Ghana’s President Commends Catholic Church in West Africa for Breaking Cultural and Linguistic Barriers

CANAA || By Damian Avevor, Ghana || 25 February 2016

The President of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama, has commended the Catholic Church in West Africa for showing that cultural and linguistic barriers can be broken if people apply firmly to the difficult task of achieving unity.

The President said this Tuesday in a speech read for him by Mr. John Henry Martey Newman, Member of the Council of State at the opening ceremony of the Regional Episcopal Conference of West Africa (RECOWA) meeting in Ghana.

Looking upon the Church in Africa for hope, President Mahama lamented that countries, tribes, clans and communities take up arms against their own kin and kith, a situation that seriously hinders development and disrupts family life.

“Many parts of Africa and the world at large have countless heart-rending tales to tell of shattered development plans and broken homes, all because citizens failed to forgive and forget when it mattered most,” he said.

Some 150 Catholic Church leaders drawn from 16 countries of West Africa, among them Cardinals, Archbishops, and bishops are gathering at the M Plaza Hotel in Accra, Ghana, for their second Plenary Assembly meeting.

President Mahama lauded the regional Catholic Bishops’ Conference, RECOWA, for organizing the Plenary Assembly describing the presence of the Church leaders in his country as a blessing.

The President said the theme of the Assembly was appropriate to the developmental need of the people, noting that the formation of RECOWA had immense relevance for all in the West African Sub-Region.

The theme for the eight-day Assembly is: The New Evangelization and the Specific Challenges for the Church, Family of God in West Africa: Reconciliation, Development, Family Life.

President Mahama encouraged the Catholic Church to continue to let the social teachings of the Church penetrate and influence government policy, saying that this could only be possible “when those of us who are called Christians live without reproach, above the worldly trappings of the present age.”

He assured the Church leaders that his government would continue to look up to the Church for inspiration, leadership by example and prayerful support.

In his address, the Apostolic Nuncio to Ghana, Archbishop Jean Marie Speich said it was the mission of the Church to promote transformation not by lobbying or electoral strategy but by inviting people into relationship with Christ whose preferential love was for the poor.

The Nuncio said that the Church is a unique place of hope, noting that a Catholic is meant to be a universal brother and sister because of Jesus Christ, true God and true man, stressing that human families were beautifully made by God.

The President of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference (GCBC), Bishop Joseph Osei-Bonsu, thanked God for the grace and blessings bestowed on RECOWA in the past years.

He encouraged the Church leaders in the region to reflect on how “we can work together as one united family and in (collaboration) with our West African Governments to advance the issues of reconciliation, holistic development and authentic family life within our Sub-Region in the light of the Church’s New Evangelization, which invites the Church to employ new and dynamic ways of spreading the Gospel message.”

On its part, the National Catholic Laity Council said that the theme of the Plenary is something the laity in Ghana can easily affiliate itself with and consider urgent and legitimate for the consideration of the Chief Shepherds of the Church in the Sub-Region.

“The Catholic laity shares in the anxieties and anxieties of their Bishops with regard to the challenges for the Church as the family of God in West Africa as indexed to reconciliation, development and the family,” the representative of the laity’s council said.

The Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council thanked God for His goodness and mercies towards the Catholic Church in Ghana and the West African Sub-Region all these years. 

There were hundreds of lay faithful at the Monday opening ceremony, expressing support for their spiritual leaders from Benin, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Togo, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, The Gambia, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Ghana.