Journal of Global Catholicism — Volume 7 | Issue 1

GLOBAL CATHOLICISM

THE JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM is an international, interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal. Its purpose is to foster the understanding of diverse forms of lived Catholicism with attention to their significance for theoretical approaches in anthropology, history, sociology, media studies, psychology, theology, and philosophy.

An open-access publication, the Journal of Global Catholicism is part of the Catholics & Cultures initiative (www.catholicsandcultures.org), administered by the Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J. Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. Read our Peer Review Statement of Principles and Commitments.

DIRECTOR & PUBLISHER

Thomas M. Landy, PhD, College of the Holy Cross

FOUNDER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Mathew N. Schmalz, PhD, College of the Holy Cross

MANAGING EDITOR

Marc Roscoe Loustau, ThD

PUBLICATIONS MANAGER

Danielle Lamoureux-Kane, College of the Holy Cross

EDITORIAL BOARD

Bernardo E. Brown, International Christian University, Tokyo

Michel Chambon, National University of Singapore

Teresia Hinga, Santa Clara University

Eunice Kamaara, Moi University, Kenya

Magdalena Lubanska, University of Warsaw

Kerry P. C. San Chirico, Villanova University Rev. Bernhard Udelhoven, Society of the Missionaries of Africa

Journal of GLOBAL CATHOLICISM

VOLUME 7 ISSUE 1

INTRODUCTION

• Marc Roscoe Loustau / Overview & Acknowledgments 4

ARTICLES

• Eszter Kovács / The Parish Choir Movement and Generational Festivals 8 in Romania’s Socialist Period: New Community Festivities in Transylvania’s Gheorgheni (Gyergyó) Region

• Geneviève Bagamboula Mayamona, Jean-Christophe Boungou Bazika, 32 and Quentin Wodon / Girls’ Education and Child Marriage in Central Africa: Insights from Qualitative Fieldwork Part I: The Democratic Republic of Congo

• Jean-Christophe Boungou Bazika, Wolf Ulrich Mféré Akiana, and Quentin Wodon / 60 Girls’ Education and Child Marriage in Central Africa: Insights from Qualitative Fieldwork Part II: The Republic of Congo

• Marc Roscoe Loustau / Airplane Hangars and Triple Hills: 90 Renovation, Demolition, and the Architectural Politics of Local Belonging at the Our Lady of Csíksomlyó Hungarian National Shrine

ON THE COVER

The iconic Triple Hill design of the altar at Our Lady of Csíksomlyó Hungarian National Shrine was obscured by roofing installed for the pope’s visit in 2019, raising the ire of hundreds of Hungarians who expressed their outrage on Facebook. See article inside.

Photo: Romkat.ro, Mária Csúcs, László Dezső.

MARC ROSCOE LOUSTAU

Overview & Acknowledgments

Marc Roscoe Loustau is Managing Editor of the Journal of Global Catholicism and a Catholics & Cultures contributor. An anthropologist and scholar of religion, he earned a masters of divinity and a doctoral degree in religious studies from Harvard Divinity School. He holds a bachelor of arts in social anthropology from Reed College. He is author of Hungarian Catholic Intellectuals in Romania: Reforming Apostles, Contemporary Anthropology of Religion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). He is editor, with Eric Hoenes del Pinal and Kristin Norget, of Mediating Catholicism: Religion and Media in Global Catholic Imaginaries (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022). He is the recipient of multiple awards and research grants, including a Dissertation Finishing Grant from the Panel on Theological Education, an East European Language Training Grant from the American Council of Learned Societies, a Frederick Knox Traveling Fellowship from Harvard University, and a John L. Loeb Fellowship from Harvard Divinity School. He has taught courses on Global Catholicism, Ethnographic Research Methods, and Charismatic and Pentecostal Christianities.

With this issue, the Journal of Global Catholicism now welcomes all submissions. To this point we have published Special Issues of articles that gathered around and reflected on a single theme, like our issue on “Mediating Catholicisms” (vol. 3, no. 2, 2019). Others were based on research in a particular region of the world, like “Brazilian Catholicism” (vol. 5, no. 2, 2021). We are happy to announce that going forward we will also publish issues of individual articles submitted to us via our online system at https://crossworks.holycross.edu/jgc.

This issue includes two articles describing a mixed-methods research project on girls’ education in sub-Saharan Africa, specifically in the Republic of Congo (RoC) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Both articles befit the JGC’s focus on lived Catholicism, which foregrounds the dynamic and conflictual nature of faith in a changing world. This dynamism and disagreement are most evident in the focus group conversations convened by Geneviève Bagamboula Mayamona, Jean-Christophe Boungou Bazika, and Quentin Wodon in the DRC and by Boungou Bazika, Wolf Ulrich Mféré Akiana, and Wodon in the RoC.

In the focus groups, the researchers described participants reflecting on trends toward marriage for “choice” and “love.” In some communities in the DRC, they write, parents influence marital decisions, while in others girls receive advice from multiple sources and the value of modern choice is growing. Anthropologists have noted similar diversity in views about marriage, even in neighboring villages, while doing research in sub-Saharan Africa, and growing recognition of urbanization and social change in this area has led to a conversation about “African marriages in transformation.”1

1 Julia Pauli, “African Marriages in Transformation: Anthropological Insights,” In Introduction to Gender Studies in Eastern and Southern Africa: A Reader, edited by James Etim (London: Sense Publishers, 2016), 95–113. See, for example, the Catholics & Cultures site on Nigeria: “Modernity and city life also seem to be transforming the family in modest ways,…” Thomas Landy, “Family Building in Nigeria Carries on Lineage, Spirit of Ancestors,” Catholics & Cultures, May 21, 2020, https://www.catholicsandcultures.org/family-building-nigeria-carries-lineage-spirit-ancestors

While the researchers are also advocates for girls’ education, which they believe is hindered by the practice of early marriage in these countries, they also note that family and friends accord great status value to marriage, lineage, clan, and family; even research that emerges from a normative perspective can recognize that lived Catholicism is Catholicism embedded in and activated by multiple overlapping and meaningful social communities.

Eszter Kovács, a historian and social scientific researcher at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, describes present-day recollections on “underground” and “informal” Catholic practices of gathering and celebration during Romania’s Communist period before 1989. Her research, drawn from a dissertation that will be published next year, focuses on Catholic parish choirs that, beginning in the late 1980s, gathered to perform for each other and improve the quality of their singing. One enlightening moment in her article notes the element of strategy and access to resources that led leaders of these parish choir festivals to organize informally. They might have sought help from the state to acquire buses for transportation and food for the post-festival party, but this would have required making certain concessions in the festivals’ timing and content. It’s not that faith was “illegal” or “forbidden” in this period. Rather, Kovács’s appropriation of the concept of informality captures the catch-as-catch-can sense of choice within limits that characterized collective practices of faith under Communism.

This issue also includes an article by myself about online controversies surrounding the arrival of Pope Francis to a Catholic shrine in Romania’s Transylvania region. The controversy did not take up liturgical issues over traditional versus new forms of worship, a question that has divided English-speaking Catholics in North America. Instead, I reflected on the historical background that explains how architecture became the privileged site for debating the national character of Catholicism in Hungarian-speaking parts of Eastern Europe, a reality reflected by the fact that online commentators were incensed by architectural changes Vatican officials requested prior to the pope’s arrival at Our Lady of Csíksomlyó.

My gratitude goes to Mathew Schmalz, the JGC’s Founding Editor, and Thomas Landy, Director of the Catholics & Cultures initiative at the College of the Holy Cross. Special thanks also go to Danielle Kane, Associate Director for Communications at the Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J. Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture, and Ruby Francis, Program Coordinator for the McFarland Center at Holy Cross.

WORKS CITED

Landy, Thomas. “Family Building in Nigeria Carries on Lineage, Spirit of Ancestors.” Catholics & Cultures. May 21, 2020. https://www.catholicsandcultures.org/family-building-nigeria-carries-lineage-spirit-ancestors

Pauli, Julia. “African Marriages in Transformation: Anthropological Insights.” In Introduction to Gender Studies in Eastern and Southern Africa: A Reader, edited by J. Etim, 95–113. London: Sense Publishers, 2016.

ESZTER KOVÁCS

The Parish Choir Movement and Generational Festivals in Romania’s Socialist Period: New Community Festivities

Transylvania’s Gheorgheni (Gyergyó) Region

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Eszter Kovács is an ethnographer and historian who studies Hungarian minorities in Romania during the period of state socialism before 1989. She recently completed her doctoral studies at Corvinus University of Budapest, and her PhD thesis is titled “Informality, Self-organization, Quasi-publicity: Culture, sport, everyday discourses, church holidays and entertainment in the Gheorgheni Basin in the 1970s and 1980s.” Since 2017, she has been teaching at Pázmány Péter Catholic University in the Institute of Media and Communication. Her book based on dissertation will be published in 2024.

Among the post-1945 East European socialist regimes, Romania and Poland were the only countries where the Catholic Church—despite government interventions, controls, and bans—managed to play a significant social and political role in community life. In spite of the persecution of churches beginning in the 1950s, the number of laypeople involved in Catholic Church activities continued to grow. Believers did not participate in the life of the Church to reject the Party state nor to engage in underground culture and read “samizdat” publications; but rather, I argue, because they required their preexisting frameworks for and habits of everyday thought and behavior. Parishes and religious communities remained independent from the lower- and higher-level Communist Party political leadership. The Church brought people together for regular events, and it provided opportunities for believers to build community and strengthen their awareness of their own distinctive cultural identity.

In Romania, the Party state and the Catholic Church never signed a formal agreement or legal accord. The regime tolerated the Catholic Church even though the Church was attached to an outside controlling power, the Vatican, in stark contrast with the Communist Party’s basic principles of operation.1 The socialist state did not recognize the official status of the Catholic Church, and priests were still regarded as a dangerous social group that posed a threat to the security of the state. Nevertheless, Catholic priests practiced their profession actively, and the majority of believers still participated in various aspects of parish life.2 This case study provides an ethnographic description of the parish choir movement and graduating class reunions, called “generational festivals” in Hungarian, in the Gheorgheni (Hu: Gyergyó) region in the 1970s and 1980s.3 During this period, these social and community gatherings became important public events even as

1 Miklós Tomka, “Egyház és “civil társadalom,” Vigilia 63 no. 5 (1998): 339–342; Miklós Tomka, “Vallásosság Kelet-Közép-Európában: Tények és értelmezések,” Szociológiai Szemle 3 (2009): 66–67.

2 József Marton, “A gyulafehérvári katolikus egyház a kommunizmus idején,” Studia Theologica Transsylvaniensia 2 (2012): 61–65, 75.

3 The organization of generation meetings became fashionable all around the Székely Land in the discussed era.

they incorporated elements of religious rituals.4 The gatherings will be analyzed in the context of everyday life, the socialist system’s distinctive shortage economy, and official limits on religious activity that characterized the era. I will first describe the world of parish choir festivals, including the outside (official government) pressures that shaped the festivals by forcing organizers to make accommodations. In my descriptions of the choir festivals, I highlight ways in which participants exploited opportunities to engage in Catholic rituals as “informal” practices despite the government’s official ban on public religious ceremonies. I will also reconstruct and describe the most important features of these socialist-era festivals.

METHODOLOGY AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

This case study is based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews.5 This interview method helps the researcher get closer to the interviewees’ life in the past, making it possible to describe and reconstruct life events as subjects’ experienced and interpreted them.6 However, it must also be taken into account that the researcher is not omniscient, nor does he or she possess every possible aspect for the reconstruction of the past, and he or she always interprets and evaluates the past from the perspective of the present.7 Therefore, this interview method does not reflect on the differences between the past experience and the events recalled in the present, nor on the changes in the thirty years that have passed since the 1970s and 1980s. This method does not make it possible to tell what actually happened, and thus this paper does not aim to explore the objective truth or objective history.8 The

4 Zoltán A. Biró, Stratégiák vagy kényszerpályák? Tanulmányok a romániai magyar társadalomról (Miercurea Ciuc, Romania: Pro Print, 1998), 19; Vilmos Keszeg, “Vasárnap: natúra vagy kultúra,” in A fiatalok vasárnapja Európában, eds. V. Keszeg, F. Pozsony, and T. Tőtszegi (Cluj-Napoca, Romania: Kriza, 2009), 23.

5 The case study is part of research which was implemented in the form of a doctoral dissertation (“Informalitás, önszerveződés, kvázi-nyilvánosság. Kultúra, sport, hétköznapi diskurzusok, egyházi ünnepek és szórakozás a Gyergyói-medencében az 1970-1980-as években.” “Informality, self-organisation and quasi-publicity. Culture, sports, everyday discourse, religious holidays and entertainment in the Gyergyó Basin in the 1970s and 1980s”), the main subject of which is the reconstruction of the experience of everyday life events in the Gheorgheni region in the 1970s and 1980s.

6 Kvale Steinar, Az interjú – Bevezetés a kvalitatív kutatás interjútechnikáiba (Budapest: Jószöveg Műhely, 2005), 20.

7 Gábor Gyáni, A történelem, mint emlék(mű) (Budapest: Kalligram, 2016), 55–56.

8 Éva Kovács, “Elbeszélt történelem,” Replika, 63 (2007): 42–43.

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purpose of the interviews was to invite subjects to recall the social context and their experience.

This case study is based on seven interviews conducted with eight persons, the material of 10 hours of conversations, which were recorded between January 2018 and July 2020. A database was created from the typed script of the interviews where the anonymized interviewees were assigned codes (e.g., R1, R2, etc.). The codes were grouped according to the following factors: gender, age, type of settlement, occupation, and type of interview.9 Only broad categories are given for their occupation. The respondents were associated with the two discussed topics in the given period, for example, they actively participated in the parish life and/or the organization of other community events.

A significant concept of the theoretical framework of the paper is informality, which in some contexts denotes the application of non-conventional activities, in contrast to formal regulations and official procedures: for example events occurring behind the official scene and forms of interaction when the partners can perform their expected roles relatively freely.10 Informality in a broader sense refers to open secrets, unwritten rules and hidden practices, 11 the ways people arrange things in various fields of life.12 To capture the sociopolitical and sociocultural factors of this phenomenon, Alena Ledeneva uses the example of the Russian term “blat.”

9 For the anonymization of the interviews, I followed Luis Corti, Annette Day and Gill Backhouse’s article on the anonymization of qualitative data. Luis Corti, “Progress and Problems of Preserving and Providing Access to Qualitative Data for Social Research: The International Picture of an Emerging Culture,” Qualitative Social Research 1, no. 3 (2000) https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-1.3.1019; Luis Corti, Anette Day, Gill Backhouse, “Confidentiality and Informed Consent: Issues for Consideration in the Preservation of and Provision of Access to Qualitative Data Archives,” Qualitative Social Research 1, no. 3 (2000). https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-1.3.1024

10 Barbara A. Misztal, Informality. Social Theory and Contemporary Practice (London: Routledge, 2000), https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203003626

11 The equivalent of the Soviet blat was the acronym PCR in colloquial Romanian language, which seemingly stood for the Romanian Communist Party (Partidul Comunist Român) and its help, but in everyday language it meant Pile – Cunostinţe – Relaţii (contacts, knowledge, relations), which were necessary for arranging things. Stoica Augustin, “Old Habits Die Hard? An Exploratory Analysis of Communist-Era Social Ties in Post-Communist Romania,” European Journal of Science and Theology 8 (2012): 172–175.

12 Alena Ledeneva, Global Encyclopaedia of Informality: Understanding Social and Culture Complexity, Volume I (London: UCL Press, 2018), 1, https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781911307907.

It denoted the informal contacts which developed as a result of the shortage economy in the Soviet Union. The term referred to the so-called arrangements, the way people handled their affairs through their personal connections in the system of mutual favors. Blat developed parallel with the regime, helping people to obtain basic necessities, work and housing. For example, people used blat to get family members who were class enemies, or kulaks, get out of prison. Party members used blat to arrange baptisms for their children despite bans on Party members’ participation in religious rituals.13 Ledeneva’s approach—stepping beyond research focusing on economic motivations—draws the attention to the unique social practices of informal self-organization, and also to the fact that informality relied on linguistic practices at regional, local or even personal idiosyncratic levels.

The other central concept is that of the quasi-public sphere, which was coined to describe everyday life under socialism.14 The quasi-public sphere selected values that had been preserved in the private sphere, which was isolated from public life. Actors then moved these values into the official sphere. This sphere was formal and official but also provided space for informal events, which were constructed from elements of both spheres in accordance with various possibilities and constraints. Due to the omnipotence of state power and discourse, the aim of everyday life was to lift up hidden values by inserting them into the realm of officiality and thus to conquer new areas for such expression.15

CHORAL FESTIVALS

Choral festivals became popular in the 1960s when local intellectuals exploited opportunities to reorganize amateur folk dance groups, drama clubs and other activities sponsored by houses of culture, government-run institutions that promoted

13 Alena Ledeneva, Russia’s Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking, and Informal Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 11–38.; Alena Ledeneva, “‘Blat’ and ‘Guanxi’: Informal Practices in Russia and China,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 50, no. 1 (2008): 119–127, DOI: 10.1017/S0010417508000078

14 The term was defined by Julianna Bodó in her research on the society of the Székely Land in the socialist era in the 1980s. In her work she discusses the mechanisms of the maneuvering room of the power and the individuals in various public scenes in society.

15 Julianna Bodó, A formális és informális szféra ünneplési gyakorlata az 1980-as években (Budapest: Scientia Humana, 2004), 56–63, 106–107.

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local history, traditions and folk culture. The research and practice of folklore played a crucial role in the organization and these activities, which often involved groups of students, as well. Most villages and towns already had choirs, which competed with singing groups in various regional festivals.16 This case study discusses choir festivals, but the focus is on the reconstruction of the world of parish choirs and parish choir festivals.

Every village in the Gheorgheni region had a church choir led by the local parish organist and cantor.17 The choirs had an important role mainly during holidays, since they often performed songs during Mass on these occasions. In addition to parish choirs, wind bands also played an important role at cultural events: processions on state holidays, funerals, and choir festivals. Many members of the wind bands sang in the local church choirs, too. The composition of the latter was diverse: men and women, workers and intellectuals participated together, and it was not unusual for choir members to be members of the parish church governing council. Before important holidays, they rehearsed once or twice a week to prepare for the Mass. In what follows, church choir festivals and the church choir movement beginning in the late 1980s will be reconstructed, based on the accounts of the participants.

The first church choir festival in the Gheorgheni region was held in Ditrău (Ditró) in 1987. As this festival was a spontaneous and unofficial event, the accounts do not record exactly which three villages organized the first meeting. The participants only remember that the cantors of the three villages—who had been classmates and good friends—regularly kept in touch with each other, and this is how the first, rudimentary gathering was organized.

16 These belonged to the scope of the national folk festival “Singing of Romania.” Csaba Zoltán Novák, “Az egyház, a hatalom és az ügynök Romániában. Esettanulmány a Pálfi Géza dossziéról,” in Az ügynök arcai. Mindennapi kollaboráció és az ügynökkérés, ed. S. Horváth (Budapest: Libri, 2014), 44–45.

17 Cantors in the Unitarian, Reformed and Roman Catholic Churches were employed officially for four, six or eight hours. They provided church music accompaniment to the Masses on Sundays and holidays, and the ceremonies related to the landmarks of human life. Noémi Kicsi, “A kántori szerepkör – a kántori státus interdiszciplináris megközelítése. Maros megyei református kántorok 1948 után,” in Mágia, ima, misztika. Tanulmányok a népi vallásosságról, eds. L. Peti and V. Tánczos (Cluj-Napoca: Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület, 2019), 305.

… these three had been classmates and then they decided that the three choirs should come together somewhere. They met in Ditró, and Zetelaka [Zetea] and joined too. But in the form as it is today, the first one was here in my village in 1988.18

Officially, it began in 1988, but there had been a few in Ditró before, but it was not official, Lövéte [Lueta], Ditró and Alfalu [Joseni], but many of us don’t regard it as the beginning. It was simply that the cantor colleagues came up with the idea of having a good sing, this is how it was arranged.19

In the following years the festivals were organized in the same way as today. After the news spread informally about the success of the meeting in Gheorgheni, another parish choir festival was organized the following year. The organizers regard the 1988 festival as the “official” beginning, because it was preceded by conscious organization work. The choirs of all parishes in the diocese were invited.20

Although the organizers called the festival in Lăzarea (Szárhegy) an “official” one, this word can only be used between quotation marks because they only referred to the conscious organization of the event. From the perspective of the authorities, it was illegal. The assembly was organized by the parishes in an informal way. The organizers did not apply for any permission or support because they were afraid that the performance of religious choral works in a church might not be permitted, or if they had applied for official permission, then they would have been required to include certain official messages and to integrate the event into a larger festival program also determined by ideological constraints. As the event took place inside a church, they hoped that this kind of ritual activity would be included in the “tolerated” category. Thus, the first choir festival was a spontaneously and informally organized one followed by a more institutionalized ecclesiastical cultural event.

18 R8

19 R38

20 These include Borsec (Borszék), Toplița (Maroshévíz), Remetea (Remete), Ditrău (Ditró), Lăzarea (Szárhegy), Joseni (Alfalu), Ciumani (Csomafalu), Valea Strâmbă (Tekerőpatak), Chileni (Kilyénfalu), Suseni (Újfalu), and Gheorgheni (Gyergyószentmiklós).

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They didn’t thwart us, it wasn’t reported anywhere officially, they didn’t intervene.21

They organized it, and it could be organized because it was quite limited and because it was in the church and not in the house of culture or a place like that.22

Then I didn’t go anywhere to get permission because if I had done so, then it was, you know, a church event. […] There was only one event like that, the “Singing of Romania,” and that was all. No other cultural events could be held.23

The first meeting had a schedule, which was followed in the subsequent years as well: the guests gathered in the church’s front yard or in the parsonage from where they proceeded into the church, each choir carrying its own flag and banner. The local priest blessed the participants at the Mass, and then they performed the choral works. After agreeing on the order, each choir sang two pieces before the altar. After the performance, they went back to the local parsonage or a place which was suitable for being together, getting to know each other and assessing the program at a reception or lunch. In 1988, although all parishes received “official” invitations, only the choirs of nearby villages participated. Organizers also invited experts on classical music. Between the festivals, choirs practiced regularly to learn the choral works to be performed at the next choral festival.

We begin the Mass at 10 a.m., then we sing our anthems,24 and then comes the procession and the more pleasant part. In the past regime it was easier to arrange it because everyone had a job and fixed working hours.25

The day began with a Mass on Saturday. And for that I tried to invite a priest to preach who had some knowledge of church music so that he could preach to

21 R51 22 R50 23 R8

24 Each choir already had its own anthem. 25 R51

the singers and give them, to use a modern phrase, some doping, because these people [sang] for free, or as they put it those days as patriotic work, so no one was paid anything for it, they got only oral recognition just like today.26

Invited experts provided an assessment of the performances. The reason for inviting critics was to improve the character of the amateurs’ singing and to develop the choirs’ overall quality. However, not everybody agreed with the presence of the critics and the assessment. Some said that it was not a competition but a festival where they wanted to be together, sing and listen to each other, and they did not want the possible criticisms to frighten away the choir members, most of whom did not have any musical training. As a result, at the choir festival held a year later, the invited critics shared their views concerning the performance of the choral works only with those parish organists and cantors who agreed to be given feedback.

It is a festival-type event, but behind the scenes we discuss which was the best, so there was such professional assessment, too. It was never like a competition, that was the point that everyone should sing from their souls. Of course, some colleagues paid more attention.27

The only professional feature was that the cantors were invited to the parsonage where we were told to be careful here because the soprano was too loud here, but all this in an encouragingly critical tone. It also matters what kind of choir you perform with, because not everyone can read music. But those had a much better attitude at the practice than those who could read music. There was a member who left the factory at 7 in the morning, but we had to be there at 9, and of course he was tired but he still came.28

And then there was a quick lunch for the cantors where I invited the music critics too and told them not to tell the choir if they had sung well or badly but tell us, and only those of us who want to hear the opinion of someone who is 26 R8

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an expert in this, because there were some who said they didn’t want to know and we accepted it.29

Although religious ceremonies held inside churches were treated as tolerated community events, control by the authorities was apparent. Party officials mainly focused on sermons. If the priest preached provocative ideas, he was punished.30 Although choir festivals received (or could receive) Party officials’ special attention, there were no reported cases of violations or punishment.

Interestingly, I wasn’t summoned. It’s true though that no such songs were sung.31

Thus, Party officials did not consider choral works to be provocative, and the participants were careful not to include so-called dangerous songs in the repertoire.

The two works could only be church songs. “All lands praise the Lord,” “Sweet Virgin Mary,” “O salutaris ostriae.” But, for example, “Our Lady, the hope of our country” or anthems could not be sung at all.32

The church songbook we had those days included some songs that were banned so we couldn’t sing them. It had the Hungarian Anthem and we have a lot of songs about the Virgin Mary which is about the country like “The Lady of the Hungarians.” A song which was simply about Jesus was not an irredentist song. Those which were about the homeland, well, those were: “Our Mother Virgin Mary, our patron in heaven,” and it has a chorus that says “Hungary, our dear homeland,” or the song “Our Lady, the hope of our homeland,” because if it’s about the homeland, then that’s the one that King Saint Stephen offered to the Virgin Mary, and that’s not Romania.”33 29 R8 30 These punishments occurred in an informal way at the Militia or the Securitate at Gyergyószentmiklós, usually in the form of physical punishment. References to and remarks of the Hungarian minority or the oppressive regime were regarded as provocative and nationalist utterances. 31 R8 32 R8 33 R8

The gatherings after the performances were events of special importance, the culminations of the festivals. These gatherings gave the cantors and singers the opportunity to have informal conversations. The atmosphere was pleasant, locals served food and drink to the guests. All of the accounts had positive memories about the atmosphere of the choir festivals, both the performances in the church and the gatherings afterwards. But when they explain what these festivals meant to them, they highlight the gatherings after the performances more emphatically. They looked forward to gathering after the concert, and to entertainment and good company. The gatherings lasted only a few hours, so they could not be regarded as parties, but they still gave a touch of party to the festivals.

The mood is unbelievable because every parish offered [food and drink] to the young ones; of course, it was easier in the villages […]. There weren’t so many bans that could’ve made it impossible to arrange and organize, but there were just enough to make the mood better. As for the sacral part, we performed in the church and it was like it was, but we did it, and then we went downstairs and just relaxed, a bottle of this and a bottle of that, we talked and sang or joked with each other. It made us so joyful that we began to look forward to the next year’s festival.34

The mood, especially at the first festivals, was very good, because we could appear in public, and it was good for us too because we could discuss the things with the colleagues.35

The festivals organized in 1988 and 1989 did not appear in the public place of the government houses of culture, which meant that catering was arranged in an informal way. The female choir members and the cook who served in the church parsonage provided everything necessary for catering. The churchyard, the classroom, and the parsonage provided space for the participants. The food and alcoholic drinks necessary for hospitality were obtained through networks of mutual assistance. 34 R50 35 R8

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It’s difficult for the host to cater for so many people in a way that everything goes well. As we were preparing, if you had half a kilogram of coffee, you took it to the butcher, and then you cut off half of a kilogram off the meat and gave it to the grocer, who gave you drink, and this is how you could get drink. […] This is how it went. We always did it privately, you couldn’t go to the house of culture those days. Dinner was in the yard; you asked women and they came, cooked, and served the meal.36

There was kalács [sweet bread] and pálinka, and the women brought cakes. It didn’t cost any money for the congregation. The women brought everything, they made the sandwiches and served them […].37

At the end of the gatherings, the choir leaders agreed where to hold the festival next year, which choral works would be performed, and other technical details. But the choirs and the members were not inactive until the following year. Rehearsals, held once or twice a week, helped preserve the choirs’ group dynamics. The rehearsals themselves as well as the time members spent together after practice brought the choir members together. They saw the choir as their own community where everyone was equal, and nobody had a larger role than the others; they operated on a basis of mutual acceptance and solidarity. On the other hand, the gatherings after the practices also gave opportunity to rewind on a weekday, the members, especially the men, had some beers together or celebrated name-days. The leaders of the choirs were the local cantors, professional leaders of the group. The choirs organized leisure activities and excursions, which gave them the illusion that they had control over spending their own free time. These activities further strengthened and maintained their identity as choir members.

They were harrowing in the backyard of one of the choir members, and then in another choir member’s backyard too, and his harrow broke, and then he saw the other one’s harrow hanging on the wall of the barn, and it broke too, and then this story spread in the whole choir, and they made a model harrow

and gave it to him as a present, and it looked like a real one. This is how they joked.38

After the choir practice, the men sometimes go out and have a beer. If someone has a name-day, he brings some pálinka and cakes and offers them to the others.39

I took my choir for an excursion, and those days there were no bus companies like today, and I could get a bus—because those days there were only those state ones—as the director of the house of culture always gave me a certificate that we were going to the “Singing of Romania” festival with the chorus. So, this is how we went on the excursion every year because these shortcuts were always there.40

The parish choir movement that began in the Gheorgheni region in the late 1980s can be regarded as a form of spontaneous and informal self-organization. The presence and active participation of the choirs indicate an understudied informal phenomenon, church-based cultural activities.41 As the Catholic Church operated as a tolerated institution in the late-socialist period, church choirs were also pushed into the background. Nevertheless, much like the dance house movement in Hungary, the church choir movement—which included these spontaneous choir festivals and offered opportunities for individuals to join voluntary associations according to their interests—developed into a self-organizing institution.42 Yet, in contrast with the definition of dance house movements, I do not regard church choirs and the choir movement to be resistance against official discourse and cultural ideology.43 Parish choirs had been an existing part of the institution of the Catholic Church.

38 R51 39 R51 40 R38

41 Dénes Kiss, “Románia a szakralizáció útján. Három romániai egyház profán társadalmi funkcióinak elemzése,” Erdélyi Társadalom 7, no. 1 (2009): 129.

42 László Kósa, Néphagyományok évszázadai (Budapest: Magvető, 1976), 94.

43 András Fejérdy, “Vallási ellenállás Magyarországon a kommunista rendszerrel szemben,” in Kulturális ellenállás a Kádár-korszakban, eds. P. Apor et al. (Budapest: MTA, 2018), 144; László Kósa, A magyar néprajz tudománytörténete (Budapest: Osiris, 2001), 210; James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 17–19.

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Likewise, the aims of the movement did not include resistance, only the provision of opportunities for spending free time and for relaxation in accordance with the participants’ interests.

The informality that permeates the choir movement is important for how it determined the way this institution existed, and also for the way it shaped parish choirs’ sense of identity. Corresponding with the characteristics of the “we” group, the choir members from each village belonged to the local choir and, in a wider sense, to the choir movement of the Gheorgheni region, the Catholic Church and the local community. This demonstrates their distancing from the “they” group in spite of the fact that many choir members were active in the local choir, too, with which they participated in the official state cultural competition called “Singing of Romania.” It means that they were members of both communities.

The same distinction is apparent when, disguised as traditional folk song choirs, they officially requested a bus to travel to the festival of the “they” group. But only until the moment when they could obtain support for spending their own free time. From the perspective of local Party officials, we can also see multiple identities at work. When they gave permission to parish choirs to rent a bus, they were members of both the official authority structure and also the local community, the Catholic Church. They supported the informal and illegal activity of the choir, thus expressing their solidarity with that movement.44

As a result, the choir enters the scene of quasi-publicity, and uses the representation of officiality for the creation of their own “our entertainment.” The choirs, together with the choir festivals, offered a strong bond to the members, a safe space where they could operate outside the restrictions of the state and without ideological influence, and, in addition, they nurtured strong professional and personal relationships, not only between the choir members but between the choirs. This strong bond—characterized by acceptance and mutual recognition and tolerance—helped

44 Ledeneva, “’Blat’ and ‘Guanxi’: Informal Practices in Russia and China,” 213–217; Eric Gordy, “Introduction: Group Identity and the Ambivalence of Norms,” in Global Encyclopaedia of Informality: Understanding Social and Cultural Complexity, ed. A. Ledeneva (London: UCL Press, 2018), 218–219.

the choirs, but also hindered their ability to engage in self-expression and to improve the quality of their singing. This problem could occur in the critical conversations after the performances. Some choir leaders and choirs had to accept that they were participants of an event and an institution providing opportunities for community building, not a competition.45

GENERATIONAL FESTIVALS

In the 1970s and 1980s, a novel form of activity became popular around Transylvania’s Szekler Region (Székelyföld): generational festivals, or class reunions held in local villages. These were a form of celebration of communal and public gatherings with a cultural message and using a special set of ceremonies. As they were new public communal activities, these festivities have no cultural-sociological or social ethnographical definitions determining which habitual activities belonged to these events meetings as festivities.46 Meetings were organized for generations of people in their forties, fifties, and sixties, the most popular of which were those for fortyand fifty-year-olds due to the larger number of participants in this age range. Some volunteers from the given age group who lived in a given village began to organize the meeting at the end of the previous year or at the beginning of the year of the event.47 In what follows, generational festivals of the villages in the Gheorgheni region will be reconstructed based on participants’ accounts.

An organizing committee was established; the main organizers, who carried out the tasks and the purchases were usually people who worked for a place where they could get things easily. Then there had to be someone who could organize it all. The generation festivals were in August, but they met as early as January and began to organize it.48

45 Ledeneva, “’Blat’ and ‘Guanxi’: Informal Practices in Russia and China,” 213–217.

46 Lajos Balázs, “’Ez nekünk jött úgy, hogy csináljuk...’ Kortárstalálkozók. Vizsgálódás egy újkeletű ünnep körül,” in Kriza János Néprajzi Társaság Évkönyve 1, ed. V. Keszeg (1992): 106–107, 132.

47 In the field research, there were no reports of forming organizing committees, like the institution in Csíkszentdomokos, among the organizers, who were called doyens or organizing councils. Balázs, “’Ez nekünk jött úgy, hogy csináljuk...’” Kortárstalálkozók. Vizsgálódás egy újkeletű ünnep körül,” 110.

48 R4

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There were generation festivals already in the ’70s. Those worked the same way, for example my father’s generation festivals, that they got things from here and there, and if someone had an older child, he or she had to help with serving or setting the table in the house of culture or the great hall.49

After the first meeting, the organizers met and discussed the tasks to be done every week if it was necessary. The tasks included setting the date, then inviting cultural groups or wind bands so that they would prepare with a program on the given day.50 Cultural programs at the meetings, however, were mentioned by the respondents only to a limited extent if at all.51 The only program they mention is the performance of wind bands52 and the religious songs sung in the church ceremony.

I remember from the first generational festival that they came and said that there would be a generational festival on Saturday, and they wanted someone who could sing nicely, and then there was someone who was working in the foundry, and they gave me this etching picture as a gift, that’s what I remember.

Maybe it was in 1970.53

It was followed by sending out the invitations. Those were invited who had been born in the given village but later moved away, and those as well who had been born elsewhere but were now living in the village. On the day of the festival, usually on a Sunday, those invited met at an agreed venue in early afternoon before the Mass.54 The meeting point could be the yard of the parsonage, but in Szárhegy they met outside the Lázár castle. After greeting each other, they went to the graveyard to remember the deceased members of their generation. It was followed

49 R5

50 Balázs, “‘Ez nekünk jött úgy, hogy csináljuk...’ Kortárstalálkozók. Vizsgálódás egy újkeletű ünnep körül,” 112.

51 Balázs writes that the organizers of the generation meeting in Csíkszentdomokos invited “agitation brigades,” drama groups and choirs to prepare for the event with a cultural program, and they posted advertisements in the county newspaper Hargita Népe and the national newspaper Előre with a list of the invited generation members. Balázs, “‘Ez nekünk jött úgy, hogy csináljuk...’ Kortárstalálkozók. Vizsgálódás egy újkeletű ünnep körül,” 112.

52 The bands greeted the participants of the generation meeting in Újfalu and Remete.

53 R8

54 Keszeg, “Vasárnap: natúra vagy kultúra,” 23.

by the solemn Mass. In the sermon the members of the generation were greeted and their merits discussed, and the local priest also blessed them. At the Mass, the participants could confess and take the holy communion. After the Mass they went to a designated place where the family members, friends and acquaintances could greet the participants. These greetings usually took place outside. In the era it was customary to give flowers, or the closer family members gave a basket with flowers and an embellished number of the year designating the age. After the greetings, a photo was taken of the group with the baskets, still outside. After the photo, the participants and their spouses usually celebrated the event with a common dinner with live music in the local restaurant or the house of culture, similarly to wedding receptions.

The primary aim of the generational festivals was the communal participation of a large number of people to celebrate their common year of birth. On the day of the generation festival, the ritual acts of the participants, who were paid a special attention, show their attachment to the village and, at the same time, their distance from it. One of the objectives of the meetings was to achieve the highest possible attendance by the members of the generation, and the passive participation of the given village was also a precondition of the festivity. The latter refers to the crowd of “spectators” who attended the processions of the meetings, those who gave flowers and baskets to the celebrated ones. There are differences in the customs and ceremonies of the generation festivals in the regions and even between festivals villages. There are, however, some special features which characterized all generation festivals (in the villages examined) and represented the festive spirit: the celebratory moments of taking photographs, the procession of the celebrated ones with the spectator villagers, the festive garment (folk costume was not in fashion in these years yet), the decoration of the entrance of the house of culture (or the other venue where the evening dinner and reception took place) with pine boughs, and the flowers and flower baskets given to the celebrated ones.55

[…] they sent congratulatory telegrams to the generation festivals, too. My

55 Balázs, “‘Ez nekünk jött úgy, hogy csináljuk...’ Kortárstalálkozók. Vizsgálódás egy újkeletű ünnep körül,” 120–132.

| The Parish Choir Movement and Generational Festivals in Romania’s Socialist Period: New Community Festivities in Transylvania’s Gheorgheni (Gyergyó) Region

father got 270. But the messages were not read aloud like at wedding receptions.56

The case study examines the obligatory elements and customs of the generation festivals, but it does not focus on the comparative analysis of the similarities and differences between the customs of the meetings in different villages. Instead, it highlights memories which are associated with the social and political context of the era. Such are the narratives referring to the economic crisis and the co-operational solutions of obtaining foodstuff. When describing the composition of the organizing committees, the accounts emphasized the importance of persons who could arrange things. For example, using their connections, they could give badges to the participants, or provide food for the festive dinner. In the villages in the Gyergyó region, the festive dinners were usually held in the local houses of culture—in Szárhegy, in the great hall of the castle—where the local women were asked to cook dinner, but the organizing committee had to provide the food and drink. They resorted to the informal practice of obtaining things through acquaintances, friends, or existing exchange relations.

We could get things even then; you had to be really helpless if you couldn’t get what you wanted. You needed to be in touch with people who worked for a proper place. I went to the distillery in Simon, and what was my luck? The manager of the distillery went to the same school as me, and we knew each other very well, so I went there and he says, if you bring me ten kilograms of meat, you can take as much alcohol as you want. So then I arranged the meat at home and then we brought the alcohol. I took him these ten kilos but then I never had any problems with getting alcohol.57

This example illustrates the instrumental58 feature of the relations with friends and 56 R5 57 R51

58 Ledeneva emphasizes the social nature and the social proximity of human relations and the instrumental feature of relations, or, in other words, the ambivalences in the interest-based use of relations. The substantive ambivalence means that whereas the participants notice the social aspect of the relations (friends, relatives), the outsiders and spectators can only see interest-based contacts. Ledeneva, Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, 9-13.

acquaintances, in which a long-term and mutual assistance is apparent. Although in the account the two parties mutually benefit from the exchange, the respondent emphasized the social basis of the relationship, the years they had spent at school together.

The other informal form of cooperation which was characteristic of the era was the connection of the generation festivals to church ceremonies because some of the participants had higher positions and were not allowed to attend Mass.

I organized the first meeting for the 40-year-olds in 1976. I went to S. B., and told him that I wanted to do the meeting, and he said, just do it. We did it and had a Mass in the monastery. S. comes to the Mass and tells me: I should confess and take the holy communion because here I can do it but at home I can’t. And before that we went to the monk’s room and told him that he needs to confess and take the communion. It was very important for him, and after this we always organized these meetings.59

This example shows the informal, co-operational and mutual assistance activities of people of the same generation as the organizer finds his former classmate, who has moved away from the village and has a high Party position in his new place of living, and asks him to help him with various issues. One of these is the organization of the generational festival, but the respondent mentions him on several occasions as a person who helps the organizers of the meeting to get jobs or other social advantages.

Whatever complaints you brought to him, he arranged it. Many people from Szárhegy went to him, and they all called him S. For example, I myself had something to arrange. I was learning to be a plumber in Szereda [Csíkszereda], and I wanted to come back to Gyergyó [to work], and there was Comrade Virág, he was the boss where we took the exams, and he didn’t want to sign my transfer60 and didn’t give me the certificate. A day later I saw S., and he asks what are you up to? And I tell him. […] We had a glass of first-class pálinka 59 R39 60 The work placement of the given person.

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and a coffee, and he sent me with a comrade to Comrade Virág, and we went to the party secretary in the construction office. Comrade Virág was called to the office and told to sign my certificate.61

Although this case was not connected to the generation festival, it still illustrates a long-term and mutual assistance system. The respondent and S. belonged to the same generation, there were classmates and lived in the same village until the age of adulthood moved them farther from each other both in space and society, but irrespective of this, they exploited the benefits and resources provided by their relationship for the fulfillment of their personal needs. S. helped the respondents find a job, and, in exchange, the organizer of the generation festival—thanks to his status as a member of the church council—established the secret and informal atmosphere for S. in which he could participate in the religious ceremonies even though he was prohibited to do so. In the example, the participants arranged things in the spirit of friendship and the cohesion of their local, ethnic, and religious communities. The instrumental nature of the relationship strengthens,62 but the respondent emphasizes a deeper, friendly relationship and not the fact that it was mutual assistance and a barter, but they helped each other on the ground of common identity and solidarity. In the example, the glass of pálinka and the coffee shows how matters were arranged and how an informal atmosphere and a more intimate relation was created, making it possible to settle the matter.

CONCLUSIONS

The case studies examine two community events which take place in the public sphere. The first one is an informal, self-organizing cultural activity which is linked to the Church and does not associate itself with the official cultural mass movements of the era, being an officially non-existent event. The church choir movement can be regarded as an institution, but the choirs of the parishes in the diocese are also parts of it as smaller institutions. Although the choirs operate in an informal way too, each choir has its own flag and anthem. Their arrival at the festival and the processions (from the parsonage to the church)—albeit a short distance—show the

61 R39

62 Ledeneva, Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, 9-13.

practice of self-representation of the choirs.

We even made a procession from some public place, sang songs about the Virgin Mary which are usually sung at indulgence festivals.63

We marched through the center of the village here to just like when we were the organizers.64

When the choir festival was in Alfalu [in 1989], the choir from Csomafalva came on horse-drawn wagons. Each choir and village had a leader who decided who marches at the front and who follows him, and this is how we marched and then took our places [in the church]. 65

For the participants the event gave an opportunity for entertainment and being together with the community, providing counterbalance to the dictatorship which controlled everyday needs and the use of time.66 The choir festivals, albeit for a short time, occupy the public space used by the participants, partly on their arrival and partly during the procession. The section of the street, the village center and the route leading to the church become the venues of the festival. Although subconsciously, the celebration had the mood of a festival, with which they tried to recreate a certain form of publicity.67 The same function is apparent in the analysis of the second case study with the difference that generation festivals were considered legitimate by the power. This festivity could be attended by crowds, and there were no rules for participation, it was possible to greet the generation members, meet others and talk to them. Whereas in the first case a small micro-community appeared in space and time, in the second case the local community participated in the celebration together, and the participants tried to include religious ritual elements and forbidden forms of action in the celebration. In both community events the values which people found important but were restricted to the private sphere

63 R51 64 R51

65 R50

66 Gail Kligman, “Népesedéspoltikai, abortusz és társadalmi ellenőrzés Ceauşescu Romániájában.” Demográfia 4, no. 1 (2000): 68.

67 Bodó, A formális és informális szféra ünneplési gyakorlata az 1980-as években, 70–72.

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were smuggled in the festive mood of the quasi-public sphere, and the organizers regard the use of informal bartering relations as a basic practice which was necessary for the creation of the festive mood (by obtaining everything necessary for the celebration).

APPENDIX

Code Type of interview Gender Village Occupation Year of birth

R4 personal male Gyergyószárhegy skilled worker 1965

R5 personal female Gyergyószárhegy skilled worker 1970

R8 personal male Gyergyószárhegy church 1957

R38 personal male Gyergyóalfalu church 1953

R39 personal male Gyergyószárhegy skilled worker, church 1936

R50 personal male Maroshévíz church 1954

R51 personal male Gyergyóújfalu church 1950

R55 personal female Gyergyószárhegy skilled worker 1943

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GENEVIÈVE BAGAMBOULA MAYAMONA, JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BOUNGOU BAZIKA, AND QUENTIN WODON 1

Girls’ Education and Child Marriage in Central Africa: Insights from Qualitative Fieldwork

PART I: THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Geneviève Bagamboula Mayamona has been a researcher at the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherche sur les Analyses et Politiques Economiques (CERAPE) since 2005. She holds a Master’s degree in management of small and medium-sized enterprises and strategic foresight from ESGAE and a Master’s degree in international economic relations from Marien Ngouabi University in Brazzaville.

Jean-Christophe Boungou Bazika holds a doctorate in economics obtained in 2001. He taught international economics for 25 years at Marien Ngouabi University in Brazzaville. He serves since 2003 as director of the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherche sur les Analyses et Politiques Economiques (CERAPE).

Quentin Wodon is director of UNESCO’s International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa, based in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.

INTRODUCTION

Child marriage is defined as a formal or informal union before the age of 18. As in much of sub-Saharan Africa,2 the prevalence of child marriage remains high in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in part because educational attainment for girls is too low. Based on qualitative fieldwork, this article looks at communities’ perceptions of child marriage and girls’ education and their suggestions for programs and policies that could improve outcomes for girls.

The article also discusses potential implications for Catholic and other faith-based schools, as well as faith leaders. The issues faced by adolescent girls discussed in this article are prevalent throughout sub-Saharan Africa. This is the region where enrollment in Catholic and other faith-based schools is largest and growing fastest.

In 2020, according to data from the Statistical Yearbook of the Church, 3 34.6 million children were enrolled in Catholic primary schools globally, with 19.3 million children enrolled in Catholic secondary schools and 7.5 million children enrolled at the preschool level. Africa accounted for 55% of all children enrolled in a Catholic primary school globally, and around 30% for children enrolled at the preschool and secondary levels. Under business-as-usual projections, the share of all children enrolled in Catholic schools who live in Africa is expected to continue to grow. Catholic schools and faith leaders simply must confront the issues of girls’ education, child marriage, and early childbearing and find ways to provide better

1 Jean-Christophe Boungou Bazika and Geneviève Bagamboula Mayamona are with CERAPE.

Quentin Wodon is with UNESCO’s International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa. The opinions and views expressed in this article are those of the authors only and need not represent the views of their employers. In particular, they need not represent the views of UNESCO. The data used for this paper were collected when the third author was at the World Bank.

2 Sub-Saharan Africa is now the region of the world with the highest prevalence of child marriage. See Alexis Le Nestour, Oliver Fiala, and Quentin Wodon, “Global and Regional Trends in Child Marriage: Estimates from 1990 to 2017,” Working paper (London: Save the Children UK, 2018).

3 Secretariat of State [of the Vatican], Annuarium statisticum Ecclesiae 2020 / Statistical Yearbook of the Church 2020 / Annuaire statistique de l’Eglise 2020 (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2022). For an analysis of trends in enrollment in Catholic schools globally, see Quentin Wodon, Global Catholic Education Report 2023: Transforming Education and Making Education Transformative (Washington, DC: Global Catholic Education, 2022).

Geneviève

opportunities for girls. A first step is to better understand the issues, and this is main the contribution of this paper for the DRC.4

At the time of writing, estimates from UNICEF suggest that 29% of girls marry as children in the DRC, with 8% marrying before the age of 15 (data from the 201718 Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey).5 Child marriage is a leading cause of early childbearing, defined as a mother having her first child before the age of 18. In the DRC, the share of women ages 18-22 who had a child before 18 is estimated at 25.6%.6 It has decreased only slightly over time. Child marriage also contributes to low educational attainment for girls. According to estimates from the UNESCO Institute of Statistics available in the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (WDI), only 70% of girls complete their primary education in the DRC.7 For lower secondary, the completion rate is even lower at 36%.8

Child marriage, early childbearing, and low educational attainment for girls lead to low levels of human capital. The World Bank’s Human Capital Index9 (HCI) measures the expected future productivity in adulthood of today’s children. It is based on five variables likely to affect future earnings: (1) the survival rate of children past age five; (2) the expected number of years of education completed by youth; (3) the quality of learning in school; (4) how long workers will remain in the workforce,

4 A companion piece is available for the Republic of Congo. The introductions and some of the conclusions in both articles are very similar, so that readers interested in only one of the two studies get the necessary background by reading that study only (i.e., they do not need to read both articles). But the data and analysis are specific to each country. One important conclusion is that many findings are similar in both countries, suggesting these findings may be robust. See Jean-Christophe Boungou Bazika, Wolf Ulrich Mféré Akiana, and Quentin Wodon, “Girls’ Education and Child Marriage in Central Africa: Part II, Republic of Congo,” Journal of Global Catholicism 7, no. 1 (2022): 60-89, https://crossworks.holycross.edu/jgc/vol7/iss1/4/.

5 UNICEF data are available at https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-protection/child-marriage/. For a profile of child marriage in the country based on a previous survey, see Chata Male and Quentin Wodon, “Basic Profile of Child Marriage in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” Health, Nutrition and Population Knowledge Brief (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2016).

6 Chata Male and Quentin Wodon, “Basic Profile of Early Childbirth in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” Health, Nutrition and Population Knowledge Brief (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2016).

7 Latest estimate for 2015. https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators

8 Latest estimate for 2014. https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators

9 World Bank, The Human Capital Index – 2020 Update: Human Capital in the Time of COVID-19 (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2021).

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as proxied by adult survival past 60; and finally (5) prevention of stunting in young children.10

The available indicators on the prevalence of child marriage, educational attainment and learning for girls in the DRC, as well as the data for the estimation of the HCI, all predate the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic is likely to have worsened these indicators substantially. This is in part because schools were closed for a substantial period of time, and most children did not have access to quality distance learning (the rate of household connectivity to the internet is very low).11

In addition, as is the case for the sub-Saharan Africa region as a whole, the country is affected by other overlapping crises, including rising food and fuel prices that are leading more households to fall into poverty,12 thereby limiting the ability of parents to send their children to school.

What could be done to end child marriage, educate girls, and more generally provide them with better opportunities? Research has shown that child marriage affects educational attainment as very few girls manage to remain in school once

10 The HCI takes a value between zero and one. It represents the ratio of the expected productivity of today’s children and youth in comparison to the productivity that they could achieve with full education and health. For girls in the DRC, the HCI took on a value of only 0.39. This suggests that in adulthood, today’s children will reach less than 40% of their productive potential. Low levels of educational attainment as well as lack of learning in school contribute to this outcome. While girls may expect to complete 8.8 years of schooling, this is valued at only 4.3 years when taking into account how much children actually learn in school. Child marriage also affects the HCI, as it contributes not only to lower educational attainment for girls, but also to higher risks of under-five mortality and under-five stunting for the children of girls marrying and having children early, as well as higher risks of maternal mortality. See Quentin Wodon et al., Educating Girls and Ending Child Marriage: A Priority for Africa (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2018). On the link between child marriage and early childbearing, see Quentin Wodon, Chata Male, and Adenike Onagoruwa, “A Simple Approach to Measuring the Share of Early Childbirths Likely Due to Child Marriage in Developing Countries,” Forum for Social Economics 49, no. 2 (2020): 166-79. https://doi.org/10.1 080/07360932.2017.1311799

11 On the impact of the pandemic on learning poverty, defined as the share of children not able to read and understand a simple text by age 10, see World Bank et al., The State of Global Learning Poverty: 2022 Update (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2022).

12 On the current food and fuel price crisis and its impact in sub-Saharan Africa, see Cesar Calderon et al., Food System Opportunities in a Turbulent Time, Africa’s Pulse 26 (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2022).

they marry. But vice versa, a higher level of educational attainment reduces the likelihood of child marriage.13

Indeed, in terms of specific policies, the literature suggests that economic incentives to keep girls in schools may work better than other policies for delaying marriage.14 Could this also be the case in the DRC? To provide a tentative answer to this question, we conducted qualitative fieldwork in one urban and two rural areas. The aim was to understand perceptions of child marriage and girls’ education in these communities, and listen to the communities’ suggestions for programs and policies that could improve outcomes for girls, thus contributing to their empowerment in adulthood.15

Specifically, we considered four questions: (1) How much support is there in communities for girls’ education and women’s work? (2) What are the factors leading girls to drop out of school?16 (3) What are communities’ perceptions related to child marriage? And, given the focus of this journal, (4) Is there a role for faith leaders and faith-based schools in helping to end child marriage and promote girls’ education?

13 See for example Erika Field and Attila Ambrus, “Early Marriage, Age of Menarche, and Female Schooling Attainment in Bangladesh”, Journal of Political Economy 116, no. 5 (2008): 881-930. https://doi.org/10.1086/593333. For Africa, see Minh Cong Nguyen and Quentin Wodon, Impact of Child Marriage on Literacy and Educational Attainment in Africa, Background Paper for Fixing the Broken Promise of Education for All (Paris and New York: UNESCO Institute of Statistics and UNICEF, 2014).

14 For reviews of the literature, see Iona Botea et al., Interventions Improving Sexual and Reproductive Health Outcomes and Delaying Child Marriage and Childbearing for Adolescent Girls (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2017). See also Amanda M. Kalamar, Susan Lee-Rife, and Michelle J. Hindin, “Interventions to Prevent Child Marriage among Young People in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review of the Published and Gray Literature,” Journal of Adolescent Health 59, no. 3 (2016): S16-S21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2016.06.015

15 On broader policies for women’s empowerment in the DRC, see World Bank, Women’s Economic Empowerment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Obstacles and Opportunities (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2021).

16 For a discussion of some of the constraints to girls’ education in the DRC, see Laura Bolton, Barriers to Education for Girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo, K4D Helpdesk Report 750 (Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, 2020). On some of the historical roots of low educational attainment for girls, see Marc Depaepe and Annette Lembagusala Kikumbi, “Educating Girls in Congo: An Unsolved Pedagogical Paradox since Colonial Times?” Policy Futures in Education 16, no. 8 (2018): 936–952. https://doi.org/10.1177/1478210318767450.

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This last question is important for the DRC. The Catholic Church and other denominations play an important role in the country, including in the provision of basic education. A majority of schools are faith-based, even if these schools are considered public schools (écoles conventionnées).17 In 2018, the latest year for which data are available in the World Bank’s WDI for the number of students in DRC’s primary schools, there were 16.8 million such students.18 That year, according to the Statistical Yearbook of the Church, 19 there were 4.3 million students enrolled in Catholic primary schools in the country. For the number of students in secondary schools, the latest year for which data are available in the WDI is 2015, with a total of 4.6 million students in the country. That year, there were 1.3 million students in Catholic secondary schools according to the Church. This suggests that Catholic schools account for about a fourth of all students in primary schools, and close to a third of all students at the secondary level. This provides an opportunity for Catholic schools to improve outcomes for adolescent girls, ensure that they remain in school at the secondary level, and avoid that they marry when they are not yet psychologically and physically ready. Furthermore, as Catholic and other faith leaders are often those who performs marriages, they also have an important role to play to end the practice of girls marrying before they reach the age of 18.

In what follows, after explaining data collection, the next four sections explore the four questions mentioned above (support for girls’ education and women’s work; factors leading girls to drop out of school; perceptions of child marriage; and role for faith leaders and faith-based schools). A conclusion follows.

17 On Catholic schools in the DRC, see Quentin Wodon, “Catholic Schools in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Trends, Achievements, and Challenges,” International Journal of Education Law and Policy 13 (2017): 55-66. On the relationships between faith-based schools and the state, see Annette Scheunpflug et al., “Relationships between Christian Schools and the State: A Comparative Analysis for Five Sub-Saharan African Countries,” International Studies in Catholic Education 13, no. 2 (2021): 163-174. https://doi.org/10.1080/19422539.2021.2010456

18 Latest estimate for 2018. https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators

19 Secretariat of State [of the Vatican], Annuarium statisticum Ecclesiae 2018 / Statistical Yearbook of the Church 2018 / Annuaire statistique de l’Eglise 2018 (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2020).

DATA COLLECTION

The analysis is based on data collected in the DRC in 2017 by the Centre for Studies and Research on Economic Analysis and Policies (CERAPE) based in Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo. The methodology for data collection followed similar work previously conducted by one of the authors in Ghana and Burkina Faso. The objective of the data collection and analysis was to explore some of the factors leading girls to drop out of school prematurely and marry early.

Three sources of data are used: (1) a small-scale survey; (2) interviews of key informants; and (3) focus groups. A particular emphasis was placed on the role played by religious and customary leaders in communities, and the perceptions of schools, including religious schools, given the importance of keeping girls in schools to prevent child marriage and early childbearing.

The survey was administered to 150 respondents, i.e., 50 respondents per locality, one urban and two rural, as outlined in Table 1. The aim of selecting three localities was to explore differences in outcomes and perceptions across areas that have different levels of economic development, as well as different level of access to services. The interviews with key informants include interviews with healthcare personnel, teachers, school principals, and other individuals with knowledge of conditions affecting development outcomes for girls. Focus groups were carried out to explore the motivations and testimonies of parents and young people.

TABLE 1: AREAS FOR DATA COLLECTION, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Source: Authors.

Education and Child Marriage in Central Africa: Democratic Republic of Congo

The first locality for data collection was the capital city of Kinshasa, a large metropolitan area with an estimated population of 17 million in 2021. Kinshasa has the administrative status of a city but is also one of the 26 provinces of the country. The economic, political and cultural heart of the country, Kinshasa is a city of contrasts, with some posh residential and commercial areas, but also shanty towns where poverty reigns. The city is subdivided into four districts: Mount Amba with six municipalities, Lukunga with six municipalities, Tshangu with five municipalities, and Funa with seven municipalities. The city of Kinshasa is multi-ethnic. Data collection took place in the districts of Mount Amba and Tshangu.

The second location was Muala-Kinsende, also known as Marchal. This is a village located in the province of Central Kongo, about 11 km from the city of Mbanza Ngungu, which itself is located about 150 km from Kinshasa. Its main ethnic group is Kongo, and the population lives mainly from agriculture. Access is difficult, as roads are almost impassable. The village has several schools, including Catholic, Salvationist, Kimbanguiste, and secular schools. Access to electricity and drinking water is limited, but development has been taking place. The village is located at the crossroads of two railways: the Matadi-Kinshasa railway and the railway leading to the town of Mbanza Ngungu, home to the Société Commerciale des Ports et de Transport. As a result, Muala-Kinsende is progressively becoming more urban.

The third location for data collection is a set of three villages—Kwenge, Ibongo, and Kakoyi, located at about 15 km, 5 km and 7 km respectively from Kikwit in the province of Bandundu. The agricultural feeder roads leading to the villages are in a state of disrepair, which makes access to the villages difficult. The main ethnic groups include the Bambala, the Pende, the Yanzi, the Basongo, and the Babunda. Much of the economic activity and trade is controlled by immigrants (Chinese, Lebanese, and others). Besides small-scale farming, there is an active private sector, including in telecommunications. Thanks to the Kwilu River, artisanal fishing is also an income-generating activity, as is public administration. The town of Kikwit has two school subdivisions that supervise preschools, primary, technical and secondary schools. Apart from public, private, and various religious schools

(Catholic, Protestant, Kimbanguist, and Muslim), there are also institutions of higher learning, including the University of Kikwit.

As expected, there are important differences in the characteristics of survey respondents in the three localities. Close to nine in ten respondents belong to households with a male head in Mbanza Ngungu and Kikwit, while in Kinshasa, a larger share of respondents (one in three) lives in female-headed households, in part because of a larger proportions of household heads who are widowed, divorced, or separated. Household heads in Mbanza Ngungu and Kikwit tend to be employees or self-employed farmers, while in Kinshasa, the proportion of the self-employed in the nonfarm sector is higher. In terms of educational attainment, almost two thirds of respondents in Kinshasa are from households where the head has at least some form of post-secondary education, while that proportion is below one fourth in Mbanza Ngungu and Kikwit, with a higher proportion of heads with secondary education in Kikwit than in Mbanza Ngungu. As for ethnic groups, many are represented in all three locations (the country has more than 400 ethnic different ethnic groups, but as mentioned earlier, there are differences between localities).

SUPPORT FOR GIRLS’ EDUCATION AND WOMEN’S WORK

There is substantial support for girls’ education in all three localities, with respectively 80%, 72%, and 88% of respondents considering girls’ education as critical in Kinshasa, Mbanza Ngungu, and Kikwit (see Table 2). Traditionally, it used to be that in many parts of the country, marriage was what mattered for girls, but this has changed, with many households encouraging girls to pursue their education as is the case for boys. The presence of women in positions of responsibility as civil servants, ministers, and members of parliament and the fact that well-educated women earn a decent income and have a much higher standard of living than women farmers has helped raise expectations for the education of girls. Most young girls want to be like these modern, scientifically literate, well-dressed, self-confident women. When asked whether the benefits of schooling were similar for boys and girls, close to nine in ten respondents in all three locations responded in the affirmative, with perhaps surprisingly the lowest share observed in Kinshasa

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at 82%, versus 90% in Mbanza Ngungu and 86% in Kikwit. Although differences in many estimates are not statistically significant given small sample sizes, the slightly smaller share in Kinshasa could be related to the fact that many women must engage in petty trading to make a livelihood, and the benefits from higher levels of educational attainment for these types of occupations may not be as large as for other occupations.

TABLE 2: IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION FOR GIRLS (%)

Kinshasa Mbanza Ngungu Kikwit

Very important 80 72 88 Important 14 4 6 Somewhat important 2 8 4 Not that important 0 4 0 Not important at all 0 2 0

Source: Authors’ estimation from small-scale survey in the three localities. Note: Some categories may not add to 100% due to rounding or non-responses.

Asked about the benefits of educating girls, respondents emphasized the opportunity for girls to have scientific knowledge and access to a rewarding job that contributes to providing her with a stable and decent income as well as autonomy within the household. Some respondents also mentioned that education could allow girls to access positions of responsibility at the political and social level, such as those of minister or deputy, and to provide them with the respect that the community has for educated women. Respondents mentioned that academic success for girls brings joy and honor to their parents and siblings, in part because the ability that this may provide for girls to help them materially and morally, through the example that successful girls set for other members of the family. A good education also provides respect from the future husband, the possibility of contributing to household needs and future children’s schooling and health.

Essentially, parents try to ensure that their children complete their schooling, which will make it easier for them to find decent jobs. In return, they expect the children to be able to support their parents when they are old and unable to work,

given the lack of other social protection mechanisms. As a focus group participant explained it:

In my family there were 10 children, six girls and four boys. My father was a cook in a big hotel and earned a small salary. He did not have the resources to support the schooling of all the children. Since I was doing well in school, he decided that I should be the only one attending school. He kept encouraging me to do well in school. I finished my secondary education and was able to get a scholarship from the Belgian government which helped me to get my master’s degree. This allowed me to be recruited as an administrative manager.

I took some of my brothers’ and sisters’ children, those who had intellectual potential, and I educated and supervised them. Today, some of them have succeeded in school and are working in the public and private sectors and, thanks to their income, are helping their parents who have grown old.

As schooling becomes more common for both girls and boys, parents have high expectations. In Kinshasa, the share of parents hoping that their daughter(s) will go to the university is almost as high as for their son(s) (80% for daughters and 88% for sons). In Mbanza Ngungu and Kikwit, expectations are lower, with half of parents hoping that their children will go to university, but again very similar for boys and girls alike.

The emphasis placed by parents on providing a good education to their children including up to the university level has been a hallmark of the country for some time. In Mbanza Ngungu, after the country’s independence in 1960, many families encouraged their children to pursue their higher education and attend the university in Kinshasa. However, places at the state university were limited. Under the Mobutu regime, quotas were established for each province with the aim of giving children from all provinces equal opportunities to access higher education. Faced with this limitation, the Kongo community, the largest community in the province of Bas Congo where Mbanza Ngungu is located, took the initiative to create its own university in the 1980s. Today Kongo University includes faculties of medicine, agronomy, and polytechnics located in the town of Kinsantu and faculties of

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economics, management, and law located in the town of Mbanza Ngungu. Kongo University is the first private (non-state) university in the country and has thousands of students. This helps explain why so many families in this rural area want their daughters to access higher education. In rural areas of Kikwit, the situation is a bit different as opportunities for higher education are more recent, but there is a strong desire for girls to complete secondary education.

Related to the strong support for girls’ education, there is also widespread support among respondents for women’s work, including work outside of the home, albeit with some differences depending on the locality. As shown in Table 3, support for women’s work is strong in all three localities, but especially so in Kikwit. This also emerges from another question in the survey where respondents were asked whether women should work outside of home for cash income, versus at home for domestic work, or both. In most cases, women were expected to do both—work for cash income and also manage the household, but in Kikwit support for work outside of the home for cash income was the strongest.

TABLE 3: ACCEPTANCE OF WOMEN WORKING OUTSIDE OF THE HOME (%)

Kinshasa Mbanza Ngungu Kikwit

Yes 80 86 96 No 6 2 4

Don’t know 12 8 0

Source: Authors’ estimation from small-scale survey in the three localities. Note: Some categories may not add to 100% due to rounding or non-responses.

FACTORS LEADING GIRLS TO DROP OUT OF SCHOOL

While there is strong support for girls’ education, many girls drop out before completing their secondary education. Multiple factors lead girls to drop out prematurely, but poverty, early pregnancies, poor grades, and a lack of motivation or interest were some of the most commonly mentioned factors. Survey respondents mentioned a wide range of factors leading girls to drop out, including poverty, the cost of schooling, and the lack of food, a lack of parental support or the death of a

parent, the distance to school, the poor quality of the education received, too many punishments at school, a poor functioning of the school including the risk of sexual harassment by teachers, pregnancies, marriages, the risk of risk of premarital sex, a lack of interest or motivation to go to school, the need to work at home, etc.

Table 4 provides a synthesis of the three main factors leading to dropouts by locality. In Kinshasa and Kikwit, poverty and the perceived high cost of schooling are mentioned the most, while in Mbanza Ngungu, the issue of unwanted or early pregnancies came out first. That issue is also mentioned in Kinshasa. Lack of motivation and interest matter as well in two of the three localities, while marriages and lack of support are each mentioned in one of the three localities as leading factors contributing to girls dropping out of school.

TABLE 4: MAIN FACTORS LEADING GIRLS TO DROP OUT OF SCHOOL BY LOCALITY (%)

Factors Kinshasa Mbanza Ngungu Kikwit

1st reason Poverty or high cost of schooling Unwanted or early pregnancy Poverty or high cost of schooling

2nd reason Unwanted or early pregnancy Poverty or high cost of schooling Lack of parental support or death

3rd reason Reasons related to marriages Lack of motivation or interest Lack of motivation or interest

Source: Authors’ estimation from small-scale survey in the three localities.

Qualitative data from interviews and focus groups suggest that especially in poor and large families, heads of households may have to make gender-based choices as to which children can go to school, or may not be able to send any of their children especially to secondary school. As a resident from Kinshasa explained it:

Going to school is a right. [But] many girls and boys drop out of secondary school because, at the primary level, the costs are generally within the reach of the parents. In secondary school, on the other hand, school fees are very expensive and are, most often, beyond the reach of parents. We must reduce secondary school fees to encourage parents to send girls to school.

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In some cases, going to school may be more difficult for girls. In such cases, even if there is support for girls’ education, some may not remain in school, as illustrated by this quote from a focus group:

There is a difference in schooling between girls and boys.… When the family is unable to meet the needs of girls, there is a risk of dropping out of school. For example, a boy can walk [to school if] there is no transport that day but for a girl it is very difficult. Especially when she studies in the afternoon, with the insecurity in Kinshasa, the lack of transport can make it impossible for the girl to attend school. If this continues, there is a risk that the girl will drop out. Thus, girls’ studies require more than boys’. The poor state of the roads and the scarcity of means of transport add to the difficulties of accessing school. The girl can wait a long time for transport because of traffic jams. The boy will walk. At the stops, there are more girls waiting for transport than boys.

The issue of early pregnancies comes out strongly in the survey in rural areas, as well as in the focus groups and interviews with key informants. Some parents manage to support their daughter through her pregnancy and keep her in school, or enable her to return to school after a pregnancy. A parent in Mbanza Ngungu explained that:

Usually, the pregnancies that we have recorded lately in our village are pregnancies in cohabitation. There are times that marriage will not happen. Me, for example, I have a daughter who got pregnant in the sixth year of humanities (Terminale). I couldn’t continue to leave her with the boy. She was picked up from home after giving birth to continue her studies. Today, she has just finished her studies in nursing sciences at Kisantu’s Higher Institute of Medical Techniques. As she has become an adult, she can now commit to marriage.

But not all parents support their daughters when they become pregnant out of wedlock. As a teacher in Kinshasa explained it: Early pregnancy contributes to school dropout. It is not in our culture to teach the girl contraceptive methods, which leads to early pregnancies and her

studies are jeopardized. Most girls who become pregnant are abandoned by their parents, sometimes also abandoned by their partners, which increases the girls’ suffering and can lead them to drop out of school. There are also teachers who impregnate young girls. I know a girl who was impregnated by her teacher. In some schools, there is a lack of communication between parents and the school. There are serious schools that require parents to justify their daughter’s absence from school in the event of an absence.

A lack of motivation or interest in remaining in school is also mentioned especially in Kikwit and Mbanza Ngungu. This lack of motivation could be explained by the low of quality of the education received in many schools, the need to travel long distances to go to school, or a lack of employment prospects for girls in areas with a high rate of unemployment among graduates. But there is also a perception, warranted or not, that girls tend to be less interested in pursuing their education than boys. Girls are also at high risk of unwanted pregnancies. A school director in Kinshasa explained that:

Girls enter adolescence before boys. If the girl is not well supervised, she may drop out of school. Parents may have the means, but the girl’s desire will ensure that she has a boyfriend. If she is really in love, there is a risk that she will use even the money her parents give her to finance her boyfriend’s activities and run away from school. Socio-cultural factors coincide with physiological factors. With the advent of satellite channels, a girl can stay in front of the TV for a long time and go to school very late. Early pregnancy also contributes to school drop-out. It is not part of our culture to teach girls about contraceptive methods; once pregnant, their studies are compromised.

Respondents in the survey could make suggestions on how to encourage girls’ education and reduce dropouts. As for the perceived factors leading to girls dropping out, respondents could make several suggestions. Table 5 provides a synthesis of these suggestions. In all three localities, the dominant suggestion was to sensitize the population to the benefits of educating girls. Other suggestions included

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providing financial assistance to help poor families pay school fees, and providing more opportunities for vocational training and skills training.20

TABLE 5: SUGGESTIONS TO REDUCE DROP-OUT RATES FOR GIRLS BY LOCALITY (%)

Classification Kinshasa Mbanza Ngungu Kikwit

1st suggestion Raising community awareness on girls’ education Raise community awareness on girls’ education Raise community awareness on girls’ education

2nd suggestion Financial assistance for fees Skills training and tutoring Financial assistance for fees

3rd suggestion Vocational training courses Financial assistance for fees Vocational training courses

Source: Authors’ estimation from small-scale survey in the three localities.

PERCEPTIONS OF CHILD MARRIAGE

When girls drop out of school, the risk that they get married as children (i.e., before the age of 18) increases. As mentioned in the introduction, child marriage remains prevalent in the DRC, including in urban areas. As shown in Table 6, most respondents are aware that some girls marry as children in their community, and many believe that the prevalence of the practice is increasing, especially in Kinshasa and Mbanza Ngungu. In rural areas (the villages near Mbanza Ngungu and Kikwit), even if the girl’s consent to a marriage is sought, the decision for a girl to marry early is typically made by the father. These are areas where the patriarchal family still dominates. In Kinshasa, the daughter typically decides, according to respondents. Overall, marriages may not be “forced” to the extent that the girl’s approval is sought, but in rural areas especially, parents have a lot of influence in the matter.

20 For a discussion of potential interventions for girls’ education in the DRC, see Jennifer Randall and Alejandra Garcia, “Let’s Go Girls!: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Tutoring and Scholarships on Primary School Girls’ Attendance and Academic Performance in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC),” FIRE: Forum for International Research in Education 6, no. 3 (October 2020): 19–35, https://doi.org/10.32865/fire202063222.

Communities seem to be aware that early marriages may have harmful consequences for couples and the reproductive health of young girls, although this is not the case for all respondents. Some of the risks associated with child marriages include marital conflict as well as intimate partner violence. Poverty and difficulties raising a family at a young age are factors leading to breakups, as a mother in Kinshasa explains:

Some families are poor, extremely poor. The girls in these families tend to marry before the legal age while still underage. They will have children and after a few years, faced with all kinds of difficulties, they return to the home of the original family with all the children, and this impoverishes the parents even more, and life becomes more difficult than before.

A school principal in Mbanza Ngungu has similar views:

I am against early marriage, because the spouses are unprepared and the consequences are ultimately borne by the girl’s parents. If the girl is married early, at any time and at the slightest problem, she goes to the parents to stock up on food, clothes and other goods. When the grandson is ill, the parents of the girl still have to vouch as if it were their own child.

TABLE 6: PERCEPTIONS OF CHILD MARRIAGE

BY LOCALITY (%)

Classification Kinshasa Mbanza Ngungu Kikwit

Are there child/early marriages in the community?

Yes 96 78 90 No 2 20 4 Don’t know 0 2 2 How is the prevalence of child marriage evolving?

Growing 80 72 42

Decreasing 10 14 30 No Change 2 4 16

Don’t know 6 10 8

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Classification Kinshasa Mbanza Ngungu Kikwit

Does child marriage affect the life of the couple?

Yes 48 72 54 No 28 22 20

Don’t know 18 4 24

Do social actors talk about child marriage?

Yes 66 84 6 No 18 6 44 Don’t know 12 10 50

Does child marriage affect girls’ reproductive health?

Yes 72 84 78 No 14 6 10 Don’t know 8 6 6

Who decides about the marriage? (Main responses)

Father 22 72 58

Mother 10 18 50

Household head 0 16 2 Girl 86 34 90

How important is the girl’s consent?

Very important 86 84 88 Somewhat important 6 4 10 Moderately important 6 2 4 Not very important 0 2 0 Not at all important 0 0 0

Do you know about the law regarding child marriage?

Yes 56 36 28 No 42 38 36 Don’t know 2 6 26

Source: Authors’ estimation from small-scale survey in the three localities. Note: Some categories may not add to 100% due to rounding or non-responses.

There seems to be a difference in perceptions related to child marriage between Kikwit and the other two localities. In Kikwit, a smaller share of respondents believe that child marriage is increasing. In addition, a smaller share recognizes some of the potential negative effects of the practice. Furthermore, when asked whether social actors such as the government, civil society organizations, religious leaders,

or the media talk about early marriage and its potential negative effects, the share of respondents stating that this is the case is smaller in Kikwit. This suggests that while awareness-raising campaigns may be needed everywhere, they are likely to be even more important in some areas than in others. In interviews and when implementing the survey, only sporadic references to actions against early marriages by the Ministry for the Advancement of Women, United Nations agencies, television programs, or other organizations were mentioned.

Professionals however are well aware of the risks of child marriage, including in Kikwit. A doctor at in Kikwit hospital explained these risks in stark terms as follows:

The pregnancies of underage girls are similar to rape since the girl does not consent. Following the families’ expectations, these marriages are effective and favored by the parents who accept that the girl lives with the boy, often because she is already pregnant. Consequently, it is the pregnancy that leads to these early marriages. For doctors, the cases of underage girls in a state of pregnancy are followed with great attention, given that these are high-risk pregnancies. Often arrangements for surgery (cesarean) are made to avoid any risk. The hospital also sensitizes underage girls who have already become pregnant to the use of family planning methods in order to help them advance in their studies, but they often neglect these methods and become pregnant again. Thus, in general, girls who are 16-18 years old already have 2, 3, 4 children.

Similarly, a nurse in Mbanza Ngungu states that “during childbirth, the reproductive health of the girl is usually affected. We often encounter cases of cesarean because the genital organ of the minor girl is not very well developed. There is also the frequent mortality either of the girl, or of the child, or of two.”

Marriage before the age of 18 is in principle not allowed under the law, but relatively few respondents are aware of the law, especially again in Kikwit. The same trend to the Family Code more generally, a legal instrument that governs relations within the family, including marriage procedures. When asked about specific provisions of the Family Code related to the legal age of marriage, the prohibition of

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Congo

levirate (a widow becomes the wife of a deceased husband’s brother), the right of widows to have a share in the inheritance, and the equal rights of the man and the woman over children, most respondents tend to be in favor of these provisions. Nevertheless, a substantial minority is opposed to the legal age of 18 for girls and the prohibition of levirate marriage. In Kinshasa, for example, 22% and 28% of respondents respectively do not approve of these provisions of the Family Code. Some participants in focus groups explained that they were not opposed to early marriage and even thought it could have advantages, especially if the husband had sufficient resources to support his underage wife, which means one less burden for the parents. They argued that women in the past were married at an early age and that this did not pose a problem in the community.

Clearly, ancient traditions about marriage still influence behaviors today. In the past, it was acceptable for a girl to get married at 12-14 years of age. Her parents would prepare her for marriage and make alliances with her future husband’s host family. In the villages, mothers would educate their daughters to learn all sorts of household skills and practices. There were also birth attendants who assisted the girl during pregnancy and childbirth. When conflicts arose within the household, they could sometimes be resolved through community mechanisms. But this was often within patriarchal structures in which women were at a disadvantage. The application of laws against child marriage comes up against the weight of traditions and the persistence of mentalities inherited from these ancestral traditions.

For laws to be more impactful, the issue of child marriage needs to be brought to the center of public debate and policies. As for approaches to reduce the risk of girls dropping out of school, in terms of opportunities to end child marriage, respondents made a number of suggestions in the survey that are summarized in Table 7. Suggestions vary between localities. In Kinshasa, the main suggestion was that the community be sensitized to girls’ rights and the Family Code, while in Mbanza Ngungu, it was recommended that young girls be helped to take charge of their lives and in Kikwit, that jobs be created to reduce poverty and vulnerability.

TABLE 7: SUGGESTIONS TO REDUCE CHILD MARRIAGE BY LOCALITY (%)

Classification Kinshasa Mbanza Ngungu Kikwit 1st suggestion Community awareness on girls’ rights/Family Code

2nd suggestion Implement the Family Code and strengthen its provisions

Encourage self-care for girls Create jobs to reduce poverty and child marriage

Raise awareness among young girls Community awareness on girls’ rights/Family Code

3rd suggestion Preach chastity Reintegrate outof-school girls into schools

Provide sex education for girls

Source: Authors’ estimation from small-scale survey in the three localities. Note: Several reasons could be mentioned by respondents, hence percentages sum to more than one.

POTENTIAL ROLE FOR FAITH LEADERS AND FAITH-BASED SCHOOLS

Traditional and religious leaders can play an important role in raising community awareness about the negative effects of child marriage and the benefits of girls’ education. They have a great deal of influence on the population, and they have an attentive audience during Masses, prayer ceremonies, or traditional festivals, as well as during court cases in which disputes are settled in the villages. Faith leaders are also those who perform most marriages, and they can advise against a marriage when girls are not psychologically or physically ready to marry.

Do faith leaders actually play this role? The data in the survey are limited to assess the extent to which faith leaders help in preventing child marriage, but responses to a question about whether faith leaders at least talk about the issue suggests that this is the case in the two rural areas, but less so in Kinshasa (Table 8). In Mbanza Ngungu and Kikwit, more than two thirds of faith leaders talk about the issue of child marriage, while in the capital city this is the case only for one third of faith

leaders. It could be that these differences come in part from the fact that the likelihood of child marriage is lower in Kinshasa than in rural areas. Still, there is room for improvement, certainly in Kinshasa, but also in rural areas.21

TABLE 8: ROLE OF FAITH LEADERS IN ENDING CHILD MARRIAGE, SHARES (%)

Kinshasa Mbanza Ngungu Kikwit

Faith leaders talk about the issue of child marriage

Yes 34 72 68 No 64 20 32

Don’t know 2 8 0

Source: Authors’ estimation from small-scale survey in the three localities. Note: Some categories may not add to 100% due to rounding or non-responses.

Beyond faith leaders, schools also play an important role in ensuring that girls can go to school, which is as mentioned earlier one of the best ways to avoid child marriage. Since a majority of schools are faith-based, faith-based schools have an important role to play. Part of that role consists in providing an education of good quality, so that it is both feasible (by passing the required examinations) and worth it for girls to remain in school (and for their parents to bear the financial cost that this implies), including at the secondary level. Unfortunately, the quality of the education provided in the DRC is low, including in many faith-based (and Catholic) schools. Lack of quality is indeed one of the reasons why girls drop out of school.

The education system as a whole has major shortcomings, including a lack of qualifications and mastery of the material to be taught for many teachers and low teacher salaries which may affect motivation. As a parent told other focus group members: 21 It is not clear if the performance of students in faith-based schools is statistically better than that of students in public schools. See Prospère Backiny-Yetna and Quentin Wodon, “Comparing the Performance of Faith-Based and Government Schools in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” in Emerging Evidence on Vouchers and Faith-Based Providers in Education: Case Studies from Africa, Latin America, and Asia, eds. Felipe Barrera-Osorio, Harry A. Patinos, and Quentin Wodon (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2009).

The social life of teachers is not good. This means that if the teacher is hungry, under these conditions, he or she will not have the courage to prepare the material to be taught and will not be concerned about the children’s understanding of the course, especially if the students are troublemakers. Therefore, children should make personal efforts to understand the lessons, otherwise the failure rate will be very high, which will lead to disgust for school.

Other issues include overcrowding, unhealthy premises, and lack of teaching aids, especially in rural areas. Nevertheless, probably because of low expectations, about two thirds of respondents stated that public secular schools in Kinshasa and Mbanza Ngungu were meeting the needs of the community (see Table 9). By contrast, in Kikwit, the proportion was at less than a third. There are however differences in perceptions of quality between secular and religious schools. Religious schools tend on average to be considered as better schools, especially in Kikwit. This is also the case in Mbanza Ngungu, and to a smaller extent in Kinshasa. That is, a much larger share of respondents considers religious schools to be better, in comparison of the share of respondents who consider secular schools to be better.

Also of interest is the fact that while parents probably focus on the quality of teaching and less on faith or morals when selecting a school, they do favor religious instruction in schools. Indeed, when asked whether religious education should be provided in schools, most parents respond in the affirmative (90% in Kikwit, followed by 84% in Mbanza Ngungu and 78% in Kinshasa).

The statistics provided in Table 9 suggest that comparatively, faith-based schools may perform relatively well. This does not mean that they perform well in absolute terms, given low levels of learning in school in the country as a whole.

TABLE 9: PERCEPTIONS OF PUBLIC AND RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS, SHARES

(%)

Kinshasa Mbanza Ngungu Kikwit

Do public secular schools meet community needs?

Yes 66 60 28 No 30 32 66 Don’t know 4 8 6

Which types of schools are better?

Religious schools 46 58 86 Secular schools 4 12 0 No difference 40 22 6 Don’t know 6 8 2 Should schools provide religious instruction?

Yes 78 84 90 No 4 8 2 Don’t know 12 6 8

Source: Authors’ estimation from small-scale survey in the three localities. Note: Some categories may not add to 100% due to non-responses.

CONCLUSION

The objective of this article was to explore the issues of girls’ education and child marriage in the DRC based on qualitative fieldwork from the capital city of Kinshasa and two rural areas. Four main questions were explored: (1) How much support is there in communities for girls’ education and women’s work? (2) What are the factors leading girls to drop out of school? (3) What are communities’ perceptions related to child marriage? and (4) Is there a role for faith leaders and faith-based schools in helping to end child marriage and promote girls’ education?

There is substantial support for girls’ education and women’s work in the communities where the qualitative fieldwork was conducted. In many cases, parents are opposed to their daughters marrying early. But a range of factors including the out-of-pocket costs of schooling for parents, the poor quality of the education being provided, and the risk of becoming pregnant leads some girls to drop out

of school prematurely. In those cases, child marriage is more likely, even if in all three communities, there is somewhat broad agreement about the negative effects of early marriages. Faith leaders have an important role to play in preventing child marriages, and in two of the three communities, they talk about the issue publicly.

It was mentioned several times that faith leaders and faith-based schools have an important role to play to improve opportunities for girls. This may lead to difficult questions. For example, following good practical advice from the international community, should Catholic schools provide comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education to girls (and boys) while they are in school, and if so, what does “comprehensive” mean? This type of question has not been explored in this article, but it needs to be, if only to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

In many ways, the findings provided by the qualitative fieldwork are not surprising although the fact that there is some heterogeneity between communities is very important to adapt program and policies to local contexts. Overall, the findings are encouraging, given fairly broad support in all three communities to end child marriage, support girls’ education, and promote women’s work. Similar support is found in the companion paper for the Republic of Congo, although in that country, there were sharp differences between the capital city of Brazzaville and one of the rural areas in comparison to another mostly indigenous rural area where support to end child marriage and educate girls was weaker. The challenge for public policy, as well as for faith leaders and faith-based and other schools, is to build on the support to provide better opportunities for girls, taking into account differences in context and attitudes between communities.

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and Child Marriage in Central Africa: Democratic Republic of Congo

REFERENCES

Backiny-Yetna, Prospère and Quentin Wodon. “Comparing the Performance of Faith-Based and Government Schools in the Democratic Republic of Congo.” In Emerging Evidence on Vouchers and Faith-Based Providers in Education: Case Studies from Africa, Latin America, and Asia, edited by Felipe Barrera-Osorio, Harry A. Patinos, and Quentin Wodon. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2009.

Bolton, Laura. Barriers to Education for Girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo K4D Helpdesk Report 750. Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, 2020.

Boungou Bazika, Jean-Christophe, Wolf Ulrich Mféré Akiana, and Quentin Wodon. “Girls’ Education and Child Marriage in Central Africa: Part II, Republic of Congo.” Journal of Global Catholicism 7, no. 1 (2022): 60-89. https://crossworks.holycross.edu/jgc/vol7/iss1/4/.

Botea, Iona, Shubba Chakravarty, Sarah Haddock, and Quentin Wodon. Interventions Improving Sexual and Reproductive Health Outcomes and Delaying Child Marriage and Childbearing for Adolescent Girls. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2017.

Calderon, Cesar, Alain Kabundi, Megumi Kubota, Vijdan Korman, Aparajita Goyal, Paavo Eliste, and Vanina Daphne Forget. Food System Opportunities in a Turbulent Time. Africa’s Pulse 26. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2022.

Depaepe, Marc and Annette Lembagusala Kikumbi. “Educating Girls in Congo: An Unsolved Pedagogical Paradox Since Colonial Times?” Policy Futures in Education 16, no. 8 (2018): 936–952. https://doi. org/10.1177/1478210318767450.

Field, Erika, and Attila Ambrus. “Early Marriage, Age of Menarche, and Female Schooling Attainment in Bangladesh.” Journal of Political Economy 116, no. 5 (2008): 881-930. https://doi.org/10.1086/593333.

Kalamar, Amanda M., Susan Lee-Rife, and Michelle J. Hindin. “Interventions to Prevent Child Marriage among Young People in Low- and Middle-Income

Countries: A Systematic Review of the Published and Gray Literature.” Journal of Adolescent Health 59, no. 3 (2016): S16-S21. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2016.06.015.

Le Nestour, Alexis, Oliver Fiala, and Quentin Wodon. “Global and Regional Trends in Child Marriage: Estimates from 1990 to 2017.” Working paper. London: Save the Children UK, 2018.

Male, Chata and Quentin Wodon. “Basic Profile of Child Marriage in the Democratic Republic of Congo.” Health, Nutrition and Population Knowledge Brief. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2016.

_____. “Basic Profile of Early Childbirth in the Democratic Republic of Congo.” Health, Nutrition and Population Knowledge Brief. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2016.

Nguyen, Minh Cong and Quentin Wodon. “Impact of Child Marriage on Literacy and Educational Attainment in Africa.” Background Paper for Fixing the Broken Promise of Education for All. Paris and New York: UNESCO Institute of Statistics and UNICEF, 2014.

Randall, Jennifer and Alejandra Garcia, “Let’s Go Girls!: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Tutoring and Scholarships on Primary School Girls’ Attendance and Academic Performance in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).” FIRE: Forum for International Research in Education 6, no. 3 (October 2020): 19-35, https://doi.org/10.32865/fire202063222.

Scheunpflug, Annette, Mark Wenz, Mimii Brown Rubindamayugi, Jean Kasereka Lutswamba, Frederick Njobati, Christine Nyiramana, Samuel Mutabazi, Claude Ernest Njoya, Onja Raharijaona, and Quentin Wodon. “Relationships between Christian Schools and the State: A Comparative Analysis for Five Sub-Saharan African Countries.” International Studies in Catholic Education 13, no. 2 (2021): 163-174. https://doi.org/10.1080/19422539.2021.2010456.

Secretariat of State [of the Vatican]. Annuarium statisticum Ecclesiae 2020 / Statistical Yearbook of the Church 2020 / Annuaire statistique de l’Eglise 2020 Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2022.

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Girls’ Education and Child Marriage in Central Africa: Democratic Republic of Congo

Wodon, Quentin. Education in sub-Saharan Africa: Comparing Faith-inspired, Private Secular, and Public Schools. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2014.

_____. “Catholic Schools in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Trends, Achievements, and Challenges.” International Journal of Education Law and Policy 13 (2017): 55-66.

_____. “Implications of Demographic, Religious, and Enrollment Trends for the Footprint of Faith-Based Schools Globally.” Review of Faith & International Affairs 17, no. 4 (2019): 52-62.

_____.

Global Catholic Education Report 2023: Transforming Education and Making Education Transformative. Washington, DC: Global Catholic Education, 2022.

Wodon, Quentin, Chata Male, Claudio Montenegro, Hoa Nguyen, and Adenike Onagoruwa. Educating Girls and Ending Child Marriage: A Priority for Africa. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2018.

Wodon, Quentin, Chata Male, and Adenike Onagoruwa. “A Simple Approach to Measuring the Share of Early Childbirths Likely Due to Child Marriage in Developing Countries.” Forum for Social Economics 49, no. 2 (2020): 166-79. https://doi.org/10.1080/07360932.2017.1311799

World Bank. The Human Capital Index – 2020 Update: Human Capital in the Time of COVID-19. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2021.

World Bank. Women’s Economic Empowerment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Obstacles and Opportunities. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2021.

World Bank. Western and Central Africa Education Strategy from School to Jobs: A Journey for the Young People of Western and Central Africa. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2022.

World Bank, UNICEF, FCDO, USAID, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and UNESCO. The State of Global Learning Poverty: 2022 Update. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2022.

Geneviève Bagamboula Mayamona, Jean-Christophe Boungou Bazika, and Quentin Wodon

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BOUNGOU BAZIKA, WOLF ULRICH MFÉRÉ AKIANA, AND QUENTIN WODON 1

Girls’ Education and Child Marriage in Central Africa: Insights from Qualitative Fieldwork

PART II: THE REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Jean-Christophe Boungou Bazika holds a doctorate in economics obtained in 2001. He taught international economics for 25 years at Marien Ngouabi University in Brazzaville. He serves since 2003 as director of the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherche sur les Analyses et Politiques Economiques (CERAPE).

Wolf Ulrich Mféré Akiana is a PhD student at the Faculty of Economics of Marien Ngouabi University. He holds Master’s degrees in community economics and international economic relations. Since 2005, he has been a researcher at the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherche sur les Analyses et Politiques Economiques (CERAPE).

Quentin Wodon is director of UNESCO’s International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa, based in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.

INTRODUCTION

Child marriage is defined as a formal or informal union before the age of 18. As in much of sub-Saharan Africa,2 the prevalence of child marriage remains high in the Republic of Congo (RoC), in part because educational attainment for girls is low. Based on qualitative fieldwork, this article looks at communities’ perceptions of child marriage and girls’ education and their suggestions for programs and policies that could improve outcomes for girls.

The article also discusses potential implications for Catholic and other faith-based schools, as well as faith leaders. The issues faced by adolescent girls discussed in this article are prevalent throughout sub-Saharan Africa. This is the region where enrollment in Catholic and other faith-based schools is largest and growing fastest. In 2020, according to data from the Statistical Yearbook of the Church, 3 34.6 million children were enrolled in Catholic primary schools globally, with 19.3 million children enrolled in Catholic secondary schools and 7.5 million children enrolled at the preschool level. Africa accounted for 55% of all children enrolled in a Catholic primary school globally, and around 30% for children enrolled at the preschool and secondary levels. Under business-as-usual projections, the share of all children enrolled in Catholic schools who live in Africa is expected to continue to grow. Catholic schools and faith leaders simply must confront the issues of girls’ education, child marriage, and early childbearing and find ways to provide better opportunities for girls. A first step is to better understand the issues, and this is main the contribution of this paper for the RoC.

1 Jean-Christophe Boungou Bazika and Wolf Ulrich Mféré Akiana are with CERAPE. Quentin Wodon is with UNESCO’s International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa. The opinions and views expressed in this article are those of the authors only and need not represent the views of their employers. In particular, they need not represent the views of UNESCO. The data used for this paper were collected when the third author was at the World Bank.

2 Sub-Saharan Africa is now the region of the world with the highest prevalence of child marriage. See Alexis Le Nestour, Oliver Fiala, and Quentin Wodon, “Global and Regional Trends in Child Marriage: Estimates from 1990 to 2017,” Working paper (London: Save the Children UK, 2018).

3 Secretariat of State [of the Vatican], Annuarium statisticum Ecclesiae 2020 / Statistical Yearbook of the Church 2020 / Annuaire statistique de l’Eglise 2020 (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2022). For an analysis of trends in enrollment in Catholic schools globally, see Quentin Wodon, Global Catholic Education Report 2023: Transforming Education and Making Education Transformative (Washington, DC: Global Catholic Education, 2022).

Jean-Christophe Boungou Bazika, Wolf Ulrich Mféré Akiana, and Quentin Wodon

Education and Child Marriage in Central Africa: Republic of Congo

A companion piece is available for the Democratic Republic of Congo.4 The introductions and some of the conclusions in both articles are very similar, so that readers interested in only one of the two studies get the necessary background by reading that study only (i.e., they do not need to read both articles). But the data and analysis are specific to each country. One important conclusion is that many findings are similar in both countries, suggesting these findings may be robust.

At the time of writing, estimates from UNICEF suggest that 27% of girls marry as children in the RoC, with 7% marrying before the age of 15 (data from the 201415 Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey).5 Child marriage is a leading cause of early childbearing, defined as a mother having her first child before the age of 18. The share of women ages 18-22 who had a child before 18 is estimated at 31.8% in the RoC.6 It has decreased only slightly over time. Child marriage also contributes to low educational attainment for girls. According to estimates from the UNESCO Institute of Statistics available in the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (WDI), only 72% of girls complete their primary education in the RoC.7 For lower secondary, the completion rate is even lower at 49%.8

Child marriage, early childbearing, and low educational attainment for girls lead to low levels of human capital. The World Bank’s Human Capital Index9 (HCI) measures the expected future productivity in adulthood of today’s children. It is based on five variables likely to affect future earnings: (1) the survival rate of children past age 5; (2) the expected number of years of education completed by youth; (3) the quality of learning in school; (4) how long workers will remain in the workforce,

4 See Jean-Christophe Boungou Bazika, Geneviève Bagamboula Mayamona, and Quentin Wodon, “Girls’ Education and Child Marriage in Central Africa: Insights from Qualitative Fieldwork Part I: The Democratic Republic of Congo,” Journal of Global Catholicism 7, no. 1 (2022): 32-59.

5 UNICEF data are available at https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-protection/child-marriage/. For a profile of child marriage in the RoC, see also Chata Male and Quentin Wodon, “Basic Profile of Child Marriage in the Republic of Congo,” Health, Nutrition and Population Knowledge Brief (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2016).

6 Male and Wodon, “Basic Profile of Early Childbirth in the Republic of Congo,” Health, Nutrition and Population Knowledge Brief (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2016).

7 Latest estimate for 2012. https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators

8 Latest estimate for 2012. https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators

9 World Bank, The Human Capital Index – 2020 Update: Human Capital in the Time of COVID-19 (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2021).

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as proxied by adult survival past 60; and finally (5) prevention of stunting in young children.

The HCI takes a value between zero and one. It represents the ratio of the expected productivity of today’s children and youth in comparison to the productivity that they could achieve with full education and health.10 For girls in the RoC, the HCI took on a value of only 0.45.11 This suggests that in adulthood, today’s children will reach only 45% of their productive potential. Low levels of educational attainment as well as lack of learning in school contribute to this outcome. While girls may expect to complete 9.1 years of schooling, this is valued at only 5.4 years when taking into account how much children actually learn in school.12 Child marriage also affects the HCI, as it contributes not only to lower educational attainment for girls, but also to higher risks of under-five mortality and under-five stunting for the children of girls marrying and having children early, as well as higher risks of maternal mortality.13

10 The HCI is constructed by multiplying the contributions of survival, school, and health to expected relative productivity: HCI = Survival × School × Health. Survival = 1 minus the under-five mortality rate. School = the expected number of school years youth will complete adjusted by student performance on international assessments as follows: exp Φ(Years of schooling) ×(Harmonized test score/625)-14) . Health = expected adult survival and the likelihood of avoiding stunting as follows: exp (γASR (Adult survival rate-1) ×γNSR (Not stunted rate-1). The components of the index are meant to capture contributions in childhood to adult productivity relative to complete high-quality education and full health. The parameter Φ = 0.08 measures the expected labor market returns to an additional year of schooling: γASR = 0.65 and γNSR = 0.35 measure the improvements in productivity associated with an improvement in health, using adult survival and stunting as proxies for health. Complete high-quality education is 14 years of schooling and a harmonized test score of 625. Full health is 100% survival into adulthood and a stunting rate of zero percent. See World Bank (2018) for details.

11 This estimate is for 2020, but some components of the HCI are based on data for prior years.

12 On the learning crisis in West and Central Africa and approaches to end it, see World Bank, Western and Central Africa Education Strategy from School to Jobs: A Journey for the Young People of Western and Central Africa (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2022). On the role of faith-based education in the region, see Quentin Wodon, Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Comparing Faith-Inspired, Private Secular, and Public Schools (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2014).

13 See Quentin Wodon et al., Educating Girls and Ending Child Marriage: A Priority for Africa (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2018). On the link between child marriage and early childbearing, see Quentin Wodon, Chata Male, and Adenike Onagoruwa, “A Simple Approach to Measuring the Share of Early Childbirths Likely Due to Child Marriage in Developing Countries,” Forum for Social Economics 49, no. 2 (2020): 166-79. https://doi.org/10.1080/07360932.2017.1311799.

The available indicators on the prevalence of child marriage, educational attainment and learning for girls in the RoC, as well as the data for the estimation of the HCI, all predate the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic is likely to have worsened these indicators substantially, especially for educational outcomes. This is in part because schools were closed for a substantial period of time, and most children did not have access to quality distance learning (the rate of household connectivity to the internet is very low).14 In addition, as is the case for the sub-Saharan Africa region as a whole, the country is affected by other overlapping crises, including rising food and fuel prices that are leading more households to fall into poverty,15 thereby limiting the ability of parents to send their children to school.

What could be done to educate girls and more generally provide them with better opportunities? Research has shown that child marriage affects educational attainment as very few girls manage to remain in school once they marry. But vice versa, a higher level of educational attainment reduces the likelihood of child marriage.

Ending child marriage would improve girls’ education, and conversely impact evaluations suggest that educating girls is one of the best ways to end child marriage.16

Indeed, in terms of specific policies, the literature suggests that economic incentives to keep girls in schools may work better than other policies for delaying marriage.17 Could this also be the case in the RoC? To provide a tentative answer to

14 On the impact of the pandemic on learning poverty, defined as the share of children not able to read and understand a simple text by age 10, see World Bank et al., The State of Global Learning Poverty: 2022 Update (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2022).

15 On the current food and fuel price crisis and its impact in sub-Saharan Africa, see Cesar Calderon et al., Food System Opportunities in a Turbulent Time, Africa’s Pulse 26 (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2022).

16 See for example Erika Field and Attila Ambrus, “Early Marriage, Age of Menarche, and Female Schooling Attainment in Bangladesh,” Journal of Political Economy 116, no. 5 (2008): 881-930. https://doi.org/10.1086/593333. For Africa, see Minh Cong Nguyen and Quentin Wodon, “Impact of Child Marriage on Literacy and Educational Attainment in Africa,” Background Paper for Fixing the Broken Promise of Education for All (Paris and New York: UNESCO Institute of Statistics and UNICEF, 2014).

17 For reviews of the literature, see Iona Botea et al., Interventions Improving Sexual and Reproductive Health Outcomes and Delaying Child Marriage and Childbearing for Adolescent Girls (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2017). See also Amanda M. Kalamar, Susan Lee-Rife, and Michelle J. Hindin, “Interventions to Prevent Child Marriage among Young People in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review of the Published and Gray Literature,” Journal of Adolescent Health 59, no. 3 (2016): S16-S21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2016.06.015.

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Education and Child Marriage in Central Africa: Republic of Congo

this question, we conducted qualitative fieldwork in one urban and two rural areas. The aim was to understand perceptions of child marriage and girls’ education in these communities, and listen to the communities’ suggestions for programs and policies that could improve outcomes for girls, thus contributing to their empowerment in adulthood.18

Specifically, we considered four questions: (1) How much support is there in communities for girls’ education and women’s work? (2) What are the factors leading girls to drop out of school?19 (3) What are communities’ perceptions related to child marriage? and (4) Is there a role for faith leaders and faith-based schools in helping to end child marriage and promote girls’ education?

This last question on the role for faith leaders and faith-based schools is important for the RoC. The Catholic Church as well as other denominations play an important role in the country, including in the provision of basic education as quite a few schools are faith-based, although less so than in RoC’s neighboring country, the Democratic Republic of Congo.20 In 2018, the latest year for which data are available in the World Bank’s WDI for the number of students in RoC’s primary schools, there were 783,448 such students.21 That year, according to the Statistical Yearbook of the Church, 22 there were 24,699 students enrolled in Catholic primary schools in the country. For the number of students in secondary schools,

18 On broader policies for women’s empowerment, as a useful study in the country’s larger neighbor, see World Bank, Women’s Economic Empowerment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Obstacles and Opportunities (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2021).

19 For a discussion of some of the constraints to girls’ education in the ROC, see Laura Bolton, “Barriers to Education for Girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” K4D Helpdesk Report 750 (Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, 2020). On some of the historical roots of low educational attainment for girls, see Marc Depaepe and Annette Lembagusala Kikumbi, “Educating Girls in Congo: An Unsolved Pedagogical Paradox since Colonial Times?” Policy Futures in Education 16, no. 8 (2018): 936–952. https://doi.org/10.1177/1478210318767450

20 On Catholic schools in the Democratic Republic of Congo, see Quentin Wodon, “Catholic Schools in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Trends, Achievements, and Challenges,” International Journal of Education Law and Policy 13 (2017): 55-66. On the relationships between faith-based schools and the state, see Annette Scheunpflug et al., “Relationships between Christian Schools and the State: A Comparative Analysis for Five Sub-Saharan African Countries,” International Studies in Catholic Education 13, no. 2 (2021): 163-174. https://doi.org/10.1080/19422539.202 1.2010456

21 Latest estimate for 2018. https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators.

22 Secretariat of State [of the Vatican], Annuarium statisticum Ecclesiae 2020.

the latest year for which data are available in the WDI is 2012, with a total of 339,250 students in the country. That year, there were 9,290 students in Catholic secondary schools according to the Church. This suggests that Catholic schools account for only a small share of all students in primary and secondary schools, but they typically have a good reputation. There is an opportunity for Catholic schools to improve outcomes for adolescent girls, ensure that they remain in school at the secondary level, and avoid that they marry when they are not yet psychologically and physically ready. Furthermore, as Catholic and other faith leaders are often those who perform marriages, they also have an important role to play to end the practice of girls marrying before they reach the age of 18.

In what follows, after explaining data collection, the next four sections explore the four questions mentioned above (support for girls’ education and women’s work; factors leading girls to drop out of school; perceptions of child marriage; and role for faith leaders and faith-based schools). A conclusion follows.

DATA COLLECTION

The analysis is based on data collected in the RoC in 2017 by the Centre for Studies and Research on Economic Analysis and Policies (CERAPE) based in Brazzaville in the RoC. The methodology for data collection followed similar work previously conducted by one of the authors in Ghana and Burkina Faso. The objective of the data collection and analysis was to explore some of the factors leading girls to drop out of school prematurely and marry early.

Three sources of data are used: (1) a small-scale survey; (2) interviews of key informants; and (3) focus groups. A particular emphasis was placed on the role played by religious and customary leaders in communities, and the perceptions of schools, including religious schools, given the importance of keeping girls in schools to prevent child marriage and early childbearing.

The survey was administered to 150 respondents, i.e., 50 respondents per locality, one urban and two rural, as outlined in Table 1. The aim of selecting three localities was to explore differences in outcomes and perceptions across areas that have different levels of economic development, as well as different level of access to services.

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CATHOLICISM

The interviews with key informants include interviews with healthcare personnel, teachers, school principals, and other individuals with knowledge of conditions affecting development outcomes for girls. Focus groups were carried out to explore the motivations and testimonies of parents and young people.

TABLE 1: AREAS FOR DATA COLLECTION, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Geographic areas Urban area Rural areas (x2)

Department Department of Brazzaville Department of Niari Plateaux Department District/Parish Brazzaville (Mfilou, Talangaï) Nyanga District (Irogo Village) Gamboma District (Village Bénin)

Respondents 50 50 50

Source: Authors. The first locality for data collection was the capital city of Brazzaville, a metropolitan area with a projected population of the order of two million people in 2021. Brazzaville is one of twelve departments in the country on the banks of the Congo River with Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, across the river. The city is subdivided into nine municipalities (arrondissements): Bacongo, Djiri, Madibou, Makélékélé, Mfilou, Moungali, Ouenzé, Poto-Poto, and Talangaï. The city is multi-ethnic. Data collection took place in the municipalities of Mfilou, Talangaï.

The second location is in the Department of Niari in the southwest of the country which borders Gabon. The Department has 14 Districts, including the District of Nyanga, which in turn has 32 villages including the village of Irogo, located 37 km from Nyanga and 27 km from Ngongo on the border with Gabon. Irogo is one of the largest villages in the Nyanga District with more than 2,000 inhabitants, most of which are from the Nzebi and Pounou ethnic groups. Irogo has a comparatively modern and well-equipped school and an Integrated Health Centre as well as two modern water wells. The main economic activity is the cultivation of cassava and peanuts. While groundnuts are grown annually, cassava is grown permanently.

Jean-Christophe Boungou Bazika, Wolf Ulrich Mféré Akiana, and Quentin Wodon

Each month, nearly 600 tons of rolled cassava are sold on the Gabonese market. As Irogo has no electricity, households use storm lights and, when they have the means, generators. The main sporting activity is soccer. Most residents are Protestant or Catholic.

The third location is the village of Benin in Gamboma District. The village has about 750 inhabitants.23 The population is mostly Batwa. There are also some other ethnic Bantu groups such as the Bangangulu, the Kouyou and the Teke. Women have an important role, often supporting husbands in agricultural and fishing activities. Men tend to go to the village where the woman lives. They hunt and harvest honey for the wife and her family. The dowry is in kind, for example hunting a wild boar or buffalo and giving it to the in-laws. Polygamy is frequent as men have the right to marry several women as long as they respect them all. The economy is based on hunting, fishing, harvesting, and yam cultivation. Rites and arts play an important role with artists transmitting traditions to the next generations. The village is located only 5 km away from Gamboma, the main urban center in the district. This is where the Batwa sell and buy their products. It is also where many go to church or go to school, especially at the secondary level. Motorcycle taxis have made access to Gamboma even easier. The village has a primary school built in the 1950s.

As expected, there are important differences in the characteristics of survey respondents in the three localities. Close to nine in ten respondents belong to households with a male head in Gamboma and Nyanga, while in Brazzaville, a larger share of respondents (one in four) live in female headed households, in part because of a larger proportions of household heads who are widowed, divorced, or separated. Household heads in Gamboma and Nyanga tend to be self-employed farmers, while in Brazzaville, the proportion of the employees is much higher. In terms of educational attainment, 28% of respondents in Brazzaville are from households where the head has a higher education. That proportion is almost nil in Gamboma and Nyanga. In Nyanga, educational attainment is especially low with 46% of

23 The district had a population of 16,142 inhabitants in the 1984 census, but the current population is not known.

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Congo

household heads have only a primary education. As for ethnic groups, many are represented in Brazzaville, but about eight in ten respondents are from a single ethnic group in the two rural areas (Teke in Gamboma and Nzebi in Nyanga).

SUPPORT FOR GIRLS’ EDUCATION AND WOMEN’S WORK

There is substantial support for girls’ education in Brazzaville, and Nyanga, with respectively 96% and 92% of respondents considering girls’ education as very important, but support is weaker in Gamboma, with only 66% of respondents emphasizing girls’ education as very important (see Table 2). Similar differences are observed for two other questions in the survey related to whether the benefits of education are the same for boys and girls, and the desired level of schooling for boys and girls. In Brazzaville and Nyanga, the desired level of schooling does not change by gender, but it does in Gamboma.

In practice, most children will unfortunately not attain the desired levels of schooling indicated in Table 2, but as higher levels of schooling progressively become more common for both boys and girls alike, at least in Brazzaville and Nyanga, parents have higher expectations, which is positive. In both localities, four in five respondents hope that their children (boys or girls) will go to university. Also of interest is the fact that in Nyanga, while there is an emphasis on girls’ education, there is also an emphasis on continuing one’s education only until getting a job. This is to be understood in the context of a labor market with high unemployment and underemployment among youth (a higher degree does not necessarily lead to a better job if there are few opportunities for graduates). Another issue which is particular to Nyanga is the low quality of the education being provided, mostly by volunteer teachers who are paid from parents’ contributions. These teachers have typically not received any pedagogical training. As the income they receive from teaching is modest, they must also engage in other activities.

TABLE 2: SUPPORT FOR GIRLS’ EDUCATION (%)

Brazzaville Gamboma Nyanga Importance of educating girls

Very important 96 66 92

Important 2 8 10

Somewhat important 0 0 0 Not that important 0 20 0 Not important at all 0 8 0

Same benefits of education for boys & girls

Yes 90 62 94 No 10 38 8

Desired level of schooling by gender Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls

Complete primary cycle 2 2 0 8 0 0 Go to secondary school 0 0 0 24 0 0

Complete high school 10 12 34 46 0 0

Complete higher education 78 80 44 14 6 0

Vocational training 0 0 0 0 0 0

Until you have a job 6 4 20 8 83 90 Until the wedding 0 2 2 8 0 0 Other 2 0 0 24 2 0

Source: Authors’ estimation from small-scale survey in the three localities. Note: Some categories may not add to 100% due to rounding, multiple responses or non-responses.

Comments in focus groups suggest that in Brazzaville and Nyanga, schooling is almost universally seen as a means of emancipation and professional and social advancement for girls and women. The image offered by women teachers and nurses in urban and rural areas is that of autonomous women who earn an income and have a much more comfortable standard of living than women farmers who have not been to school. These women civil servants have helped to raise the profile of girls’ schooling and have given schooling considerable social importance in both urban and rural areas. Young girls want to be like these modern, scientifically literate, well-dressed, self-confident women, rather than do hard work in the fields and risk being poor. Likewise, parents want their daughters to look like those female

officials who command the respect of the community. Finally, for parents, having their children succeed in school is a way to ensure that their ability to get support in old age, given the lack of social protection systems.

Some respondents noted that education could allow girls to reach positions of responsibility on the political and social level such as those of minister or director general, and to earn the respect of the community. At the family level, they stressed the honor and joy that a girl’s academic success brings to her parents, brothers and sisters, the ability she acquires to help them materially and morally, and the example she sets for the other members of the family. At the household level, respondents in Brazzaville were unanimous in stressing that a daughter’s schooling brings her respect from her husband, the ability to contribute to meeting the household’s needs and to children’s schooling and health. It was said that educating a woman is like educating an entire nation.

By contrast, among the indigenous Batwa population of Benin village in Gamboma District, a substantial share of respondents does not place a high importance on girls’ schooling. Priority tends to be given to boys for study, as girls are seen as having childbearing as their primary role. Although some Batwa girls go to secondary schools, this is rare. These girls may be subject to insults, bullying, and mockery because of their dress, which discourages school attendance. In addition, during the harvesting season (October to December), the Batwa tend to involve their children—boys and girls—in their activities, which also reduces their attendance in school. Enrollment in school for girls actually decreased in the three years prior to data collection, but not for boys. Another problem is the lack of educational materials and desks in the primary school, forcing children to sit on the floor, which is not conducive to learning.

Some respondents in Gamboma saw gender differences in education as legitimate. This quote from a villager reflects the social role assigned to girls:

In our village, girls, unlike boys, are destined for marriage and not for school. The parents, from the moment she is born, if they know that she is a girl, will already start selecting a family that will be able to receive her as a beautiful girl

and in which there is already her future husband. As soon as she reaches the age of 10, this girl will be placed with her future family-in-law so that she can get used to living with them. Her future is not in school but in her new family as a girl destined for marriage and to procreate children so that the clan will continue.

This does not mean that adolescent girls themselves agree with these views, as illustrated by another quote from a young girl in Gamboma:

I had a friend who attended with me in the same class, at the college of Gamboma. Instead of continuing her studies like me, she preferred to follow traditions and get married very early. Thus, she dropped out of her studies in fifth grade. She must have been 14 years old. I was not in agreement with her, and this disagreement pushed me to separate from her and to end our friendship. When she got married, she started having children very early. Today, I am in high school and preparing for my baccalaureate diploma. She, on the other hand, now has 4 children and, to survive, she trades cassava flour (foufou) in the street and lives in great poverty.

FACTORS LEADING GIRLS TO DROP OUT OF SCHOOL

Although there is strong support for girls’ education at least in Brazzaville and Nyanga, many girls drop out before completing their secondary education. This can be due to multiple factors, including poverty, early pregnancies, poor grades, and a lack of motivation or interest. In the survey, respondents indicated a wide range of factors that could lead girls to drop out of school. The list included poverty, the cost of schooling, and a lack of food; lack of parental support or death of a parent; the distance to schools; low quality of teachers and instruction; too many punishments at school; a lack of quality and poor functioning of the school and bad behavior by teachers (sexual harassment); early pregnancies, the risk of premarital sex; a lack of motivation or interest for remaining in school, a failure at school failure or poor grades; the need to engage in field work; a lack of better employment opportunities with higher levels of schooling; social pressure; preparations for a wedding; and a range of other reasons.

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Table 3 provides a synthesis of the three main factors that emerge from respondents’ perceptions. Poverty and the inability to pay for school fees, as well as a lack of motivation and early pregnancies tend to be the main reasons for dropping out, but low school quality, the risk of sexual harassment, and a lack of support from some parents are also mentioned. Poverty tends to be the main reason for dropping out in Brazzaville, while a lack of motivation and early pregnancies appear to be more prominent factors in the two rural areas.

On the issues of early pregnancies and marriage, a quote from a woman in Nyanga is illustrative of the situations faced by many girls:

A young girl was married at 15 because she was pregnant. She had to agree to marry and live with a man who is a farmer in the village. This marriage resulted in two children. Today, the girl realizes that she had made a mistake. This error is explained by the fact that she had to drop out of school at the secondary level. At the age of puberty, she contracted a pregnancy and agreed to marry early and devote herself to field work. Later, conflicts appeared in the home, marital violence. Today, she wants to withdraw from the marriage. But the parents oppose it because they claim that the early marriage she performed was of her own free will. Now she wants to leave the marital home, she has no other alternatives. She greatly regrets having dropped out of school and speaks with great rage in her heart. If she had completed her school cycle, she would perhaps be in a satisfactory social position today.

The lack of motivation to remain in school, especially when a girl is not doing well in school, was mentioned more in rural areas, but it is also present in Brazzaville, as a woman explained based on her own experience:

I was not motivated at school because I saw no interest in it. In the fourth grade, my little sister, two years younger than me, caught up with me. We were both in the same class. She was doing well in class, and I started to feel ashamed because I couldn’t stand the teasing from family members and friends. I finally broke down and dropped out of school, preferring to learn a trade.

TABLE 3: MAIN FACTORS LEADING GIRLS TO DROP OUT OF SCHOOL BY LOCALITY (%)

Factors Brazzaville Gamboma Nyanga

1st reason Poverty Lack of motivation Early pregnancy

2nd reason Early pregnancy Early pregnancy Poverty

3rd reason Lack of motivation School quality/ sexual harassment Lack of support

Source: Authors’ estimation from small-scale survey in the three localities. Note: Several reasons could be mentioned by respondents, hence percentages sum to more than one.

Discussions in focus groups confirm that for girls in rural areas, pregnancy and marriage are key factors leading them to drop out of school. As girls marry, they may no longer have the time to study, given the pressure of housework and childcare. The period before the arrival of the first child is generally short, and in some couples, the husband may pressure his wife to give up her studies or even her professional work to devote herself to the household. A girl’s status in the eyes of her family and friends is enhanced by the fact that she got married and a man came to her parents to ask for her hand in marriage, and that she soon became pregnant and a mother. From her childhood to her teenage years, the upbringing she receives from her father and mother puts a special emphasis on the behavior she will have to display in her future household. Thus, the upbringing she receives as a child focuses on her future housework, respectful behavior, and even submission to men.

Another aspect of this upbringing concerns the criteria for choosing a husband. In some communities, it is the parents who will influence the girl’s decision. In other communities, she has a free choice, but she is advised to make a good choice, namely a man with moral qualities, the ability to provide for himself and the whole household, the ability to help his in-laws in case of need, and even to accept to bring up some of the younger members of his wife’s family of origin, to help them study. Lack of solidarity, arrogance and condescension are defects that will be criticized by the parents of the daughter and that may even lead to the latter being strongly criticized, or even isolated by her family of origin if it feels that her husband’s behavior is incompatible with the spirit of inter-family solidarity.

Respondents made recommendations to promote girls’ enrollment and reduce the risk of dropout (see Table 4). In Brazzaville, a majority of respondents recommended that vocational training courses be set up for girls so that they could learn a trade to facilitate their socio-professional integration. Next, they suggested financial assistance to parents to meet school fees. In third place, they recommended improving teacher training and recruitment so that schools are of better quality, with competent teachers who respect professional ethics.

In rural areas, the main recommendations were different. In Gamboma, the main recommendations were to raise awareness of the importance of enrolling girls in school, followed by the need to strengthen parental involvement of parents in monitoring school activities, and finally the government’s duty to better train teachers and recruit teachers able to provide a quality education. In Nyanga, training and recruiting teachers came first, followed by greater involvement of parents, and the provision of financial assistance to families to cover school fees.

TABLE 4:

SUGGESTIONS TO REDUCE DROP-OUT RATES FOR GIRLS

BY LOCALITY (%)

Classification Brazzaville Gamboma Nyanga

1st suggestion Vocational training for girls Awareness for girls’ education Teacher training & recruitment

2nd suggestion Financial assistance for fees Involving parents in schools Involving parents in schools

3rd suggestion Teacher training & recruitment Teacher training & recruitment Financial assistance for fees

Source: Authors’ estimation from small-scale survey in the three localities. Note: Several reasons could be mentioned by respondents, hence percentages sum to more than one.

Jean-Christophe Boungou Bazika, Wolf Ulrich Mféré Akiana, and Quentin

PERCEPTIONS OF CHILD MARRIAGE

Early marriage was the norm long before the colonial era. Almost all women born before the 1940s were married at an early age. In the villages, it was customary for a woman who had reached puberty to be married off by her parents to play the role of mother and reproducer of the clan. Marriages sealed the alliance between families and the decision was taken by the head of the family or the father after consultation. The opinion of the girl was often not taken into account. In some ethnic groups, such as the Vili in the Department of Kouilou, there was a virginity rite called Tchikoumbi. This rite obliged young girls to preserve their virginity until marriage. For a period of several months, the young girl, before proceeding with the marriage, was locked up in a house and coated with powder. She had to undergo this rite and at the end was handed over to her future husband with whom she spent the first night together. In the morning, women were in charge of checking the sheets for blood stains indicating that the girl had retained her virginity and that the marriage could then be tied. Her family was honored. Premarital sex was considered a dishonor to the family and to the parents. Traditional societies were aware of this danger, and this was a key reason for early marriages in the past.

With modernization and the development of schooling for girls, the rite of virginity has virtually disappeared, including in the countryside. However, the trend towards early marriage persists because of the traditional role assigned to women in society, especially in rural areas. That main role is that of having children, with husbands ensuring that the needs of the family were met. This division of labor between men and women was a source of inequality. Even when women worked, their income was perceived as marginal in the household. Even today, this division of labor persists and continues to influence behaviors in many geographic areas.

During the survey and especially during focus groups, the issue of traditions was raised by participants. It is impossible to understand the motivations behind early marriages without perceiving the weight of traditions that are more or less anchored according to localities and ethnic groups and that influence individual and social behaviors. This diversity of traditions generates a diversity of approaches to

the role and place of women. As a 45-year-old focus group participant testified:

In my village, in the past … it was not the girls who chose their husbands. It was their parents and especially the father who were responsible. I can mention the case of my mother. At the age of 14, her father decided that she should marry a boy 15 years older than her because he was a member of the family on her father’s side. This boy had left the village and gone to other distant lands to learn about life. There he learned to sew and became a tailor. He also learned to speak other languages. Then, wanting to start a family with a woman from his village and clan, he returned to the village. His father consulted with my mother’s uncle. My mother had just lost her father and mother and was orphaned. She now had a 12-year-old brother and a 10-year-old sister to support. She began to cultivate the cassava fields to support the family. Seeing that she was a good worker, it was decided that she would marry this man who had just returned to the village. But he was a very bossy person. “He is too mean a man and I don’t want to be his wife,” said my mother, crying. My mother refused the marriage. Her uncle took a big stick and threatened to beat her to death if she disobeyed. She had no choice but to agree. That is how she married my father. Traditionally, the decision had to be made by the father or the uncle. Today, this is not the case because the woman has gained more freedom and can decide for herself which man she wants to marry as well as how she chooses to work and how to spend her income.

While the role of women in society is changing, child marriage nevertheless remains prevalent. As shown in Table 5, most respondents in the three communities are aware that some girls marry as children in their community, albeit with differences between localities since in Nyanga, close to a third of respondents deny the existence of early marriages. Many believe that the prevalence of the practice is increasing, although again the proportion is much lower in Nyanga. The perceptions of a rising prevalence of child marriage are associated with other issues such as juvenile delinquency. As a school principal in Brazzaville explained in perhaps too stark terms:

Early marriages and pregnancies are becoming a common phenomenon in Brazzaville and can fuel … children [who may] be abandoned, left to their own devices, and will swell the ranks of street children.

In rural areas, even if the girl’s consent to a marriage is sought, the decision for a girl to marry early is typically made by the father. These are areas where the patriarchal family still dominates. In Brazzaville, the daughter typically decides according to respondents (this is also the case in Nyanga, but to a lower extent). Overall, marriages may not be “forced” to the extent that the girl’s approval is sought, but in rural areas especially, parents have a lot of influence in the matter.

Some of the risks associated with child marriages include instability in the couple and intimate partner violence. A lack of maturity when getting married may not allow a mother to properly educate her children and monitor their health and nutrition. She may be unable to face the problems that arise in the life of a couple and create an understanding with her husband. Early marriages may be a source of conflict, domestic violence, and divorce. A quote from a woman in Brazzaville is illustrative of those risks:

I was 14 and got pregnant. I was in fifth grade in Brazzaville. My father decided that I should go live with my partner, who was 17 years old himself. My friend lived with his sister and was from a modest background. To survive, I started selling vegetables, then bread at the neighborhood bakery. The situation was difficult. With my husband there were a lot of disputes, fights. As I was serious about work, the owner of the bakery recruited me as a cashier. I was anxious and regretted the behavior I had. The situation in the marriage had become untenable. I was forced to flee the home and go back to my parents. My father wanted to put me back at home, but my aunt intervened against this idea. This saved me from poverty because, later, I went back to school and met a man at 25 who married me and with whom I founded a real family.

Many of the people interviewed understood that early marriage may lead to serious health problems and difficulties in childbirth for the woman. In interviews with medical personnel, various health problems faced by young mothers were raised.

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In integrated health centers, medical staff believe that most cases of dystocia and cesarean sections as well as fistulas are related to the early age of the woman giving birth. In addition, the short life span of the child can be related to young mother’s inexperience to follow and apply prenatal care during pregnancy. According to medical personnel, most premature children are born to young women who have undergone early marriages and pregnancies. The chance of survival of these newborns are low, and infant mortality rates are high for these mothers.

TABLE 5: PERCEPTIONS OF CHILD MARRIAGE BY LOCALITY (%)

Classification Brazzaville Gamboma Nyanga

Are there child/early marriages in the community?

Yes 86 96 63 No 6 2 29 Don’t know 8 2 8

How is the prevalence of child marriage evolving? Growing 84 62 31 Decreasing 0 4 33 No Change 4 0 8 Don’t know 10 34 29

Does child marriage affect the life of the couple?

Yes 88 36 85 No 8 4 2 Don’t know 4 60 11

Do social actors talk about child marriage?

Yes 6 2 47 No 84 14 29 Don’t know 4 84 24

Does child marriage affect girls’ reproductive health?

Yes 54 46 86 No 40 4 4 Don’t know 2 52 9

Classification Brazzaville Gamboma Nyanga

Who decides about the marriage? (Main responses)

Father 0 74 63

Mother 0 6 12

Household head 0 22 0 Girl 100 4 57 Don’t know/other 0 0 2

How important is the girl’s consent?

Very important 100 32 96

Somewhat important 0 30 2

Moderately important 0 10 0 Not very important 0 24 2 Not at all important 0 4 0

Do you know about the law regarding child marriage?

Yes 26 46 24 No 72 54 74

Don’t know 2 0 2

Source: Authors’ estimation from small-scale survey in the three localities. Note: Some categories may not add to 100% due to rounding or non-responses.

A resident in Nyanga recounted a recent tragedy in the village:

A 15-year-old girl got knocked up by a young boy in the village. The boy was 20 years old. This early pregnancy progressed to childbirth. The delivery took place in the Integrated Health Centre (IHC) of the village itself. It is important to note that the health center is not well equipped and has only one nurse who is already retired. The IHC does not have a midwife. It is the birth mothers who take care of the delivery cases. During the delivery, she had many difficulties. She suffered a hemorrhage. The baby was already dead before it left the womb. The mother also did not survive due to lack of care and died a few hours later. This event greatly upset the whole village. The community, the village chief, and the two families involved decided that … this tragedy should serve as a lesson for everyone. Parents have [since] been asked to be more involved in the education of girls and boys to avoid sexual relations and early marriages.

Communities seem to be aware that early marriages may have harmful consequences for couples and the reproductive health of young girls. This is however not the case for all respondents and there are differences between communities. In Gamboma where there is more tolerance for child marriage, there is also less awareness of its potential negative effects, as illustrated by the views of a respondent:

Early marriage has no consequences in married life. It guarantees the girl a home where she can play her role as a mother and have children early on, whom she can raise and see grow. This marriage gives her security and protects her from the hazards of life. It helps the girl and her family escape the shame and banishment experienced in the village when a girl is not married and continues to live with her parents until she is older or does not give birth.

The survey included questions as to whether any actors in society (the state, NGOs, etc.) had taken measures or carried out actions that would contribute to the fight against early marriage. The results of the survey suggest that in Brazzaville and Gambona, most respondents were not aware of programs or initiatives to end child marriage. In Nyanga, half of respondents were aware of initiatives in their locality, especially by a community radio station which has made many broadcasts on this issue, with this information campaign much appreciated by the listeners. As to the marriage laws in place, they tend not to be understood by respondents. Most respondents in Brazzaville and Nyanga have not heard of the legislation governing marriage, while this is the case for only a fourth of respondents in Gamboma. But with regards to the legal age of 18 for marriage, while most respondents in Brazzaville and Nyanga agree with this provision, less than half do in Gamboma. Many respondents among the indigenous population consider that 18 years of age is too old for a girl to be married, as illustrated by this quote:

Why do we have to wait so long for a girl to get married? At the age of 18, the girl runs the risk of having premarital sex and not finding a husband. It is when she is still very young that she should get married, have children and learn her job as a mother. She will be able to listen to her husband and be docile in the

home. The best wives are those who get married at 14 or even 15 when their breasts start to come out.

In terms of recommendations for ending child marriage, community awareness initiatives about girls’ rights and the family code were suggested in all three communities as a potential priority (Table 6). Other suggestions included offering scholarships to disadvantaged girls, educating parents, sanctioning parents who accept an early marriage, and in Nyanga preaching chastity by the churches. Remarkably, but not too surprisingly given attitudes towards child marriage in that locality, many respondents in Gamboma did not have any suggestions.

TABLE 6: SUGGESTIONS TO REDUCE CHILD MARRIAGE BY LOCALITY (%)

Classification Brazzaville Gamboma Nyanga

1st suggestion Community awareness on girls’ rights/ family code

No particular suggestions Churches must preach chastity

2nd suggestion Offer scholarships to disadvantaged girls Community awareness on girls’ rights/family code Community awareness on girls’ rights/family code

3rd suggestion Educating parents State must sanction parents who accept an early marriage

State must sanction parents who accept an early marriage

Source: Authors’ estimation from small-scale survey in the three localities.

POTENTIAL ROLE FOR FAITH LEADERS AND FAITHBASED SCHOOLS

The role of churches and faith-based schools had been in decline until the 1990s, but since the establishment of the multiparty system, there has been a revival. Alongside traditional churches (Catholic, Evangelical, Salvationist, Muslim, Kibangist, etc.), new churches have emerged. Traditional and religious leaders can

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Education and Child Marriage in Central Africa: Republic of Congo

play an important role in raising community awareness about the negative effects of child marriage and the benefits from girls’ education. They have a great deal of influence on the population, and they have an attentive audience during Masses, prayer ceremonies, or traditional festivals, as well as during court cases in which disputes are settled in the villages. Faith leaders are also those who perform most marriages, and they can advise against a marriage when girls are not psychologically or physically ready to marry. Are faith leaders talking about these issues? As shown in Table 7, this does not seem to be sufficiently the case. For about half of respondents in Brazzaville and Nyanga, religious leaders do not talk about this issue, and the proportion reaches nine in ten respondents in Gamboma. While there is some awareness of issues related sexual and marital violence, faith leaders tend to be silent on issues of school dropouts and early marriages.

TABLE 7: ROLE OF FAITH LEADERS IN ENDING CHILD MARRIAGE, SHARES (%)

Brazzaville Gamboma Nyanga

Faith leaders talk about the issue of child marriage Yes 48 14 51 No 50 86 49 Don’t know 2 0 0

Source: Authors’ estimation from small-scale survey in the three localities. Note: Some categories may not add to 100% due to rounding or non-responses.

Beyond faith leaders, faith-based and other schools also have a role to play in ensuring that girls can go to school, which is as mentioned earlier one of the best ways to avoid child marriage. As a respondent from Brazzaville stated:

Our church is very interested in the schooling of boys and girls. It has formed a special committee to assist young people who are in secondary school and who are in need. This committee encourages the young people to take their studies seriously and to work hard for their academic success. It organizes evening coaching classes to help the youth of the church understand the lessons and application exercises and improve their academic performance.

Jean-Christophe Boungou Bazika, Wolf Ulrich Mféré Akiana, and Quentin

But for faith-based and other schools to play their role, they must provide an education of good quality, so that it is for girls both feasible (by passing the required examinations) and worth it to remain in school (and for their parents to bear the financial cost that this implies), especially at the secondary level. Unfortunately, the quality of the education provided in the RoC is typically low, including in some faith-based (and Catholic) schools.

Communities are aware of this lack of quality. Satisfaction with secular schools is low. Most respondents are either moderately satisfied or dissatisfied with the schools. This crisis of confidence is likely to affect the enrollment of girls, who tend to be more vulnerable and face more socio-cultural constraints to enroll than boys. Another issue mentioned earlier is that of the risk of sexual harassment in schools. The words of a woman in Nyanga district on those issues speak volumes:

Girls in school are not in good conditions. They are often sexually harassed by teachers. Study conditions are bad. Students do not have benches, and some teachers do not come to provide training and are conspicuous by their absenteeism. Instead of wasting her time at school, I prefer that my daughter comes to help me in the field. That way, she will be useful for something.

There are however differences in perceptions of quality between secular and religious schools. Religious schools tend on average to be considered better, at least in Brazzaville and Nyanga. In those communities, a much larger share of respondents considers religious schools to be better in those two localities, in comparison of the share of respondents considering secular schools to be better. By contrast, among the indigenous population in Gamboma which has a stronger attachment to traditional beliefs, this is less the case.

Finally, while parents tend to focus on the quality of teaching and less on faith or morals when selecting a school, many do favor religious instruction. Indeed, when asked whether religious education should be provided in schools, most parents respond in the affirmative, albeit with differences between communities since the proportions are 66% in Brazzaville, 98% in Nyanga, but only 44% in Gamboma given a strong attachment to animist traditions and rites among indigenous populations.

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TABLE 8: PERCEPTIONS OF PUBLIC AND RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS, SHARES (%)

Brazzaville Gamboma Nyanga

Do public secular schools meet community needs?

Yes 26 72 43 No 72 28 57

Don’t know 2 0 0

Satisfaction with secular schools

Very satisfied 8 4 20 Satisfied 22 36 14 Moderately satisfied 34 28 37 Dissatisfied 34 24 29 Very dissatisfied 2 8 0

Which types of schools are better?

Religious schools 50 20 63 Secular schools 30 0 16 No difference 20 18 14 Don’t know 0 60 4

Should schools provide religious instruction?

Yes 66 44 98 No 28 0 0 Don’t know 6 56 2

Source: Authors’ estimation from small-scale survey in the three localities. Note: Some categories may not add to 100% due to rounding or non-responses.

CONCLUSION

The objective of this article was to explore the issues of girls’ education and child marriage in the RoC based on qualitative fieldwork from the capital city of Brazzaville and two rural areas. Four main questions were explored: (1) How much support is there in communities for girls’ education and women’s work? (2) What are the factors leading girls to drop out of school? (3) What are communities’ perceptions related to child marriage? and (4) Is there a role for faith leaders and faith-based schools in helping to end child marriage and promote girls’ education?

There is support for girls’ education and women’s work in the communities, although less so in Gamboma which has a predominantly indigenous population. But a range of factors including the out-of-pocket costs of schooling for parents, the poor quality of the education being provided, and the risk of becoming pregnant when sexually active lead some girls to drop out of school prematurely. In those cases, child marriage is more likely, even if in two of the three communities, there is agreement about its negative effects. Faith leaders have an important role to play in preventing child marriages, but they tend not to talk about the issue, in contrast to what is observed in the companion paper for the Democratic Republic of Congo. Faith-based schools also have a role to play in efforts to keep girls in (secondary) school, especially as they tend to be perceived as being of higher quality.

It was mentioned several times that faith leaders and faith-based schools have an important role to play to improve opportunities for girls. This may lead to difficult questions. For example, following good practical advice from the international community, should Catholic schools provide comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education to girls (and boys) while they are in school, and if so, what does “comprehensive” mean? This type of question has not been explored in this article, but it needs to be, if only to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

The findings provided by the qualitative fieldwork are not too surprising, although the fact that there is substantial heterogeneity between communities is very important to adapt program and policies to local contexts. Overall, except perhaps for Gamboma, the findings are encouraging, given fairly broad support to end child marriage, support girls’ education, and promote women’s work. Similar support is found in the companion paper for the Democratic Republic of Congo. The challenge for public policy, as well as for faith leaders and faith-based and other schools, is to build on the support to provide better opportunities for girls, taking into account differences in context and attitudes between communities.

REFERENCES

Backiny-Yetna, Prospère and Quentin Wodon. “Comparing the Performance of Faith-Based and Government Schools in the Democratic Republic of Congo.” In Emerging Evidence on Vouchers and Faith-Based Providers in Education: Case Studies from Africa, Latin America, and Asia, edited by Felipe Barrera-Osorio, Harry A. Patinos, and Quentin Wodon. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2009.

Bolton, Laura. “Barriers to Education for Girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo.” K4D Helpdesk Report 750. Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, 2020.

Botea, Iona, Shubba Chakravarty, Sarah Haddock, and Quentin Wodon. Interventions Improving Sexual and Reproductive Health Outcomes and Delaying Child Marriage and Childbearing for Adolescent Girls. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2017.

Calderon, Cesar, Alain Kabundi, Megumi Kubota, Vijdan Korman, Aparajita Goyal, Paavo Eliste, and Vanina Daphne Forget. “Food System Opportunities in a Turbulent Time.” Africa’s Pulse 26. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2022.

Depaepe, Marc and Annette Lembagusala Kikumbi. “Educating Girls in Congo: An Unsolved Pedagogical Paradox since Colonial Times?” Policy Futures in Education 16, no. 8 (2018): 936–952. https://doi. org/10.1177/1478210318767450.

Field, Erika, and Attila Ambrus. “Early Marriage, Age of Menarche, and Female Schooling Attainment in Bangladesh.” Journal of Political Economy 116, no. 5 (2008): 881-930. https://doi.org/10.1086/593333

Kalamar, Amanda M., Susan Lee-Rife, and Michelle J. Hindin. “Interventions to Prevent Child Marriage among Young People in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review of the Published and Gray Literature.”

Jean-Christophe Boungou Bazika, Wolf Ulrich Mféré Akiana, and Quentin Wodon

Journal of Adolescent Health, 59, no. 3 (2016): S16-S21. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2016.06.015

Le Nestour, Alexis, Oliver Fiala, and Quentin Wodon. “Global and Regional Trends in Child Marriage: Estimates from 1990 to 2017.” Working paper. London: Save the Children UK, 2018.

Male, Chata and Quentin Wodon. “Basic Profile of Child Marriage in the Republic of Congo.” Health, Nutrition and Population Knowledge Brief. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2016. _____. “Basic Profile of Early Childbirth in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the Republic of Congo.” Health, Nutrition and Population Knowledge Brief. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2016.

Nguyen, Minh Cong and Quentin Wodon. “Impact of Child Marriage on Literacy and Educational Attainment in Africa.” Background Paper for Fixing the Broken Promise of Education for All. Paris and New York: UNESCO Institute of Statistics and UNICEF, 2014.

Randall, Jennifer and Alejandra Garcia, “Let’s Go Girls!: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Tutoring and Scholarships on Primary School Girls’ Attendance and Academic Performance in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (ROC).” FIRE: Forum for International Research in Education 6, no. 3 (October 2020): 19–35. https://doi.org/10.32865/fire202063222

Scheunpflug, Annette, Mark Wenz, Mimii Brown Rubindamayugi, Jean Kasereka Lutswamba, Frederick Njobati, Christine Nyiramana, Samuel Mutabazi, Claude Ernest Njoya, Onja Raharijaona, and Quentin Wodon. “Relationships between Christian Schools and the State: A Comparative Analysis for Five sub-Saharan African Countries.” International Studies in Catholic Education 13, no. 2 (2021): 163-174. https://doi.org/10.1080/19422539.2021.2010456.

Secretariat of State [of the Vatican]. Annuarium statisticum Ecclesiae 2020 / Statistical Yearbook of the Church 2020 / Annuaire statistique de l’Eglise 2020. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2022.

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Wodon, Quentin. Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Comparing Faith-Inspired, Private Secular, and Public Schools. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2014.

_____. “Implications of Demographic, Religious, and Enrollment Trends for the Footprint of Faith-Based Schools Globally.” Review of Faith & International Affairs 17, no. 4 (2019): 52-62.

_____.

Global Catholic Education Report 2023: Transforming Education and Making Education Transformative. Washington, DC: Global Catholic Education, 2022.

Wodon, Quentin, Chata Male, Claudio Montenegro, Hoa Nguyen, and Adenike Onagoruwa. Educating Girls and Ending Child Marriage: A Priority for Africa. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2018.

Wodon, Quentin, Chata Male, and Adenike Onagoruwa. “A Simple Approach to Measuring the Share of Early Childbirths Likely Due to Child Marriage in Developing Countries.” Forum for Social Economics, 49, no. 2 (2020): 166-79. https://doi.org/10.1080/07360932.2017.1311799

World Bank. The Human Capital Index – 2020 Update: Human Capital in the Time of COVID-19. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2021.

_____.

Women’s Economic Empowerment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Obstacles and Opportunities. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2021.

_____.

Western and Central Africa Education Strategy From School to Jobs: A Journey for the Young People of Western and Central Africa. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2022.

World Bank, UNICEF, FCDO, USAID, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and UNESCO. The State of Global Learning Poverty: 2022 Update. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2022.

Jean-Christophe Boungou Bazika, Wolf Ulrich Mféré Akiana, and Quentin Wodon

MARC ROSCOE LOUSTAU

Airplane Hangars and Triple Hills: Renovation, Demolition, and the

Architectural Politics of Local Belonging at the Our Lady of Csíksomlyó Hungarian National Shrine

Marc Roscoe Loustau is Managing Editor of the Journal of Global Catholicism and a Catholics & Cultures contributor. An anthropologist and scholar of religion, he earned a masters of divinity and a doctoral degree in religious studies from Harvard Divinity School. He holds a bachelor of arts in social anthropology from Reed College. He is author of Hungarian Catholic Intellectuals in Romania: Reforming Apostles, Contemporary Anthropology of Religion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). He is editor, with Eric Hoenes del Pinal and Kristin Norget, of Mediating Catholicism: Religion and Media in Global Catholic Imaginaries (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022). He is the recipient of multiple awards and research grants, including a Dissertation Finishing Grant from the Panel on Theological Education, an East European Language Training Grant from the American Council of Learned Societies, a Frederick Knox Traveling Fellowship from Harvard University, and a John L. Loeb Fellowship from Harvard Divinity School. He has taught courses on Global Catholicism, Ethnographic Research Methods, and Charismatic and Pentecostal Christianities.

INTRODUCTION: THE MATERIALITY OF POLITICAL OUTRAGE

In late 2019, the right-wing Hungarian online tabloid ripost.hu published a follow-up article about Pope Francis’s visit to the Hungarian national shrine, Our Lady of Csíksomlyó. “Scandal at Csíksomlyó,” the headline bellowed before describing how that summer Hungarians had left hundreds of spiteful comments on a Facebook post announcing renovations to the altar where the pope would celebrate Mass.1 The Franciscan Order of Transylvania, which oversees this shrine in one of Romania’s ethnic Hungarian enclaves, had published plans for a metal sheet roof to cover an outdoor altar designed by a famous architect, Imre Makovecz. The Vatican had requested the covering, even though it obscured Makovecz’s design, which evoked the “Triple Hill” motif found on Hungary’s official coat of arms (Figure 1, Figure 2). Facebook commentators had compared the addition to an airplane hangar and hoped that a storm would blow it away. One indignant online commentator asked, “To humiliate such a lovely, landscape-appropriate Hungarian symbol like this. How can they do such a thing?” The public fury continued when news broke that the Franciscan Order wanted to make the renovation permanent. In the words of a ripost.hu reporter, commenting on a new round of angry online responses, “This decision has outraged many Hungarian believers.”2

Over the last thirty years, according to historians Jeffrey Berry and Sarah Sobieraj, public debate has been determined increasingly by a new genre of political opinion media commentary. Indignation and moral offense as well as the tendency to

1 Coverage in national and local newspapers described first the renovation. See Botond Rédai, “Felújítják a Hármashalom-Oltárt Ferenc Pápa Látogatására,” RomKat.ro, April 8, 2019, https:// romkat.ro/2019/04/08/ferenc-papa-latogatasara-felujitjak-a-harmashalom-oltart/; Hajnal Barabás, “Csak a pápalátogatás idejére födik be a Hármashalom oltárt,” Szekelyhon.ro, April 26, 2019, https://szekelyhon.ro/aktualis/csak-a-papalatogatas-idejere-fodik-be-a-harmashalom-oltart; Endre Farkas, “A pápa színeibe öltözik a Hármashalom-oltár,” Maszol, May 30, 2019. https://maszol. ro/belfold/112423-a-papa-szineibe-oltozik-a-harmashalom-oltar; Norbert Timár, “Megy vagy marad a fémtető? Sokaknak nem tetszik a Hármashalom oltár átalakítása,” Transindex, April 25, 2019, https://eletmod.transindex.ro/?cikk=27777. Zoltán Fáy, “Eltakart kettős kereszt,” Magyar Nemzet, June 1, 2019, https://magyarnemzet.hu/lugas-rovat/2019/06/eltakart-kettos-kereszt; Márta Bodó, “A Hármashalom-oltár: tények és valóság,” RomKat.ro, April 26, 2019. https://romkat. ro/2019/04/26/a-harmashalom-oltar-tenyek-es-valosag/. Accessed May 31, 2019.

2 In Hungarian, “Ez sok magyar hívet felháborított.”

Figure 1.

respond to specific events as the entry point into political debate have always existed in the media landscape, Berry and Sobieraj argue in their book The Outrage Industry: Political Opinion Media and the New Incivility. Recently, however, “this form of commentary has come into its own” as a new genre of political discourse they call outrage discourse.3 In the case of the Csíksomlyó altar, the original Facebook comments bear the hallmarks of outrage discourse’s rhetorical techniques, including fear mongering, use of overgeneralizations and sensationalism, ad hominem attacks, and ridiculing opponents.4 Later on, tabloids like ripost.hu exploited and extended the outrage in order to position their own media platforms and political patrons (Hungary’s governing right-wing Fidesz Party) in the role of heroic defender of national values against enemies.5

While there are similarities between outrage discourse and right-wing Hungarian speech, the Facebook commentators’ indignation at the “humiliation” of Makovecz’s altar evokes anthropologist Krisztina Fehérváry’s argument that Hungary’s Cold War consumer culture has made politics in this country into a distinctively material endeavor. During the 1970s and ’80s Hungary’s semi-market economy

3 Jeffrey Berry and Sarah Sobieraj, The Outrage Industry: Political Opinion Media and the New Incivility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

4 Berry and Sobieraj, The Outrage Industry, 7.

5 Berry and Sobieraj, The Outrage Industry, 8. According to the independent media site Hungarian Free Press, the government pays for 90% of ripost.hu’s advertising revenue. Ripost.hu is owned by Fidesz Party advisor Árpád Habony. Christopher Adam, “Ripost – The pro-Fidesz tabloid that gets 97% of its ad revenue from the government,” Hungarian Free Press, June 6, 2017, https://hungarianfreepress.com/2017/06/06/ripost-the-pro-fidesz-tabloid-that-gets-97-of-its-ad-revenue-fromthe-government/.

Airplane Hangars and Triple Hills: Renovation, Demolition, and the Architectural Politics of Local Belonging at the Our Lady of Csíksomlyó Hungarian National Shrine

made the country into the envy of the Eastern Bloc as state-socialist countries increasingly saw consumption as the vehicle of their victory over the West.6 The collapse of socialism in 1989 set in motion Hungarians’ “profound adjustment of identity” from socialist consumer paradise and Soviet satellite to aspiring member of a reconfigured Europe.7 The European Union presented itself as victor by embracing a neocolonial discourse about Western consumer culture, enacted by an influx of condescending visitors insisting that socialism had oppressed consumers by subjecting them to constant shortages of drab, gray, and monolithic consumer goods.8 Successive Hungarian governments responded by embracing the anti-socialist dissident “Organicist” design movement.9 Led by Imre Makovecz, the same architect who designed Csíksomlyó’s original outdoor altar, Organicism drew on national and local craft traditions and celebrated natural materials, countering

6 See Krisztina Fehérváry, Politics in Color and Concrete: Socialist Materialities and the Middle Class in Hungary (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press. 2013), 150; Liviu Chelcea, “The Culture of Shortage during State-Socialism: Consumption Practices in a Romanian Village in the 1980s,” Cultural Studies 16, no. 1 (2002): 16-43. DOI: 10.1080/09502380110075243; Eva Huseby-Darvas, “Hungarian Village Women in the Marketplace during the Late Socialist Period,” in Women Traders in Cross-Cultural Perspectives: Mediating Identities, Marketing Wares, ed. L. Seligmann (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2001); Anna Wessely, “Travelling People, Travelling Objects,” Cultural Studies 16 no. 1 (2002): 3–15. DOI: 10.1080/09502380110075234.

7 Fehérváry, Politics in Color and Concrete, 51.

8 Fehérváry, Politics in Color and Concrete, xi.

9 Organicism became, in Fehérváry’s words, “the official design ideology of the newly independent Hungarian nation-state. Fehérváry, Politics in Color and Concrete, 155. With its victory in 2010, Fidesz appointed Makovecz head of the Hungarian Academy of Arts with the agenda of promoting only those artists who represented the nation in a positive light. Fehérváry, Politics in Color and Concrete, 243.

Figure 2.

In the second section, I describe the process through which Imre Makovecz’s Triple Hill altar was constructed at Csíksomlyó. This story centers neither on Makovecz’s creative vision nor on this architectural work’s particular features. Rather, I describe the strategic creativity, what anthropologist Arjun Appadurai calls a “politics of value,” employed by various Transylvanian Hungarian entrepreneurial “go-betweens” who worked in religious and political institutions to bring this project to fruition.13

I also draw on recent studies of the politics of memory in Eastern Europe, including Hungarian political scientist Andrea Pető’s research showing how political coalition-building is mediated through interpretations of major historical events.14

My contribution is to excavate the perspectives of minor intellectuals in Hungary and Romania who helped revive the Triple Hill motif. I draw attention to the political and ideological forces that marginalize their now-forgotten interpretations of this aesthetic form. I join this focus on historical paths-not-taken to research on “the social life of things,” a phrase first coined by anthropologist Arjun Appadurai. For Appadurai, political meanings and political practices become intertwined in material objects. Scholars should follow the things themselves as they traverse social, historical, and political cleavages, Appadurai insisted, because objects’ political meanings are inscribed in their changing forms, uses, and trajectories.15

Before summarizing my findings in the conclusion, I examine the outbreak of online outrage in the weeks leading up to Pope Francis’s visit to Csíksomlyó. As an ambiguously rooted political rhetorical style that itself appeared as commentary on the US-based Facebook website, I argue that outraged critics of the altar renovations were challenged to highlight their ethnic identity. I examine the context clues and rhetorical strategies that commenters used to make their outrage “Szekler” and “Hungarian.” There is growing evidence that outrage discourse is influencing

13 Arjun Appadurai, ed. The Social Life of Things Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 6

14 Andrea Pető, “’Hungary 70’: Non-remembering the Holocaust in Hungary,” Culture & History Digital Journal 3, no. 2 (2014): 1-8, http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj. Andrea Pető, “Roots of Illiberal Memory Politics: Remembering Women in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution,” Baltic Worlds 1 no. 4 (2017): 42-53, http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.016. Andrea Pető, “The Illiberal Memory Politics in Hungary,” Journal of Genocide Research 24, no. 2 (2022): 241-9, https://doi.org/10.108 0/14623528.2021.1968150

15 Appadurai, The Social Life of Things, 5.

political discourse around the globe, including in Eastern Europe.16 However, sustained analysis of the political uses of outrage has focused on North American and Western European contexts, sometimes leaving the impression that, as Berry and Sobieraj observe, “this kind of speech has deep roots in American media.”17 Such claims not only reduce the diversity and particularity of political cultures but also ignore the histories of empire and neo-colonialism that have yoked this diversity to various inequalities across the European space. Therefore, it remains a desideratum to demonstrate the rhetorical strategies through which outrage becomes a national style.

THE TRIPLE HILL RETURNS: LOCAL AND CITY INSIGNIA

In 1949, the Stalinist leader of the People’s Republic of Hungary, Ferenc Rákosi, banned use of the interwar era Hungarian coat of arms, which include the Triple Hill motif, as an ideologically objectionable irredentist symbol (Figure 3).18 Institutions that had supported historical research on coats of arms, like the Hungarian Heraldic and Genealogical Society, were liquidated as feudalistic and false fields of research. This branch of research was marginalized amid the new socialist government’s effort to monopolize ideological control of the production of professional knowledge.19 Use of this nationalist coat of arms was even

16 Alessandro Nai and Jürgen Maier, “The Wrath of Candidates. Drivers of Fear and Enthusiasm Appeals in Election Campaigns across the Globe,” Journal of Political Marketing (2021), 10.1080/15377857.2021.1930327. Kinga Polynczuk-Alenius, “At the Intersection of Racism and Nationalism: Theorising and Contextualising the ‘Anti-Immigration’ Discourse in Poland,” Nations and Nationalism 27 no. 3 (2021): 766-781, https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12611.

17 Berry and Sobieraj, The Outrage Industry, 7. See also Ruth Breeze, “Angry Tweets: A Corpus-Assisted Study of Anger in Populist Political Discourse,” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 8, no. 1. (2020): 118-145, https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00033.bre

18 Márta Gombócz, “Az Állami Szimbólumok Vátozásai a kelet-közép-éuropai áltokmányokban.” Jog-Állam-Politika 3 (2009): 18-28.

19 Trencsényi and Apor, in their review of post-War Hungarian historical research, write that, “From 1949 onwards, higher education became part of centralized planning. All aspects of university and college life came to be directed by the Ministry of Education, existing under various names. The authorized Party centers determined the goals and financial means for these institutions.” Balázs Trencsényi and Péter Apor, “Fine-Tuning the Polyphonic Past: Hungarian Historical Writing in the 1990s,” in Narratives Unbound: Historical studies in Post-Communist Eastern Europe, eds. B. Trencsényi and P. Apor (Budapest: CEU Press, 2007): 3-4, https://doi. org/10.1515/9786155211294.

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more strictly controlled after it became a symbol of the country’s 1956 anticommunist revolution.20

After 1956, Party First Secretary János Kádár, who took over after Rákosi was deposed, initiated a broad push to distance the state from the previous regime.21 One sign of this de-Stalinization was the state’s new insignia: a shield with the national colors topped by a red star. While in the 1970s Hungarians embraced national and local craft traditions to decorate their homes’ interiors, Fehérváry states that during this period the socialist state continued to evoke the ideology of building socialism out of a tabula rasa by constructing public squares with concrete and steel in generic and modern designs. The Kádár government’s insignia, which remained in use until 1989, did signal a subtle sense of deference to historical precedent (Figure 4). The post-1956 coat of arms, according to historian Lajos Rácz, “complied with heraldry’s oldest rule,” which stated that for the sake of contrast metal should not be placed upon metal, nor color upon color.22 The post-1989 state’s

20 Before the Soviet Union violently suppressed the uprising, student revolutionary leaders had called for readopting a version of the old coat of arms. In Gombócz’s words, “In the fall of 1956, one of the university students’ main acts was to replace hated and foreign symbols. They wanted to replace it with the coat of arms without the crown. That is, the Kossuth coat of arms. Gombócz, “Az Állami Szimbólumok Vátozásai a kelet-közép-éuropai áltokmányokban,” 23.

21 According to Trencsényi and Apor, “[T]he Kádár regime sought to generate an image of breaking with Stalinist schematism.” Trencsényi and Apor, “Fine-Tuning the Polyphonic Past,” 33.

22 Gombóc observes that, “This coat of arms only aligned with the rules of heraldry to the extent that it was in the shape of a shield in the national colors.” Gombócz, “Az Állami Szimbólumok Vátozásai a kelet-közép-éuropai áltokmányokban,” 23.

Figures 3 (left) and 4.

adoption of vernacular Organicism and its ideological valorization of the past was neither a complete about-face nor an act of pure appropriation by the state to take over a practice of informal domestic design.

Balázs Trencsényi and Péter Apor write that, in Hungarian historical research, the 1970s was “a period of re-thematization: more and more topics, previously treated schematically, were allowed to come to the fore.”23 As the liberalization of the Kádár regime was taking shape, historical research on coats of arms, a discipline that had been formerly marginalized as nationalist or irredentist, came to signal Hungary’s connections to “European” and “Western” historical traditions. Fortifying Hungary’s sense that it stood apart from the Eastern Bloc as an open and Western society, heraldic research was successfully reframed in an ideologically acceptable way. Coats of arms became a way to document the European context of Hungarian political phenomena and, on an institutional level, was shaped by knowledge transfers between Hungarian research institutions taking part in European academic joint ventures.24 Trencsényi and Apor observe that research about the aesthetics of pre-socialist political culture was no longer nationalist and irredentist but tolerated because it “came to place Hungary in a symbolic neighborhood that was more ‘respectable’ than the Eastern Bloc.”25

Amid this effort to reframe the meaning of ideologically objectionable historical topics within the changing contours of Cold War international politics and the broader to shift to undo Stalinist cultural uniformity, the Kádár regime’s Council of Ministers began allowing city and local governments to develop new and distinctive coats of arms. A jury of professionals working in a state-controlled professional research institute, the Lectorate of Fine and Applied Arts, was to approve all final designs. Municipal administrations employed heraldic professionals and historians to provide expert advice. Their counsel focused on developing images that tied communities’ distinctive character to their productive industries, labor

23 Trencsényi and Apor. “Fine-Tuning the Polyphonic Past,” 38.

24 Trencsényi and Apor, “Fine-Tuning the Polyphonic Past,” 6-7.

25 Trencsényi and Apor, “Fine-Tuning the Polyphonic Past,” 7.

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movement participation, and contributions to socialist economic development.26 In 1975, historian Endre Castiglione collected them in a widely published miniature handbook, The Coats of Arms of Hungarian Cities (A magyar városok címerei), which featured images evoking mining, manufacturing, and other forms of industrial labor.27

In the early 1970s, the Triple Hill motif reappeared briefly on Kecskemét city’s new coat of arms, but was removed following objections from county-level officials. The Kecskemét municipal government developed its new insignia from the city’s preWorld War II coat of arms, retaining a central motif of a white goat rising vertically from a base of three green-colored hills.28 Three years later, the Bács-Kiskun County’s central committee forbade all cities within the region from using local coats of arms until Kecskemét removed or altered its design.29 Prominent Hungarian poster artist and designer, Nándor Szilvásy, was working with the City Council to design the coat of arms. The final version used bold contrasting colors and the five hills were drawn with rough uneven lines, both hallmark features of the designer, Nándor Szilvásy, who had made a name as a poster artist using collage, expressionist forms, and abstraction to challenge the aesthetic dicta of strict socialist realism (Figure 5). The municipal government reinterpreted the shape in socialist terms as a symbol of Kecskemét’s distinctive local viticultural tradition.30

26 Pandula looks back in judgment on this development, writing, “This unjustified and incorrect practice was sharply criticized by representatives of the profession from the beginning.” This reflects the contemporary perspective of a right-wing intellectual, not the perspective of heraldry professionals working with the socialist regime at the time. See Attila Pandula, “Heraldika,” in Magyarország a XX. Században, Volume 5, Társadalomtudományok, ed. István Kollega Tarsoly (Szekszárd: Babits Kiadó, 1996-2000), p. 325-6.

27 Endre Castiglione, A agyar városok címerei (Budapest: Közgazdasági és Jogi Könyvkiadó, 1975).

28 In Hungarian, the word for goat, kecske, is part of the city’s name, Kecskemét. János Kozicz, Kecskemét címerei és zászlói (Keresztény Értelmiségiek Szövetsége: Kecskemét, 1996).

29 Kecskemet650.hu, “Kecskemét cimerének története,” accessed May 3, 2022, https://kecskemet650.hu/kecskemet-cimerenek-tortenete

30 Today, the heraldic historian István Bertényi, a member of the right-wing government-controlled Hungarian Academy of Sciences, uses his memory of this episode to distance himself from his involvement in the socialist-era government. See István Bertényi, A címertan reneszánsza. Tanulmányok (Budapest: Argumentum, 2010).

Figure 5.

Figure 6.

The Triple Hill shape became attached to a widely held desire for national sovereignty in the years immediately following the collapse of socialism. Several anthropologists and historians of Hungary have described how in the early 1990s Hungarians participated in public funerals as a form of political performance, using the state-sponsored reburials of composer Béla Bartok and politician Imre Nagy to bring together diverse political factions in Hungarian society.31 Using subtle rhetorical and aesthetic strategies, the various political factions began to differentiate themselves from each other after they had muted their differences for the sake of opposing János Kádár’s Communist regime. The Triple Hill motif was prominent at these events—it was on flags beside Imre Nagy’s coffin, for example—but this shape was not as controversial as others on these pennants.

On one side of the coffin was the coat of arms used during Hungary’s 1848 revolution against the Habsburg Empire and its official Catholic Church. In the 1990s, left-wing supporters of a constitutional and secular republican government viewed the 1848 revolution as a touchstone and model. On the other, there was the same insignia but with a crown where the double cross intersected with the Triple Hill. The crown was associated with the imperial government of Hungary’s found-

31 Susan Gál, “Bartók’s Funeral: Representations of Europe in Hungarian Political Rhetoric,” American Ethnologist 18, no. 3 (1991): 440-458, https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1991.18.3.02a00020

Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).

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ing monarch, King Stephen (975-1038). Hungary’s post-socialist political conservatives hailed King Stephen, especially his close relationship with the Catholic Church hierarchy (Figure 6).32 A year later, the state crest was the topic of one of the Hungarian parliament’s first public debates. Representatives debated whether to adopt the coat of arms with King Stephen’s crown or the crownless “Kossuth” crest, named for the leader of the 1848 republican revolution Lajos Kossuth (Figure 7).33 The former insignia received an overwhelming vote in the new post-socialist parliament, but the Fidesz Party fraction voted for the republican Kossuth crest. At the time, according to historian Karl Benziger, Fidesz had not yet transformed itself into the conservative and Christian nationalist party that it is today. In fact, Fidesz’s fraction argued that the Kossuth crest was preferable to the King Stephen insignia because the latter’s association with Catholicism would be a violation of the principle of separating church and state, and also lead non-Catholics to feel excluded from the state.34 While the crown signaled contradictory republican and imperial historical roots for Hungary’s government, the Triple Hill motif was present on both coats of arms and did not spark as much heated commentary as the crown.

THE TRIPLE HILL AT OUR LADY OF CSÍKSOMLYÓ

While the Kecskemét Triple Hill motif exemplified the growth of the Hungarian consumer economy and Hungarians’ openness to the West—designer Nándor Szilvásy became popular making tourism posters and was influenced by Western art movements like abstract expressionism and surrealism—today the Triple Hill

32 In Rainer’s words, the former republican crest commemorated “the late-modern democratic and independence movements,” while the latter emphasized “the thousand-year-old historical continuity of the Hungarian state.” János Rainer, “Contemporary History Discourses in Hungary after 1989,” Institute of National Remembrance Review 2 (2020): 263–283.

33 Originally, the idea was to hold a referendum on the issue. Even the date was fixed for January 7, 1990, but the referendum never materialized.

34 Karl P. Benziger, “Imre Nagy, Martyr of the Nation: Contested Memory and Social Cohesion,” East European Quarterly 36, no. 2 (2002): 171-190.

Figure 7.

image is associated with Organicism, a highly nationalistic aesthetic movement. The architect Imre Makovecz played a large role in fostering this blind spot in Hungary’s historical memory. In 1996, he completed Our Lady of Csíksomlyó’s Triple Hill-inspired commission, currently the most famous example of public architecture featuring this motif and, in the words of one journalist, “the most important Hungarian pilgrimage site’s most significant location.”35

Despite being celebrated as a founding example of Triple Hill architecture, Makovecz visited the site only once in his life. Fifteen years after his shrine was finished, he finally went to the Our Lady of Csíksomlyó shrine, which is nearly twelve hours by train from Budapest where Makovcz lived and worked. Yet as Arjun Appadurai observes efforts to convey commodities into unfamiliar patterns of circulation are often destabilized by ignorance or structurally mediated discontinuities of knowledge.36 The terms of Appadurai’s analysis of ignorance’s role in the strategic politics of value are more apt to North American and Western European societies where cultural production is mediated through the market. In post-socialist Hungary, state and nationalist ideology mediated the work of conveying the Triple Hill motif into new patterns of circulation. Go-betweens did not mediate Transylvanian Hungarians’ ignorance of consumer desire, but rather their ignorance of state ideologies and political relationships in Hungary. On the other side, Makovecz himself was unfamiliar with the politics of cultural production at Csíksomlyó when began work on the project in 1996; he had never visited Romania and had little direct knowledge of Transylvania’s Catholic Church and Franciscan Order, and their relationships with Romanian government institutions that permitted new construction projects.

Makovecz was dependent on local actors to execute the Triple Hill altar, and not just on the local craft experts whom the architect was famous for using to build his projects. While journalists often mention the stone and wood carvers who executed Makovecz’s plans, they also celebrate three key figures who helped Makovecz navigate the bureaucratic process required to execute the project: a Transylvanian

35 Lóránt Szőcs, “Ha esik, ha hull, nekik ott misézniük kell,” Szekelyhon.ro, May 17, 2013, https:// szekelyhon.ro/aktualis/csikszek/ha-esik-ha-hull-nekik-ott-misezniuk-kell..

36 Appadurai, The Social Life of Things, 41.

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diocesan priest, Father Pál; local architect, Ernő Bogos; and a leader in the Franciscan Order, Father Albert Bartók. In the process of marshaling financial resources from Hungary and utilizing their knowledge of the Romanian state bureaucracy, they also marginalized a third local figure, Father Márk József. Just as importantly, they marginalized a particular vision for the ongoing Szekler cultural revival. Between 1990 and 1992, annual attendance at the shrine’s Pentecost pilgrimage event grew from ten thousand to several hundred thousand. The two priests in residence at Csíksomlyó initially welcomed pilgrims at the church’s front doors, registering each group throughout the day with a break for the main pilgrimage Mass at noon.37 In 1993, The Franciscan Order, consulting with Transylvania’s Catholic bishop, decided to move the noon Mass to an open-air amphitheater above the shrine church. In the weeks before the 1993 pilgrimage event, Father József used a tractor to go back and forth to the amphitheater, carrying materials of wood and metal that he used to build a small altar.38

In an interview I conducted with Father József, he recalled not only the decision to relocate the pilgrimage Mass but also his effort to build an altar for celebrating the Mass. “We decided to hold the pilgrimage up on the hill,” he explained, “because the attendees didn’t fit in the church. We built a small altar dais, a small house, and placed it so that the attendees would be able to see. And then when they arrived, we told people to go out there.”

While Father József uses the same neutral term, “altar dais” (oltáremelvény), in a 2010 post to his personal blog, speaking in 1993 to a Hungarian ethnologist, Father József gave the structure a different name, kaliba (Figure 8).

A kaliba is a small house that Szekler farmers build on outlying hay meadows so that, in the time before mechanized transportation, they did not have to spend valuable time walking back to a village home during busy haymaking season. With the rise of village tourism, the kaliba has become a valuable symbol of rural authenticity and Szekler cultural identity. Speaking to a Hungarian ethnologist in 1993,

37 Tamás Mohay, “A csíksomlyói kegyhely és búcsújárás a 20. század második felében,” PhD diss., (MTA, 2020), 178.

38 Mohay, “A csíksomlyói kegyhely,” 173.

Figure 8.

Father József was pleased to compare his altar to a kaliba. “We have recently built a small altar,” he told the researcher, “Some have called it a kaliba. It looks just like a kaliba. It’s got a nice view [just like a kaliba]. [I placed it there because] it has such a nice view of the entire area.”39

To Father Pál, who became involved in the project as a go-between with Hungarian government funders, the early altar was not only impractical but also undignified.40 He has never publicly tied Father József’s structure to Szekler culture by calling it kaliba. In a 2007 newspaper article, he recalled the decision to hold the 1993 pilgrimage in the open-air amphitheater but complained about Father József’s structure. “For two years, we celebrated Mass underneath umbrellas,” he grumbled, “We felt that we should have some kind of more serious structure, which would convey a kind of respect.”41 Father Pál, whom the architect Bogos called an

39 See also István Sarány, “Huszonöt éve tartják a két Somlyó hegye közti nyeregben a zarándoklatot,” Hargita Népe, May 19, 2018, https://hargitanepe.ro/huszonot-eve-tartjak-a-ket-somlyo-hegye-kozti-nyeregben-a-zarandoklatot

40 He had already risen to prominence by founding an orphanage network that combated ethnic assimilation by keeping Hungarian children out of the Romanian state orphanage system.

41 Judith Székely, “Imákkal megszentelt hely,” Csíki hírlap, May 17, 2013, https://www.magnificat.ro/ portal/index.php/hu/koezoes-ertekeink/75-szent/szent-helyek/624-imal-megszentelt-hely.

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Airplane Hangars and Triple Hills: Renovation, Demolition, and the Architectural Politics of Local Belonging at the Our Lady of Csíksomlyó Hungarian National Shrine

important “go-between,” began the process by raising the idea of a Triple Hillshaped altar in a meeting with Makovecz. Father Pál also instructed Makovecz to make the altar dais multifunctional. At the time, he was also in discussions with a Hungarian composer to organize a performance of Stephen the King, a popular 1970s Hungarian rock opera, at the Csíksomlyó shrine.

While many online commentators imagined Makovecz “rolling over in his grave” and expressed outrage that one of his “original works” was being ruined, Makovecz did not actually complete the design for the Triple Hill altar. Bogos, the architect from Miercurea Ciuc, created the design while studying under Makovecz in Hungary. In the end, Makovecz and Bogos came down in favor of the King Stephen version of the Hungarian state steal. They affixed a wooden crown to the base of the cross where it meets the roof that mimics the Triple Hill shape (Figure 9). While they thus allied the shrine with Hungarian political conservatives who traced the roots of the state to King Stephen and the Catholic Church, the specifics of Makovecz’s design were not especially fraught or controversial. In the early 1990s, Makovecz founded a professional artistic institution called the “Makovecz Wandering Institute” (Makovecz Vándoriskola). Part of a broad revival of interest in the institutions of the pre-socialist Hungarian polgár class (equivalent of the German

Figure 9.

“Bürger” class), the Makovecz Wandering Institute was patterned after a medieval “guild” that gave opportunities for young post-graduate architects to study with established masters.42

The Makovecz Wandering Institute was specifically designed to reproduce Makovecz’s signature Organicist style.43 Makovecz wanted these guilds not only to recover the historical political and cultural dispositions needed to renew Hungary for the post-socialist age, but also to create a system of intellectual reproduction that would withstand external colonization. In Makovecz’s words, “[It should] withstand internal and external gales and the stars’ change of color from red to the twelve yellow ones [in the European Union flag].”44 As a young architectural student in the 1980s, Bogos would have had limited contact with the Szekler cultural revival, which was focused on other aesthetic forms. While the 1970s push to create a national socialist culture in Romania led to new production in fields like ethnology, music, and dance, other fields like architecture were still dominated by socialism’s modernist cube and concrete design. Bogos first came under the sway of anti-socialist artistic trends by designing the Triple Hill altar to satisfy the Makovecz Wandering Institute’s graduation requirement: completed plans for a Makovecz-inspired structure.45

In the mid-1990s, as the plan for installing Makovecz’s altar was getting underway, the Franciscan Order was still trying to secure ownership of the amphitheater space they were using for the annual Pentecost pilgrimage Mass. In 1948, Romania’s Communist government had dispossessed the Franciscan Order of most of its property. While the Franciscan Order had not owned the amphitheater in 1948, Father Bartók requested ownership from government officials overseeing the restoration of church property when the Order began using the amphitheater for

42 Fehérváry writes, “Here the notion of polgárosodás (embourgeoisement) was used to mean eradicating mentalities of entitlement and dependence on the state, reforming slack work habits, and fostering risk taking, economic autonomy, and entrepreneurial activities, as well as civic responsibility.” Fehérváry, Politics in Color and Concrete, 152.

43 According to the Institute’s mission statement, “The Wandering Institute guarantees the practice, popularization, and pedagogy of Hungarian Organicist Architecture.”

44 Vandoriskola.hu, “20 éves a Kós Károly Egyesülés,” accessed May 5, 2019, https://vandoriskola.hu/ hu/iskola-mesterek.

45 Orszagepito.net, “Vándoriskola,” accessed May 4, 2019, https://orszagepito.net/nevjegy/vandoriskola.

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the Pentecost Mass. According to the ethnologist Tamás Mohay, “He was guided by the notion that might have need of this land as its own real estate to use for the pilgrimage. He felt that no one should be allowed to build on the area, and that the Order should be able to guard its use.”46 Father Bartók placed a request with the Harghita County officials overseeing the restitution of church property. In the end, Bartók ended up bargaining and bartering with the government. He offered the Miercurea Ciuc city administration agricultural land that the Order had once used for growing hay in return for the amphitheater space.47

Bártok’s willingness to parlay with Romanian government officials stands in stark contrast to Father Pál’s public statements about defending the altar against Romanian threats. On the tenth anniversary of the Triple Hill altar’s construction, Father Pál told a regional newspaper about a tense encounter with an unnamed official from the Romanian office of heritage protection. “After the Triple Hill altar was completed, some group of heritage officials visited from Bucharest.”48 Father Pál recalled that they were especially offended by the Tiple Hill shape, because they recognized it from the Hungarian state coat of arms. “They said it was not appropriate to the landscape and too close to other heritage-protected monuments.”49 Father Pál claimed that the latter, in particular, was an invention to justify the officials’ demand to tear down the new altar. In the article, Father Pál does not explicate exactly who deflected this demand or how it was accomplished. He skips ahead to the current state of affairs, saying simply that the altar remains at the site. He implies not only that the Romanian government is antipathetic toward Hungarian cultural initiatives at Csíksomlyó, but also that he played an agentive role in thwarting the Romanian state’s attacks. With no identifiable information given to the officials and no exact dates or locations for Father Pál’s encounter with them, the story is empirically unverifiable but emotionally affecting—evoking both fear of aggressors and pride in defenders—for the newspaper’s audience of ethnic minority Hungarian readers.

46 Mohay, “A csíksomlyói kegyhely,” 176.

47 Mohay, “A csíksomlyói kegyhely,” 175.

48 Székely, “Imákkal megszentelt hely.”

49 Székely, “Imákkal megszentelt hely.”

By the time I arrived at Csíksomlyó for fieldwork in 2009, Father Pál’s involvement in building the Triple Hill altar had earned him the ire of many former colleagues in the Catholic Church. Tainted reputations and shifting patterns of circulation are often linked. “The diversion of commodities from their customary paths always carries a risky and morally ambiguous aura,” Appadurai argues.50 When I spoke with Miercurea Ciuc’s lead priest, he criticized Father Pál for putting a plaque on the Triple Hill altar calling attention to the role he played in its construction. The priest called the plaque a sign of Father Pál personal “itch” (viszketni) to call attention to himself. Father József, in an article he wrote for the Csíksomlyó shrine’s official website, objected to a plaque that Father Pál had affixed to the altar. “It was Father Pál,” the monk complained, “who put up a plaque saying that ‘the Csíksomlyó parish council built’ the Trimount Altar. But the plaque is inadequate, because it forgets to say, based on whose donations?” Father Márk went on to state that, in fact, the Catholic Church in Hungary had donated the most. Strategic efforts to move commodities across spheres, though often perceived to be a violation of a “moral economy,” are at the heart of what Appadurai calls “the politics of value.”51 Father Pál’s reputation for self-serving manipulation was attached to how he strategically conveyed the Triple Hill shape into a new context after the fall of socialism, helping to renew its political effectiveness and usefulness in moving government officials to support Transylvanian Hungarian communities. Father Pál gained significant fame and influence, but also envy and ire by taking advantage of the changed political context for funding cultural production and conveying the Triple Hill shape into a structure of stone, earth, and wood.

PAPAL DESIGN, OUTRAGE ONLINE

Two months before the pope visited Csíksomlyó, Transylvania’s Franciscan Order used its official Facebook page to publish plans for the white sheet-metal covering over Makovecz’s Triple Hill altar. The announcement appeared on the day after Holy Week, the series of holidays culminating in Easter as the holiest day in the Christian calendar. The timing of the announcement was perhaps strategic, since

50 Appadurai, The Social Life of Things, 27. 51 Appadurai, The Social Life of Things, 26.

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the post-Easter period is a time of exhaustion in the Catholic Church. After believers have spent a full week paying close attention to events in the Church, many turn their attention to other matters. If the Franciscan Order hoped to mute the response to the renovations, the post-Easter period was the right time to release their plans.

The 225 individual comments on the Franciscan Order’s Facebook post were swift and overwhelming. Nearly three hundred comments appeared below the Facebook post. According to the Transindex.ro news website, a mainstream media outlet that nevertheless used ripost.hu’s tabloid-style terms, the designs caused a “small uproar” (kisebb felháborodás), with most commentators criticizing “the metal roof covering the stage.”52 Some used outrage discourse’s crude and profane language to defend a threatened Hungarian national aesthetic. András Aklecov wrote that, “It’s clear that for the pope Hungarian design just a big turd.”

Others said the roof was the imposition of an external and generic colonizing material culture. “This is why they have borders,” Gyöngyver Gyöngyössy wrote, “which shouldn’t be crossed. So that they don’t insult our inheritance like this.” One writer used the phrase, “papal invasion” to describe Francis’s visit to Csíksomlyó. Authors complained by comparing it to an airplane hangar, a bus stop, and a garage. Others said it resembled a football stadium, that infrastructural emblem of modern consumer culture. Others complained about the neutral and indifferent impression it left. It was also a sign of modernity’s aesthetic impoverishment. Gyöző Petres called the roof a “vile and inconsiderate modern abomination.” According to the ripost.hu author, another critic grudgingly wrote, “Fine, it’s practical, but it’s also nasty and not appropriate for the landscape.” The final design thus signaled modern mass production’s valorization of form over function.

Observers not only took offense at the design, but used this opportunity to express their criticisms in a Szekler style. After the news broke in September that the roof addition would be permanent, some said they were complaining on Szeklers’ behalf. “Even during the papal visit, the Szeklers and the pilgrims found the covering

52 Norbert Timár, “Megy vagy marad a fémtető? Sokaknak nem tetszik a Hármashalom oltár átalakítása,” Transindex, April 25, 2019, https://eletmod.transindex.ro/?cikk=27777.

ugly, crude, and inappropriate to the landscape,” one individual wrote.53 Another critic claimed the covering had ruined the pilgrimage for him. “It’s good that I’ve already been to the amphitheater,” Zoltán Zsolt Vig claimed, “because if they leave this abomination there for sure I’m never going to back.” Vig finished by quoting the opening words of the Szekler national anthem, “Who knoweth where, O where our destiny shall be?”

Others evoked their identification with Szeklerness in subtler ways, using Szekler slang expressions in their complaints. “They’re covering over the national character of the altar just for the papal visit,” another observer stated before using a slang expression to speculate about the Church’s motives: “I reckon that mayhaps the Triple Hill offends the eyes of the Eucharist?”54 The commentator used rural Szekler expression to invoke a complex theological notion that the Eucharist is the real presence of Christ. According to Catholic theological doctrine, a priest’s act of blessing the Eucharist transforms ontologically the bread and wine into the real presence of Jesus Christ’s body and blood; but the commentator suggests that the Church wants to cover the altar so that Jesus will not take offense at the shape of this Hungarian national symbol. For this individual, the controversy evoked a conflict between Hungarian aesthetic values and the Church’s liturgical theology, but did so by offering an opportunity to imagine a concretely embodied encounter between Jesus and Hungarian aesthetics. Jesus has eyes to express distaste for the Triple Hill shape.

Gyula Ede Sztuflák invoked an influential Hungarian architect, Károly Kos, who became famous for creating a Szekler design style during the post-World War I period. Sprinkling his commentary with phrases in all capital letters, as if shouting, Sztuflák insisted that Szeklers should learn a lesson from the affair. He quoted Kos’s disgusted reaction at a new fad for modernizing church buildings that appeared in the early 1900s. The quotation came from a regional newspaper in one of Transylvania’s Szekler areas. Although Kos complained about one renovat-

53 Ripost.hu, “Botrány Csíksomlyón: ezért akadtak ki a hívők,” September 1, 2019, https://ripost.hu/ harcel/2019/09/botrany-csiksomlyon-ezert-akadtak-ki-a-hivok

54 Siculus, May 1, 2019, comment on Barabás, “Csak a pápalátogatás idejére födik be a Hármashalom oltárt.” In Hungarian, “Ejsze tán sérti a szemét őszentségének a hármashalom?”

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ed church in particular, Sztuflák concluded that the local Szekler community had learned its lesson and repaired the roof in a traditional style.

The altar’s new covering not only materialized a conflict between universal Catholic theology and particular Hungarian aesthetic motifs, but also allowed observers to engage unresolved and enduring questions about the nature of the Church and the pope’s identity. Following the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (196265), many in the Catholic Church embraced a less clergy-centered and hierarchical vision of the Church, which was supposed to become far more communal. The metaphor of pilgrimage, as in the phrase “pilgrim Church,” evoked the idea that the Catholic Church was not only capable of progress and change but also a democratic community. The way of following Jesus was symbolized by the collective direction of the pilgrimage group.

Commentators on the altar renovations wondered if the pope would live up to the image of the pilgrims who visit to Csíksomlyó. The new altar covering suggested otherwise, since pilgrims are often subject to the weather in the outdoor amphitheater and the roof was supposed to protect the pope from the rain. Affecting mock pity, one commentator pretended to worry about the pope’s getting wet: “Poor little pope,” the individual wrote, “what will happen if he gets soaked!” To this commentator, the pope’s unwillingness to get wet signaled his secret undemocratic inclinations: “Jesus gathered to himself neither an audience, nor a group of spectators, nor a sympathetic crowd, but rather followers!” The commentator thus mobilized a contradiction resulting from post-Vatican II discourse about lay leadership and the use of rituals like pilgrimage and the Mass to exemplify a newly democratic Catholic Church. Rituals like pilgrimage are valuable for their emphasis on popular engagement and participation, but the Mass that is supposed to sanctify these events also requires priests to perform acts like transforming bread and wine into the real presence of Jesus Christ—acts that are forbidden to everyone else.

Some claimed the demand to cover the altar was a sign of the pope’s hypocrisy in this matter: “Why is such a fuss necessary for a papal visit? It’s as if he’s not just

a person like everyone else.”55 The pope visited a pilgrimage site to show he was just another human believer, but celebrated the Mass at Our Lady of Csíksomlyó, a ritual that highlighted his distinctive ontological authority to instantiate the real presence of Jesus Christ on earth. The roof became a way to engage this fundamental social and ontological contradiction of post-Vatican II Catholicism.

CONCLUSION

During its twelve years in power, Hungary’s right-wing government, led by Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz Party, has spent lavishly on public architecture. The government has paid for over thirty public monuments across the country, all with the distinctive Triple Hill architectural form. The Triple Hill has been especially popular in structures memorializing the hundred-year anniversary of the Treaty of Trianon, which dissolved the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I. Areas formerly controlled by Hungary were transferred to the Empire’s various successor nation-states, some of which like Romania inherited significant populations of Hungarian-speaking minorities. Most observers of Hungarian politics have interpreted these Triple Hill monuments as signals of Hungary’s abiding irredentist desires, its continuing use of political tactics toward the goal of revising post-World War I borders.

I have tried to destabilize this interpretation with a historical analysis of the Triple Hill motif’s trajectories across borders and political economic systems. My goal has been to recover some of the diversity of meanings attached to this aesthetic form in contemporary Hungarian public culture. Not simply a symbol of right-wing political aspirations, in the 1970s the Kecskemét city government used the Triple Hill motif to take part haltingly in the process of de-Stalinizing Hungary’s public culture. The Triple Hill motif proved flexible enough to survive rematerialization into the favored natural media of Hungary’s Organicist architectural movement. The process of building Imre Makovecz’s Triple Hill-inspired altar at Our Lady of Csíksomlyó—a structure Makovecz did not see in person for a decade after it was built—made Makovecz’s partial knowledge of Transylvania’s ethnic minority cul-

55 Barabás, “Csak a pápalátogatás idejére.”

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tural politics into a problem. To obtain funding for the project, the shrine’s Franciscan caretakers also needed to navigate political institutions in Hungary whose inner workings were largely unfamiliar to them. Go-betweens like the local Hungarian priest, Father Pál, leveraged knowledge of Hungarian political institutions to come to their aid. In the process of bringing the Triple Hill motif to Csíksomlyó, Father Pál gained a reputation for opportunism, selfishness, and moral ambiguity that bred resentment among his clerical colleagues.

The Triple Hill motif is also a threatened symbol of Hungarian material culture, at least for those who participated in the outraged reaction to the proposed renovation of Imre Makovecz’s Triple Hill altar at Our Lady of Csíksomlyó. Pope Francis’s visit to Csíksomlyó raised anxieties about Hungarians’ vulnerability to foreign and alienating material cultures. These anxieties were in turn rooted in the pride that Hungarians’ felt in the late socialist period when they were the envy of the Eastern Bloc and a Western-leaning consumer paradise. The fall of socialism ushered in a profound adjustment of identity that only contributed to a tendency to read national and international politics through the lens of consumer culture. The Vatican’s insistence on covering Makovecz’s altar thus played into Hungarians’ pre-existing political anxieties about dominating material cultures.

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