The Zairian Rite originated in the post-colonial movement to reclaim African identity and spirituality in Christian worship, inspired by the late Cardinal Joseph Malula’s 1959 call for an Africanized liturgy. Since 1961, the Episcopal conference of Congo – CENCO had come to the agreement of having the Church in Congo to be evangelized in a deeper way; meaning, to use the inculturation in order to make people understand the message of the Good News while seeing their own cultures playing an important part in it. This option led them to the elaboration of a project of a text for Mass, bringing in some elements of Congolese cultures, with the aim of having a “Congolese Rite“. This happened in 1969, under the guidance of the Episcopal Commission for the Evangelization.
The development of the Zairian Rite was closely tied to authenticité, a national movement led by the DRC (then Zaire) former president Mobutu Sese Seko to affirm African heritage and cultural pride. The liturgy reflects not just aesthetic changes but a deeper symbolic worldview that places African traditions in conversation with the mystery of the Eucharist.
For ten years, this project was being tested countrywide, with the intention of allowing each and every culture to make corrections and bring in new elements according to the customs. The year 1979 was the year that the experimentations were compiled and presented to Rome. From 1979 to 1985, there took place discussions, corrections, and modifications about the proposed “Congolese Rite”, and in 1985, the Congregation for the Divine worship ended up suggesting some corrections to be made.
This ritual possesses a historical background: it is the result of missionary evangelization efforts, beginning with the initial evangelization conducted by the Portuguese and followed by the subsequent evangelization carried out by Belgian missionaries. Within this context, two significant documents warrant attention: The first one by Pope Benedict XV, who in the apostolic letter Maximum illud published on 30 November 1919, quoting Mk 16:15, gives recommendations to missionaries, asking them to bring the Gospel, not Europe, to their missions.
The Gospel must be preached with care in order to reach the soul of the people; this is a process of inculturation, already begun by Rome.
Then there is the Second Vatican Council, especially with the document Sacrosanctum Concilium, which strongly pushed for the liturgy to be closer to the people. This document had already defined the iter to be followed, or, in other words, how to proceed so that the liturgy is adapted to the life, the genius of the people.
After the Council, the bishops of Zaire (actual DRC) began to reread all the Council documents, including Lumen Gentium, Gaudium et Spes and Sacrosanctum Concilium, to examine the possibility of applying and adapting them to the context of the country. To do so, they came up with ideas of “Theology Weeks” a series of discussions and studies by the Episcopal Conference of Zaire, focusing on inculturation of the liturgy, particularly in preparation for the Zairian Rite, a localized form of the Roman Rite. These sessions took place at the theology faculty of Lovanium University, currently the University of Kinshasa.
In 1969, immediately after the publication of the Roman Missal in the wake of Vatican II, the Episcopal Conference of Zaire submitted a draft of the Missal readapted for the celebration of Mass according to the Congolese style, at the instigation of the late Cardinal J. Malula, who had been appointed a member of the Liturgical Preparatory Commission for the Second Vatican Council by Pope John XXIII.
The project was presented to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. After almost 20 years of dialogue, exchange and study, the ad experimentum Missal was transformed into the definitive Missal accepted by Rome on 30 April 1988; with a modification of title that became: “Le Missel Romain pour les Dioceses du Zaire”.