“Conciliar Tradition in Africa from Nicaea to Vatican II: Exploring Historical Lessons in Response to Ecumenical Challenges in Africa”

Okpaleke, Ikenna Paschal
(2025) III Pan-African Catholic Congress on Theology, Society, and Pastoral Life — Location: UCAO Abidjan (5.August.2025)

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To think of a conciliar tradition in Africa that stretches to back the Council of Nicaea leads to two possible assumptions. The first would imply a claim that such conciliar tradition of the African Church that stetches into the 2nd century exists and that the Church in Africa is far from being a young Church as predominantly believed. The second is that it represents the quest to construct such a tradition by linking the experience of conciliarity in today’s African Church to a preexisting tradition of conciliarity that stretches back to Nicaea. Whichever is the case, a catholicity of the conciliar tradition in Africa is automatically inferred in this exercise in so far as all particular churches can lay claim to the same conciliar tradition, their date of historical emergence notwithstanding. The task of this paper is therefore to explore the conciliar tradition in Africa not simply from a historical chronological sense, but in terms of the questions, concerns and aspirations of the African Church, while reflecting on the major concerns of Nicaea, Vatican II and even to the Synod on Synodality. Such an interrogative-historical approach, I dare to call it, would focus on Africa’s contributions or lack of contributions to the Conciliar tradition with attention to what we have learned from history that can serve the Church in Africa for meeting the challenges of today, particularly regarding ecumenism.
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Okpaleke, I. P. (2025). “Conciliar Tradition in Africa from Nicaea to Vatican II: Exploring Historical Lessons in Response to Ecumenical Challenges in Africa”. III Pan-African Catholic Congress on Theology, Society, and Pastoral Life, UCAO Abidjan.