Rite
Zairean Use of the Roman Rite
Latin liturgical use
The inculturated Congolese use of the Roman Rite, approved in 1988 as the Roman Missal for the Dioceses of Zaire.
History
After the Second Vatican Council called for the liturgy to be adapted to the genius of peoples, the bishops of what was then Zaire worked for two decades on an African expression of the Roman Mass. The Roman Missal for the Dioceses of Zaire was approved by the Holy See in 1988 and remains the one inculturated use of the Roman Rite approved for a whole region since the Council. Pope Francis celebrated it in Saint Peter's Basilica in 2019 with the Congolese community of Rome, and again during his visit to Kinshasa in 2023.
Background
The use keeps the structure and the whole substance of the Roman Mass while giving it a Congolese voice: an announcer who guides the assembly, an invocation of the saints and of ancestors of upright heart, sung and danced processions, and the penitential rite placed after the homily and the creed, before the offertory, so that the assembly asks pardon in the light of the Word it has just heard.
Summary
The inculturated Congolese use of the Roman Rite, approved in 1988 as the Roman Missal for the Dioceses of Zaire.
Family
latin
Region
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Congolese communities abroad
Entry kind
latin_use
Content subtype
latin_use
Faithful estimate
Celebrated widely in a country with tens of millions of Catholics