Pope Benedict’s indifference and Africa’s faith

[bones_IV]

This article is just a bunch of dribble. Some liberals, like the site linked here, are still hellbent on destroying the Church of God. And have regained their confidense.

Link

 

[m134e5]

While the most expansive African debt forgiveness initiative yet was coming to fruition in Gleneagles last summer, the Vatican’s presence was only marginally visible. Not a papal delegation but a collective of African bishops met with G8 representatives to lobby for debt relief for their continent. The fact that the full voice of the new papacy was not heard on this cause is an indication of a broader issue that may have a significant adverse effect on the Catholic Church as it exists in the African continent. If Pope Benedict XVI does not personally adopt a larger advocacy for poverty elimination in Africa, this same poverty, coupled with the perception of the church’s indifference towards it, will trigger a significant exodus from the Catholic faith over the next twenty to thirty years. The dimensions of the problem become clearer when one notes that the Vatican has benefited tremendously from a dramatic increase in African followers, whose numbers have gone from 55 million to 144 million since the late 1970s.

In its brief history, the Benedictine pontificate has revealed the Pope’s distinct tendency to relegate specific matters relating to African poverty to those beneath him or to a Vatican offshoot. A week before the G8 summit, it was Archbishop Celestino Migliore, speaking on behalf of Pope Benedict and the Holy See, who publicised the Vatican’s endorsement of the debt relief proposal. Similarly, in a recent address to the UN General Assembly, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Cardinal Secretary of State, voiced the Vatican’s pleasure in the outcome of the G8 summit, qualifying this statement by saying that the “first and foremost” priority of the Holy See was a spiritual one. Likewise, it was not the Pope but the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the Vatican body in charge of stimulating the Catholic Community to “foster progress in needy regions and social justice on the international scene,” that released a statement expressing approval for the agreed plan of debt forgiveness. The Pontifical Council for Health Care has also been vocal in calling attention to the sickly poor in Africa, as well as elsewhere. In a recent speech to the World Health Organization, the Council’s president Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan spoke out in harsh terms against the “diseases of poverty” such as malaria, smallpox, and fever, and condemned the lack of access for the poor to curative drugs. He also pointed out that the Catholic Church has provided over a quarter of the AIDS care centres in the world, including Africa.

For those who want to know what it is about without clicking on the link…

 

[m134e5]

I don’t know why some think the Church’s most important mission is to eliminate poverty. (The endless supply of homilies on social justice, but so few on other things is probably at least one reason why).

 

[jimmy]

I am sick of people criticizing the Vatican saying that they should have done something different. These people don;t care what we believe, they just want their own agenda pushed.