Thanksgiving, African Style

Before anything else, a blessed and Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the States, and to those you love and serve so well day in and day out. And as gratitude goes from this end, for the grace of getting away with doing lo these many years, no words could ever say thanks enough.Back to the news, it's 8pm in East Africa, and the Pope's wrapping up the first full day of his first-ever trek to the continent – a weeklong, three-country tour set to intensify toward its final stop in the violence-ridden Central African Republic, the first papal visit in recent memory into an active war zone.In the meantime, Francis' first major event of the tour came this morning in Nairobi, long one of the de facto capitals of a burgeoning African church, and today home to some 3 million Catholics who form a bulk of the population in Kenya's capital. (For context, the continent's largest diocese – Kinshasa, capital of the once Belgian-colonial Democratic Republic of the Congo – now boasts some 6 million faithful, a nearly six-fold increase since 1980.)Lest anyone forgot, Eucharist means "thanksgiving," so especially in the spirit of this holiday, here's fullvid of this morning's muddy yet exuberant Mass on the grounds of Kenya's national university, which – as with the opening liturgies of Francis' visits to Latin America and the US in September – was dedicated to the evangelization of peoples and boosting the church's "missionary impulse" in the vein of Evangelii gaudium, which marks its second anniversary of release this week:And tonight, on a soccer field, the Pope's meeting with the country's clergy and religious, at which the Pope (again) ditched his prepared text to speak off-the-cuff, with English translation:More as the weekend ensues. For now, again, a beautiful Thanksgiving to one and all.-30-