Vatican City, Zanzibar, Christianity and urbanisation

From various sources, we learn that Vatican City is a city state, the smallest country in the world, surrounded entirely by Rome, Italy, situated on the west bank of the Tiber River. It is the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church. It is the home to the Pope and it is also home of a trove of iconic art and architecture. The Vatican Museums house ancient Roman sculptures as well as Renaissance frescoes in the Raphael Rooms and the Sistine Chapel, famous for Michelangelo’s ceiling. Well known statues, including the famous Pieta dot the landscape and the various rooms in the Vatican.

The Vatican City has a small population of around 825 people. It cannot grow fast since nobody is expected to be born in the City. Its area covers 44 hectares.

According to UNESCO, having been the Centre of Christianity since the foundation of Saint Peter's Basilica by Constantine (4th century), and at a later stage, the permanent seat of the Popes, the Vatican is at once the pre-eminently holy city for Catholics, an important archaeological site of the Roman world, and one of the major cultural reference points of both Christians and non-Christians.

As an official city-state, Vatican City has only been around for less than a hundred years. It became its own sovereign state in 1929, created by none other than Benito Mussolini. Indeed, I remember hearing the now retired Bishop Methodius Kilaini, saying that despite his shortcomings, the Church was thankful to Mussolini “for giving us the Vatican”.

It is very much possible that as President Hassan fathomed the artistic beauty of the Vatican City, the famous Beit-el-Ajaib, the House of Wonders, back home in Zanzibar, came into mind. It was built for ceremonial purposes by Sultan Barghash in 1883, and it is the tallest landmark building in the heart of the Stone Town, overlooking the Forodhani Gardens on the old town's seafront, on Mizingani Road.

We therefore have huge lessons to learn from the Vatican, about conservation in our urban areas, as well as the need to create respectable monuments, be they of humans or events, to conserve culture, andtell histories.

We are told that the President gave the Pope a gift of a Zanzibar Door and used the opportunity to remind the Pontiff that Zanzibar was the door that opened the spread of Christianity in Tanzania and elsewhere.

We however know that the early missionaries avoided urban areas, since they considered that these were already taken. Urban areas were also considered to be areas of traders. Thus, early missionaries focused on rural areas, and had great enthusiasm to promote local languages. The dwindling number of aged folks will remember reading the Bible, saying their prayers, and singing their religious songs, in vernacular languages. With the rising of nationalism and the spread of Kiswahili, praying in traditional languages has greatly waned, and with it, is the waning of the knowledge and use of local languages.

Missionaries concentrated as well on education and health services. The educated people soon joined the workforce and moved out of the villages. This has created a nearly one way traffic, with young people joining the bandwagon of migrating to urban areas. Some of the missionary and health stations that were founded by missionaries have grown into small urban areas. However, many rural missions are facing a survival crisis, as the young and those with money move to urban areas, in a worldwide phenomenon of rapid urbanization. The tithes from the rural folk are not adequate to maintain these rural missions.

As a result, many urban dwellers are now having to support their home parishes through regular and special remittances. Just as they have to support their people in the villages, they have to support their rural parishes.

As pointed out earlier, missionaries focused on rural areas; and this means that as urban areas grow, the new urbanites have to actively participate in the development of their churches in the growing urban areas. This involves building new churches in many developing neighbourhoods, and supporting the new and old parishes through sadaka, mavuno and various contributions.

Thus, the modern urbanite has a double duty of supporting church activities in both rural and urban areas; but this may not be sustainable in the long-run.

As the President ruminates about her recent foreign tours, which besides the Vatican, included a visit to Norway and Addis Ababa, she may need to encourage the building of museums, conservation of structures and spaces; and the building of monuments as our urban areas expand. Monuments are good. They form rallying points for communities and visitors, who want to know something about the culture and history of a place.

As a country, we also have a duty to think about the survival of the rural institutions, as urbanization gathers pace.