Mozambique

MOZAMBIQUE. - Portuguese colony in southern Africa (also called Portuguese East Africa), enclosed between the territories of Tanganyika, Nyasaland, Rhodesia and the Union of South Africa.

It covers 771,125 sq km, that is, more than two and a half times the size of Italy, and consists of a series of plateaus of granitic formation surmounted here and there by isolated elevations (Mount Namuli, 2,700 m) and preceded along the outer coastline by a flat strip that extends south of the Zambezi. The territory is, also because of its climatic conditions (hot and dry on the plateaus), suited to white settlement, and lends itself to various tropical crops, first among them sugar cane (and also cotton, peanuts, rice, coconut palm, etc.). Livestock raising is of little importance; mineral resources are notable, perhaps, but so far almost untouched (a little gold and coal are extracted).

The population (6.3 million inhabitants) consists of Bantu negroes and mulattoes. Europeans number about 30,000. The capital, Lourenço Marques (70,000 inhabitants), is the main port, the outlet of the neighboring Transvaal.

Giuseppe Caraci

EVANGELIZATION

The activity of the clergy of the small island of M. along the coasts of southeastern Africa, which had served since 1500 as a port of call on voyages to India, was limited to the Portuguese. Only in 1559 did the Jesuits of Goa begin the mission among the natives in Inhambane and in the Kingdom of Monomotapa. After initial successes the mission ended with the martyrdom of Fr. Gonzalo da Silveira.

From 1563 the Dominicans began the evangelization of the natives on the Zambezi River. In 1607 the Jesuits returned to work among the blacks. In 1612 M. was detached from the archdiocese of Goa as a vicariate or perpetual administration, and from 1783 a prelature with a titular bishop. The mission among the blacks made progress, extending after the Portuguese victory over the Monomotapa in 1629 to that Kingdom as well. But in the 17th century the decline of the mission began, caused by the stubborn resistance and counterattacks of Islam, by the slave trade and by the shortage of capable missionaries. After the Jesuits were expelled in 1759, missionary activity diminished even further, so much so that in 1822 the Dominicans, the only missionaries remaining, were serving 6 churches in all. With the suppression of the religious Orders in Portugal and in the colonies in 1834, the mission was practically at an end. Only toward the end of the century was missionary activity resumed by the Jesuits, who arrived in 1881 in the lower Zambezi; with great sacrifices they founded 7 stations and conversions multiplied. The Portuguese mission in M. itself was renewed through the work of the prelate Antonio José de Sousa Barroso (1891-97), who founded several stations entrusting them to zealous secular priests. However, their number was too small to achieve successes on a large scale. In 1898 the Portuguese Franciscans came to help. The Jesuits, on the other hand, were again expelled after the Portuguese Revolution of 1910. The Fathers of the Divine Word succeeded them in the Zambezi mission, expelled in their turn because of the world war in 1915; the secular clergy and the Franciscans took their place. In 1922 the Montfortians began a mission in M., in 1926 the Missionaries of the Consolata; both with slow and scanty results among the Muslim population or that under the influence of Islam. The missionary agreement from 1940 between the Holy See and Portugal established the division of M. into 3 dioceses: archdiocese of Lourenço Marques with the suffragans of Beira and Nampula. New missionary forces arrived. In Lourenço Marques, whose archbishop Teodosio Clemente de Gouveia (prelate from 1936, archbishop from 1941) was honored by Pius XII in 1946 with the cardinalitial purple, there work, besides the secular clergy and the Franciscans, the Missionaries of the Society of Cucujães, the Dutch Eucharists (from 1947) and the Lazarists in the seminary (from 1942). In the diocese of Beira the Franciscans work in the coastal region, the Jesuits are rebuilding the Zambezi mission and from 1945 the White Fathers are entrusted with a territory of their own. In the diocese of Nampula there are at work the Missionaries of Cucujães, the Montfortians, the Missionaries of the Consolata and from 1947 the Capuchins. This new organization has given new life to those missions which do not depend on Propaganda but on the Sacred Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. The number of Catholics rose from 30,000 in 1936 to 131,000 in 1947 among a total population of 5 million.

Giovanni Rommerskirchen