By David Willey
BBC News, Rome
**Pope Benedict is to open a three-week gathering of African bishops with a Mass in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome.**The Synod on Africa is aimed at discussing the continent’s social and economic problems.
The Catholic Church is growing faster in Africa than in any other part of the world, nearly trebling in size to 150 million followers over 30 years.
It will be the second synod of bishops organised at the Vatican to be devoted specifically to the problems of Africa.
The last one took place in 1994 at the very moment when the Rwandan genocide was beginning, but turned out to be little more than a talking shop.
This time Pope Benedict, who earlier this year visited two African countries, Cameroon and Angola, will sit in during three weeks of discussions among his African bishops on the social and economic problems of the continent.
Resources plundered
An editorial in the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano published on the eve of the synod complained that Africa’s natural resources were being plundered with the complicity of the continent’s ruling elite.
Among the experts invited by the Pope to address the synod - which has only advisory powers - will be the former head of the joint UN/African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur.
In a preparatory meeting in Rome, Burundian Dominican priest Father Emmanuel Ntakarutimana said that the four most heavily Christian nations in Africa - Burundi, Rwanda, the DR Congo and Congo Brazzaville - had also seen the worst carnage during the past two decades and generated tens of millions of refugees.
Catholic missionaries want to see the church more involved in training peacemakers.