The “Zairian rite:” Liturgy Conceived for a Post-Colonial Context

One of the most remarkable facets of Congolese Catholic life is a liturgy developed specifically for worship in a post-colonial Congolese cultural context.1 The liturgy is celebrated regularly in parishes in Kinshasa and beyond. Most parishes celebrate it at least once each Sunday.

Catholic parishes in Kinshasa also celebrate the Eucharist in the international form of the Roman rite. Stylistically, those liturgies span a spectrum from those more traditional in a European sense, including with Latin hymnody, to those more traditional in an African sense, incorporating African style within the structure of the Roman rite.  The latter, in particular, are celebrated with a vibrancy and degree of outward participation that exceeds that normally found in the West.2 Choral music plays a dynamic role in all forms of liturgy. The Zairian rite in particular, but other forms of liturgy to a lesser degree, provides a large number of opportunities for laypeople to take formal roles. Choirs involve dozens of people, but there are also roles for sacristans, acolytes, lectors, communion ministers, greeters, and girls known as Bana Nkembi—Children of Praise—who dance at important liturgies. At some liturgies, 50 or 60 people serve in formal roles.  

The Zairian rite (officially, “the Roman Missal for the Dioceses of Zaire”) fulfills a vision articulated in 1959 when Bishop (later Cardinal) Joseph Malula called for the development of “a Congolese Church for a Congolese people” at his consecration as the first native-born bishop of Kinshasa, before the Democratic Republic of Congo achieved independence.3 In 1961, before Vatican II, the bishops of Zaire, still primarily European, first called for “a living African liturgy which is sensitive to the aspirations” of the people.4 Formal initiatives to develop the rite began in 1969, following the publication of the revised Roman liturgy.5

Those who developed the Zairian liturgy proposed to do more than dress up the Roman liturgy by adding African art, dress, and music. Malula’s vision entailed “re-expressing the Lord’s supper in such a way that the people of the land could truly become part of the experience here and now.”6 By the 1970s, the effort coincided with a parallel effort by the country’s ruler, Mobutu Sese Seko, to embrace and foster authenticité, a form of consciousness that honored local cultures and rejected colonial ideas, dress, and ways of being.7

As they worked to ground the liturgy in a Congolese symbolic and ritual worldview, the authors of the liturgy needed to take into account that the people of the DRC come from hundreds of local ethnic groups with many different cultural norms. They explored issues like the symbolic meaning of colors and the perceived meaning of gestures across these cultures.  

Approved in 1988 following years of development, experimental use in Zaïre, and substantial edits from the Congregation for Divine Worship in Rome, Le Missel Romain pour les Diocèses du Zaïre is the only new liturgy approved by the Church since Vatican II. It has since been adapted for use in neighboring countries.8

At a surface level, non-Africans may be struck most of all to see Congolese dance, music, and imagery incorporated into the liturgy.9 Each of these elements is significant, but the liturgy is also shaped in other, equally important ways.

Inculturated Roles

Three models shaped the liturgy’s development: the Roman rite, the model of the tribal chief, and the model of African assembly.10 The use of the latter two responds to the question, “how would a chief [and assembly] authentically immersed in African tradition best bear witness to the mystery of Christ?”11

As initially conceived, the priest-presider would be vested with the signs of the authority of a traditional village chief, holding a horse’s tail and wearing a goat-skin hat.12 Though chasubles, not chiefly clothing, are worn by the celebrant today, the priest’s “chiefly” role is still a part of the liturgy. The ministers at the altar relate to him in part in that fashion. In more than one context, some altar ministers carried spears, as they would to protect a chief. However, the meaning of the chief’s role runs deeper and intersects with the ways assemblies work in traditional Congolese cultures. A chief is defined by his relationship with all those present around him. He takes the lead when appropriate, but does not lead alone.

The Zairian liturgy also adds an official role, the announcer. Modeled on a similar role in traditional assemblies, the announcer, a lay man or woman, calls the assembly to order, introduces the celebrant and the other participants present, and before several key moments, summarizes what is about to happen. The role should not be confused with the role that laypeople in many other liturgical contexts might have in making announcements about special collections and parish events. Rather, in this liturgy, the announcer stands as a “herald” to call attention to key moments about to come.13 He or she stands at a podium on the right side of the altar from the assembly’s perspective, across from the ambo (lectern). In each of the liturgies witnessed for this account, the announcer filled the role with great authority, signaling that something significant was about to take place, worthy of attention.

While the priest has a clear “chiefly” and priestly role as presider, the liturgy incorporates a large number of other official ministries at the altar, robed accordingly. At the liturgies witnessed during this research, the many lectors, acolytes, Eucharistic ministers, altar servers, dancers, and choir members all filled their roles in careful and well-choreographed ways. The streets around the church may often be chaotic, but the celebration of the liturgy is quite the opposite, with ministers of the altar, the choir, and the assembly fulfilling their roles with a level of precision and attention to detail that contrasts with many other settings. The assembly actively engages in song and verbal prayer.  

Language

The liturgy is inculturated in terms of the way it uses language compared to the Roman rite. It incorporates Congolese forms or orality, making use of “dialogue, narrative, repetition, dramatization, the use of short sentences, strong images, and metaphors, enigmatic expressions calling for a deep sense of imagination, expressive sonorities, and allusions.”14 Its language is vivid rather than abstract, drawing metaphors from the natural world.  

Many prayers in the liturgy are structured in dialogue form. Call-and-response is an element of preaching. Abbé Kola Emmanuel Lubamba, a leader of the archdiocesan committee on liturgy, likened this to the oratorical style of the Yombe people, referencing a tendency in that culture to engage people by leaving them to complete a phrase someone else starts: “We say something, we don't finish the sentence. Those who listen complete it directly. It even entered the liturgy when we say ‘Boboto, Bondeko.’ When you say Boboto, it means peace, those who listen know that they must say Bondeko, fraternity, in response to complete the thought… It's a way of captivating the population, captivating the interlocutor.”15

Ancestors as Intermediaries

One significant change, sometimes controversial even in the DRC, is that the liturgy invokes the people’s African ancestors—including those who were not Christian—to be present at the Eucharistic celebration, on par with the prophets, patriarchs, and saints of the Church.  Doing so, it suggests, raises up the congregation.16 "According to the text of the Mass, the assembly recognizes itself as poor before God, and therefore calls on God’s intimate friends the saints and ancestors to intercede on its behalf.”17 The invocation of ancestors is not simply done in passing, but rather at the beginning, as a way to frame and enable the celebration. In a post-colonial Church, this is a powerful statement. It rejects, or perhaps reverses, a rift that the missionary Church had long placed between living African Christians and their “pagan” ancestors.  

Some interviewees reported that for many people they encountered, turning to “ancestors seems like idolatry. If not idolatry… superstition.” Proponents of the liturgy repeatedly point out that the invocation is meant to confirm the importance of “good-hearted” ancestors who “sought God.” As the late Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya has described it, “the term ‘ancestors’ does not refer generally to all deceased but only to those who have lived in an exemplary way, promoting unity and harmony of the group, inspiring respect for the elderly, loyalty to traditional customs. In short, those who have supported everything that refers to the promotion of the authentic life. For this reason, they are regarded as the true protectors and intermediaries between God and the living, between the earthly world and the hereafter. The ancestors therefore play a very important role in the life of the African family; the family has no meaning without the link with the ancestors that become models and cohesion instruments among community members.”18

Other changes are smaller but significant.  The liturgy adjusts to account for the fact that striking one’s breast, as the Roman rite prescribes during the penitential rite, is in the Congolese context a sign of defiance, not humility.19

Foreigners who might expect to hear primarily drums and singing would be surprised instead to hear a great deal of choral singing, often in local styles, but sometimes in Western styles as well, as the primary musical aspect of the liturgy. While much of the music is distinctively Congolese, the body of music that counts as Congolese is also, like music elsewhere, not simply fixed in tradition, but ever-evolving. Foreigners might also be surprised to see that, unlike most post-Vatican II liturgies, incense is used liberally in the Zairian rite.

In the rite, dance is recognized as a proper and significant expression of faith. It is used to express and reinforce a range of emotions, not just joy and praise. Some of the dance is by young girls in an area between the altar and the people, but dance by the priest and the ministers is also incorporated in processions, the offertory, and around the altar. The congregation “dances” while standing in place in the pews by swaying their bodies or using their arms and hands to participate.

The liturgy is normally celebrated in Lingala or other Congolese languages, including Kikongo (Kituba), Swahili, and Tshiluba.  

The Order of the Liturgy

Call to Order of the Assembly: The announcer, a lay man or woman, rings a handbell and calls out, with authority, “Boboto,” (“My brothers and sisters, Peace…”) “Bondeko,” (“Fraternity,”) the assembly responds. “Fraternity,” the announcer repeats. “Esengo,” (“Joy,”) they respond.  

Following the call, the procession, long and dignified, with the ministers of the altar carrying symbols of their ministry, dances down the aisle.

The veneration of the altar is particularly solemn and elaborate, with all of the ministers at the altar reverently joining in. The priest-celebrant venerates the altar from all four sides, raising his arms in a "V" form and touching each side of the altar with his forehead.  

“Invocation of the Saints and Ancestors of Upright Heart”: Asking that the assembly, “gathered at the mountain of God… before the sun that we cannot stare into,” put itself in the presence of God, the celebrant asks that the community unite itself with all the disciples of Christ now resting from their labor and “all those who, even if they did not know Christ during their lives, sought for God with a sincere heart. With his aid, they accomplished his will and are with him… may this Eucharistic sacrifice bring us all together into one family before God.”20 The antiphonal invocation that follows is addressed directly to the saints, the patriarchs, and prophets, and “our right-hearted ancestors,” “you who, helped by God, served with fidelity, Be with us. Come, Glorify the Lord together.” The invocation repeatedly asks the saints and then the ancestors not, as the Roman litany does, to “pray for us,” as if from a far-off place, but to actually “be with us.”21

The Gloria follows, using the same wording as in the Roman liturgy. Here it is sung, accompanied by a glorious rhythmic dance around the altar by the priest and the altar ministers.

The Liturgy of the Word begins with the lector(s) coming forth to seek a blessing from the presider, who says, “May the Lord come to your aid so that your eyes light up, so that the word proclaimed by your mouth consoles the hearts of the people.”22 The act parallels what a deacon would do in the Roman rite, but also recognizes, “in a typical African [traditional] set-up, no one in the village assembly would rise to speak without first seeking the authority of the chief to do so.”23 The announcer then calls the congregation to pay full attention—“Brothers and sisters, lend your ears”—after which the lector proclaims the passage.24 Though the people stand during many other parts of the liturgy, they sit for the scripture proclamation, including the Gospel, a nod to how important messages would be received in a traditional assembly. As one interviewee put it, “When someone in authority talks about serious things, people should sit down to listen properly.” The enthronement of the Gospel, using incense, is quite elaborate and reverent. The choice of readings, with a few exceptions for local feasts, is the same as in the Roman lectionary.  

Homily: The presider generally preaches at length, occasionally punctuated with a call-and-response style that keeps the congregation involved and engaged.  The assembly claps after the homily to affirm the message presented.

The Creed follows.

Readers familiar with the Roman rite may have noticed that the Penitential rite, located in the Roman rite after the greeting and before the Gloria and the Liturgy of the Word, is not included at that point in the Zairian rite. Instead, the Penitential Rite occurs after, as the priest puts it, “the word of God has illuminated our conscience.”25 The revised placement is to emphasize that it is by hearing the Word of God that people come to recognize their shortcomings. The rite is structured with the tradition of a palaver, a traditional form of communal reconciliation in many parts of Africa, in mind.26 The imagery of the prayer is drawn from nature and visceral: “Like a bloodsucker that sticks to our skin and sucks away the blood of man, evil has invaded us, our life is diminished. Who will save us if not you, Lord?” the priest asks as he introduces the Kyrie.27 The rite includes sprinkling of holy water on the whole assembly, after which the celebrant asks again God for mercy.  

The Sign of Peace directly follows the penitential rite so that after people reconcile with God, they reconcile with each other. Unlike the Roman rite, the assembly offers a sign of peace to each other before they come to the altar for the Eucharistic prayer. Until COVID-19, the kiss of peace involved shaking both hands of the people close by and bowing toward others who were at a greater distance. As of 2024, people still bow to each other reverently while wishing each other the peace of Christ.28

Prayers of the Faithful follow, with intentions expressed publicly.

Procession with the gifts: The acolytes return to the back of the church and slowly dance their way forward to accompany the gifts of bread and wine, followed in many cases by gifts of food for the parish, the clergy, and the most needy.29 The announcer also calls the assembly to pay attention to what is to come.  

The Eucharistic Prayer is a modest adaptation of Eucharistic Prayer II. Other than the fact that there is only one Eucharistic prayer, this is the least adapted part of the liturgy.30 For the doxology, “Through him, and with him, and in him…” the celebrant calls the elements and the people respond, “Amen.”

Following Communion, there is a brief concluding rite.

Experience of the Liturgy

Even as the liturgy unites people in prayer, as in other places, people aren’t lacking in opinions about how it ought to be done best.  

One lay man, typical of others, reported that he prefers the Zairian liturgy over the ordinary Roman one because “I feel at ease when the Mass is the Zairian rite. A mass with Lingala songs, our language, even dances. People are singing. People are dancing. The mass is eventful.” “Our Roman rites are mixed with songs and dances” too, he noted, but not to the same extent. 

An announcer at a liturgy reported that he thought that the liturgy had tremendous “dignity,” even as it was joyful and celebratory as a form of worship.

Another man who is highly invested in the Zairian liturgy still lamented, “it is difficult here to ask people to remain calm, silent. People are always used to singing, to talking. When you say, let's stay calm, silent, that's a problem… here they find that the Spirit must always speak. The Spirit must speak.” And so the Spirit does.

• 1In addition to the published sources cited here, these articles are based on interviews and research in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from March 24 to April 7, 2024 at eight parishes: la Cathedrale de Notre Dame du Congo, Reine des Apôtres, St. Alphonse, Ste. Anne, St. Joseph, St. Pierre, St. Raphaël, and Sacré Coeur. Thanks to all of the parishes who welcomed me to attend and to video, and to those who were willing to talk about their experience of prayer in the liturgy. Special thanks are due to Fr. Emmanuel Bueya, SJ, for help setting up the itinerary and for making many introductions and to Axel Kiangebeni for accompaniment, guidance and translation at many of these parishes. For the sake of avoiding confusion with the ordinary Roman rite, the Roman Missal for the Dioceses of Zaire is usually referred to in this article as the Zairian rite.
• 2Not only the West, at that.  One man from Kenya reported that, when they saw the Zairian rite, his friends at home had been taken aback to see dancing at the altar as in the Zairian rite.  “It would not be scandalous, but certainly anxiety-provoking.” They would be equally surprised, he said, that masses in the DRC could last so long.
• 3Though the name of the country is no longer Zaire, the formal name of the rite is unchanged.
• 4Conférence Episcopale du Congo, “Apostolat liturgique–Adaptation du culte” in Actes de la VIè assemblée plenière de lepiscopat de Congo (Leopoldville: Secrétariat Générale de l’Episcopat, 1961), 363, as quoted and translated by Chris Nwaka Egbulem, O.P., in “An African Interpretation of Liturgical Inculturation: The Rite Zairois” in A Promise of Presence, ed. Michael Downey and Richard Fragomeni (Washington, D.C.: The Pastoral Press), 192, 229.
• 5On the development process see Édouard Flory Kabongo, Le Rite Zaïrois: Son Impact sur l’Inculturation du Catholicisme en Afrique (Brussels: P.I.E-Peter Lang, 2008), 117-149.
• 6Nwaka Chris Egbulem, “The ‘Rite Zairois’ in the Context of Liturgical Inculturation in Middle-belt Africa Since the Second Vatican Council” (PhD diss. The Catholic University of America, 1989), 15.
• 7Mobutu and Malula’s ideas were both post-colonial, but differed significantly in their particulars. Mobutu used his understanding of authenticité at times as a weapon against the Church.
• 8For a brief theological account of some of the tensions and processes that led to the creation of the rite, see Nathan Peter Chase, “A History and Analysis of the Missel Romain pour les Dioceses du Zaire,” Obsculta 6, no. 1 (2013):  28-36.
• 9Egbulem enunciates a range of ways that the rite could have further integrated local African sensibilities, perspectives and symbols, but stopped far short of doing so. Egbulem, “The ‘Rite Zairois’,” 295-317.
• 10Egbulem, “The ‘Rite Zairois’,” 288-293.
• 11Nwaka Chris Egbulem, The Power of Afrocentric Celebrations: Inspirations from the Zairean Liturgy (New York: Crossroad, 1996), 38.
• 12Egbulem, “The ‘Rite Zairois’,” 32.  The published Roman rubrics make no mention of this, noting, “The clothing appropriate to a priest-celebrant(s) is the chasuble, according to the form received in Zaire…” “Presentation Generale de la Liturgie de la Messe pour les Dioceses du Zaire,” no. 37, in Missel Romain pour les Dioceses du Zaire (Conference Episcopale du Zaire, Kinshasa: Editions du Secrétariat Génerale, 1989), author translation.
• 13Kabongo, Le Rite Zaïrois, 162.
• 14G. Iwele, “Missal For The Dioceses Of Zaire,” Encyclopedia.com, accessed April 1, 2024.
• 15Abbé Kola Emmanuel Lubamba, personal interview, March 28, 2024.
• 16The Roman rite likewise appeals to pre-Christian prophets and patriarchs like Abraham and Melchizadech, unbaptized precursors of Jesus, though these are seldom held up as controversial.
• 17Egbulem, “The ‘Rite Zairois’,” 40, citing Notitiae 24 (1988): 459, which reads, “it is justified to invoke ancestors of sincere heart who are, in virtue of the merits of Christ, in communion with God, just as the Roman liturgy evokes from antiquity Abel the just, Abraham and Melchisedech.”
• 18Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya, “Liturgy Inculturated in the Congo,” in Proceedings of the Third African National Eucharistic Congress, (Washington, D.C.: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2016), 20.
• 19Egbulem, “The ‘Rite Zairois’,” 19, 53.
• 20“La Liturgie de la Messe,” 84-85.
• 21“La Liturgie de la Messe,” 85-86.
• 22“La Liturgie de la Messe,” 89.
• 23Egbulem, “The ‘Rite Zairois’,” 47.
• 24Egbulem, “The ‘Rite Zairois,’,” 90.
• 25Egbulem, “The ‘Rite Zairois,’,” 93.
• 26Monsengwo Pasinya, “Liturgy Inculturated in the Congo,” 20.
• 27Monsengwo Pasinya, “Liturgy Inculturated in the Congo,” 94-96.
• 28The ritual in some local contexts entails washing hands together in a bowl.
• 29Notably, in wealthier parishes in the ville, the gifts were limited to the bread and wine to be used at communion.
• 30Chase, “A History and Analysis of the Missel Romain pour les Dioceses du Zaire,” 35.