Africa’s oldest surviving Catholic church is under threat

Its survival down the centuries is a miracle worthy almost of Francis Xavier, its patron saint. The tiny chapel in Malindi, an ancient port on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast, is believed to date to the turn of the 16th century, when Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese explorer, arrived on his way to India. He left some of his crew behind to establish a trading post there. They built their small, vulnerable Christian settlement in what was a Muslim city. In the centuries that followed, the chapel withstood invasions, economic decline and the sea itself.