Late last week, George Neumayr, author, journalist, and senior editor for the American Spectator became the third high-profile Catholic to die in as many weeks. Neumayr suddenly perished on Thursday, Jan. 19, after contracting malaria in the west African nation of the Ivory Coast, where he was undertaking research for an upcoming project on the Catholic Church in Africa.
The year began on a dismal note, with Pope Benedict XVI’s death on Dec. 31. Two weeks later, the conservative Australian Cardinal George Pell unexpectedly succumbed in Rome after a routine hip operation. But if the loss of Benedict after a decade of frailty and seclusion was deeply upsetting, and if Pell’s sudden death, days after he authored a stern rebuke of the Vatican’s neo-Marxist interpretation of faith and morals, was dismaying, Neumayr’s premature demise was distinctly unsettling.
All three — pope, cardinal, and journalist — have bequeathed a message of urgency, nay emergency, regarding the perilous road the church is treading, a warning that should not be buried with them.
On Friday, Jan. 20, it was reported that Neumayr had died. He had been in Africa since Dec. 26, visiting various parishes in and around Abidjan. He noted that these were conspicuously run down and/or poorly attended, a testimony to both decolonization and the decline of the post-Vatican II church.
Neumayr never publicly disclosed that he had contracted malaria. On Sunday, Jan. 15, he mentioned having been “violently ill” the day before with a form of food poisoning but confirmed that he
