The Rise and Downfall of a Marial Cult: Media and Religious Competition in Contemporary Kinshasa

During the mid-1990s, many Kinois (inhabitants of Kinshasa) turned to Brother Raphael, a man in his late twenties, who had been receiving messages from the Virgin Mary since the late 1980s announcing the violence in the eastern part of the country and also offering strategies to counter it. Topicalizing warfare and urban moral decay, crucial issues in the experience of postcolonial Congolese, Brother Raphael quickly gained much authority in religious and political circles. The compound in which he grew up and where the Virgin visited him soon turned into a sacred space where large groups of followers, academics and leading and aspiring politicians included, prayed, venerated the Virgin, and asked Brother Raphael for spiritual guidance. Yet, conflicts with the Congolese Catholic authorities, and a media ban, announced by the Congolese Catholic Church board in the early 2000s, eclipsed Brother Raphael totally from the public scene, and, in addition, the increasing appeal of Pentecostal churches marginalized this cult, leaving the sacred compound nowadays almost empty. Despite the prohibition to appear on radio and television, Brother Raphael has not ceased to mobilize various other media, in particular photography, print media, statuettes and natural objects (in particular trees and water), to spread the message of the Virgin Mary, to evidence his privileged relation with the Otherworldly, and to attract new followers. This paper takes this marial cult as a privileged entry point to understand religious competition within Kinshasa’s Christianity and will focus on three different technologies of mediation employed or contested by various players in this conflict (the Congolese Catholic Board, non-believers, Brother Raphael and his followers): first, Mary, Jesus and saints as privileged channels of divine messages; second, public broadcasting; and third, charms and mystical objects (natural objects, statuettes, photographs and print media).status: publishe