Catholics, who were spiritually abandoned. The Second Council of Baltimore of 1833 concerned itself with them. Ten years later three priests offered to go to Liberia, namely Msgr. Barron, Father Kelly and the lay catechist Pindar; but this first attempt having failed, Liberia was again abandoned for forty years, until in 1884 the Fathers of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit were sent there. Masonic and Protestant opposition forced them to close church and school.
In 1903, when the mission was erected into an apostolic prefecture, there was another attempt, also failed, by the Montfortians; finally the Fathers of the African Missions of Lyon (1906) were put in charge of it, and they still work there. Its first apostolic prefect was Father Kyne: the mission developed under the prefect and then apostolic vicar Msgr. Ogé. The apostolate, despite the Protestant preponderance, is not declining: the most responsive populations are the Kru tribes (the station of Sasstown dates to 1912, that of Grand Cess to 1916); other stations were founded in recent times: Monrovia in 1921, Rassa in 1929 and Cape Palmas in 1930; further inland: Saniquelle in 1932 and Gbangba in 1933. The mission had not a few and not slight hardships: the war of 1914-18 threatened to stifle it; the epidemic of 1918 scattered the Christians, who were promptly aided by the missionaries; then came the turn of open Protestant hostility, which demanded the removal of the Catholic missionaries. Despite everything the mission progressed. In 1934 the prefecture was elevated to an apostolic vicariate. On 5 February 1950 the vicariate was divided into the apostolic prefecture of Cape Palmas, which comprises the south-eastern part of Liberia, and into the apostolic vicariate of Monrovia. Giovanni B. Traccella
III. LEGAL STATUS OF THE CHURCH
The Catholic Church in Liberia enjoys freedom of movement and action, so that well-founded hopes of progress for Catholicism in the country may be entertained; hitherto, in fact, the number of Catholics is small: 9,363 out of a population of about 2,500,000 souls.
(from U. A. Bernatzki, Il continente nero (Orbis terrarum), Berlin 1908, pl. 6)
On the part of the Government no obstacles are placed in the way of the Church's important educational activity. Medical assistance is likewise developed. The annual consultations in the 6 mission dispensaries amount to about 30,000. The government of the Republic has always maintained cordial relations with the Holy See. In 1927 regular diplomatic relations were established; the president of Liberia accredited a minister plenipotentiary to the Supreme Pontiff, and His Holiness appointed a permanent chargé d'affaires of his own, the only example among pontifical representations with a diplomatic character. From the outset this mission has been entrusted to the vicar apostolic of Monrovia.
A recent proof of the esteem and deference that the Government entertains toward the Catholic Church and Catholics was given on the occasion of the UNESCO international conference in Florence in September 1950; for the first time Catholics were chosen, and among them the only indigenous priest, to represent the Republic at that international assembly, and this despite the position of predominance of the Protestants in Liberia.
Ippolito Rotoli