In a poor neighbourhood of Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, the bell tower of a neat whitewashed church rises high above grey walls and tin roofs. Just after dawn on a Sunday morning, the sound of tom-tom drums, electric guitars and lively choral music draws in hundreds of people, who sing and dance through the mass.

This is the “Zairean rite”: Catholic liturgical services adapted to Congolese culture.

Emmanuel Lamamba, a priest at the church, argues that the unique combination brings the local faithful closer to God. It seems to be working.

Whereas Catholic pews across the faith’s European and American heartlands are often empty, in Congo and much of Africa they are heaving.

At the current pace, as many as half the world’s Catholics could be in Africa by 2066, a shift so seismic for the church that it has been compared to the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation

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