A leading bishop in the Republic of the Congo has warned that an exponential rise in Christian Pentecostalism in the country is posing a stiff challenge to the Catholic Church, drawing people away amid what he described as “guerilla warfare” in the spiritual realm.
“They disrupt the faith of Catholics by offering quick and easy solutions to their problems,” said Archbishop Bienvenu Manamika Bafouakouahou of Brazzaville, in a wide-ranging interview with the Fides news agency.
According to the CIA World Factbook, Catholics constituted 33.3 % of the population of Congo-Brazzaville in 2019, closely followed by the Awakening/Revival churches with 22.3 percent and other Protestants making up 19.9 % .
Manamika said the promise of quick fixes from the revival churches seems to be hemorrhaging the Catholic Church.
“There are so-called “revival churches” or Pentecostal communities that wage a kind of “guerrilla warfare” on spiritual terrain, in the sense that they bitterly fight the Catholic Church,” he said.
He said the Pentecostals have been effective in exploiting the poverty of the people to promise miraculous solutions to their “pressing problems,” and often, people find comfort in such promises.