A History of Catholicism in Wolaita

Abstract This thesis is a study of Catholic religion in Wolaita. It was mainly introduced to Wolaita from the 1920s. Catholicism evolved in Wolaita during the period of 1920s to till now. Catholicism in Ethiopia has a long history. After the division of the Churches in the 5th century following the Council of Chalcedon (451) the Ethiopian Church was doctrinally separated from the Catholic Church in the West and also later largely isolated from contacts with it. The attempt to win Ethiopia to Catholicism in the reign of Susenyos ended in disastrous failure and it was not until the 19th century that Catholicism gained a rather precarious foothold in Ethiopia. Starting from the 1920s it was able to make progress and my thesis and studies tries to show how it progressed from the1920s in Wolaita. In spite of this, however, it has so far received inadequate scholarly attention. Even the small numbers of studies on Catholicism are limited and fragmented. My thesis tries to give a comprehensive coverage of Catholicism in Wolaita and as a major aim, to put Catholicism from the 1920s to present into the social and political context of Wolaita. Social history, often called the new social history, (though it is no longer new) is a broad branch of history that studies the experiences of ordinary people in the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments including religious history. “The spirit of the 1960s social history responding in its own way to the „winds of change , " was pre-eminently a modernizing one, both chronologically, in the choice of historical subject matter, and methodologically, in the adoption of multi-disciplinary perspectives.” Therefore, present social history themes vary much more. The history of religion refers to the record of human religious experiences and ideas. My study therefore, is meant to fill the gap in the field of socio-cultural and religious history of Wolaita. In addition, this thesis can also, hopefully, contribute to the study of southern peoples and various Vicariates of Ethiopia, particularly the neighbors of Wolaita.