“African bishops, in their poverty, are today the heralds of divine truth in the face of the power and wealth of certain Western episcopates,” said Cardinal Robert Sarah during a speech to Cameroon’s bishops in April 2024. He criticized Western prelates as “paralyzed by the idea of opposing the world” and tempted by a “fluid and practical atheism.”

The emeritus prefect of the Vatican’s liturgy office had been no less direct a few months earlier at a conference of African liturgists in Senegal, where he sharply condemned liturgical celebrations he described as “too ordinary and too noisy, too African and not Christian enough.” His remarks stirred controversy across the continent.

Guinea’s first cardinal

This tension—praising Africa’s doctrinal clarity while denouncing its liturgical styles—reflects Sarah's complex relationship with his home continent.

Born in Ourous, a remote village in the predominantly Muslim and animist highlands of Guinea, Sarah was named archbishop of Conakry in 1979 at age 34, making him the youngest bishop in the world at the time. Pope John Paul II reportedly dubbed him the “boy bishop.” As archbishop, Sarah publicly denounced the abuses of Sékou Touré’s authoritarian regime.

He was called to Rome in 2001 to serve in the Vatican’s mission office, the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI named him president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, which coordinated the Catholic Church’s charitable activities worldwide. A month later, Benedict made him a cardinal—the first in Guinea’s history.

One of Francis’ fiercest critics

In 2014, a year after his election, Pope Francis appointed Sarah as prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Though seen as a promotion, the move was widely interpreted as an effort to sideline him.

Sarah soon emerged as one of Francis’ most severe critics, notably attacking the pope’s decision to allow blessings for couples in “irregular” situations, including same-sex unions. He called the declaration the work of the “Divider”—a clear reference to Satan.

He used the same term in reaction to Traditionis Custodes, the pope’s decree that restricted the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass. Since retiring in February 2021, Sarah has spent much of his time in France, where he remains a favorite among traditionalist Catholics and conservative media outlets.