“If I hadn’t gone to Africa, I would be living a lie.”

His Eminence Metropolitan Gregory of Cameroon was in Thessaloniki, as a guest of the Orthodox Missionary Fraternity. Drawing from his 21 years of continuous presence in Cameroon, he shared with the audience his experience of missionary work in sub-Saharan Africa, a work which, as he emphatically stressed, confronts us with challenges identical to those of the early Church around 160 AD.

His Eminence refuted the myth of ‘uncivilized Africa,’ calling it ‘a bad myth and slander.’ The continent’s thousands of tribes—230 in Cameroon alone, 550 in neighboring Nigeria—carry ancient civilizations with burial rituals, poetry, music, and theology. As an example, he cited the Fayum portraits: the soul, they believed, needed to recognize its body to return to it. ‘There is a theology behind this.’

His reference to the Belgian Congo and Leopold II, who acquired the entire country as personal property in exchange for colored fabrics, caused a particular stir! In the rubber plantations he established, those who did not meet the daily harvest quotas were punished by having their hands amputated! ‘So many hands were cut off that it became a unit of measurement,’ His Eminence said. At the same time, Africans were exhibited in European zoos as ‘curious animals’!

Deep emotion was evoked by the mention of Jomo Kenyatta and Archbishop Makarios III of Cyprus, whose friendship was forged when they were exiled together by British colonialists, and which went down in history with the concession of Riruta Hill outside Nairobi, which developed into the center of systematic Orthodox work in Kenya.

Referring to the contemporary religious landscape, His Eminence pointed out the advance of the ‘Prosperity Gospel,’ the Protestant theology that promises material prosperity to believers, as well as the subscription-based Protestant churches that dominate the African continent. Opposed to all this is the self-sacrificing character of Orthodoxy: ‘Life goes through many difficulties; and if it goes through ease, you should be afraid.’

Regarding the method of Mission, His Eminence revealed that he always begins with chapters 5 to 7 of the Gospel according to Matthew, that is, with the Sermon on the Mount. ‘If the entire Gospel had been lost and only these three chapters remained, they could balance everything.’ Mission, he emphasized, is not exhausted in a quick baptism but requires a permanent presence and practical example: ‘If I preach the Gospel and live a different life, I immediately undermine it.’

The speech concluded with a personal confession: “If I hadn’t gone to Cameroon, I would be living a lie, the lie that the world is what I have known” in Greece of “99% Orthodox.” And he concluded with a symbolic image: “Stepping outside the borders of your homeland, you become a negligible minority. But this minority, if it truly works for Christ, is the leaven that can leaven the whole batch of flour.”