90 I Journal of Global Initiatives African Catholicism and the Diaspora Phenomenon: A Socio-Political Analysis of African Priests in the Diaspora

Religious agents, including Catholic priests, are no exception with regards to involvement in the diaspora phenomenon. Among them, especially in the most recent time, are those who, for the purposes of this paper, are identified as "African Catholic priest-diasporas " (African priest diasporas, for short); that is, those Catholic priests from Africa who, for a variety of reasons, relocated from the continent to reside in a foreign country where they exercise their priestly ministry. This new and growing group of diasporas obviously forms part of the "African Diasporas"-a group African Union (AU) considers as Africa's "sixth region " (Auma, 2009). The paper argues that the specificity of the African priest-diasporas cannot be told and understood outside of a context, namely: the situation of African Catholicism in the face of the continent's socio-political and economic predicaments