Burundi official calls for laicization of bishops over election message

September 23, 2019 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

Gitega, Burundi, Sep 23, 2019 / 06:59 pm (CNA).- Government officials in Burundi have accused the country’s bishops of spreading hatred and division following a message from the bishops warning of violence and corruption in the country’s election preparations.

According to AFP, the Catholic Bishops Conference of Burundi released a letter voicing concern over efforts to “suffocate” certain political parties ahead of the May 20 presidential election.

The letter, which was read in churches over the weekend, warned that “[c]riminal acts go as far as murders with political motives … perpetuated against those with different opinions of the government,” AFP reported.

The bishops also warned that the Imbonerakure – the youth wing of the ruling party – had replaced security forces in the country. UN investigators have accused the Imbonerakure of widespread human rights abuses, including murder, rape, torture, and arbitrary detainment against political opponents.

In response to the letter, Evariste Ndayishimiye, secretary-general of the ruling party, accused the bishops of “sowing division” and “spread[ing] hatred.”

“Some bishops should be defrocked because it is becoming a habit: on the eve of elections they spit their venomous hatred through incendiary messages,” said presidential spokesman Willy Nyamitwe on Twitter.

A United Nations report earlier this year warned that the 2020 elections in Burundi “pose a major risk” for atrocity crimes. It pointed to red flags including increasing government control, a lack of a true multi-party system, suppression of free press, and a climate of intimidation against those who oppose the ruling CNDD-FDD party.

Burundi’s current president, Pierre Nkurunziza, took power in 2005 following a peace agreement ending a civil war in the country.

Burundi’s last presidential election, held in 2015, was marred by protests, an attempted coup, and grenade attacks, with much of the unrest sparked by anger over Nkurunziza’s decision to seek a third term, which the opposition said was unconstitutional.

Some 1,200 people were believed to have been killed in the violence that followed the election, and over 400,000 people were displaced from their homes, AFP reports.

In 2018, voters approved a new constitution allowing Nkurunziza to run for two more seven-year terms. However, Nkurunziza said last year that he would not seek re-election. Still, concerns remain high, with the United Nations calling for vigilance in the months leading up to the election.

Poverty in Burundi is widespread, with the majority of the population facing food shortages.

 

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Pope appoints new archbishop for booming African diocese

December 30, 2019 CNA Daily News 2

Bamenda, Cameroon, Dec 30, 2019 / 08:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has promoted an African bishop known for his emphasis on family, community, and traditional values. In an announcement released on Monday, the Holy See Press Office confirmed that the pope has named Bishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya as the new Archbishop of Bamenda in Cameroon.

Bishop Fuanya, 54, has served as the Bishop of Mamfe, also in Cameroon, since 2014. He came to international attention during the 2018 meeting of the Synod of Bishops on young people, faith, and vocational discernment.

In contrast to the situation in many European countries, Fuanya said during the synod, the Church in Cameroon and in many parts of Africa is growing – including among young peoples.

“My churches are all bursting, and I don’t have space to keep the young people,” Fuanya during a Vatican press conference in October last year. “And my shortest Mass would be about two and a half hours.”

A 2018 study by Pew Research found that church attendance and prayer frequency was highest in sub-Saharan Africa and lowest in Western Europe. Four out of five Christians in Cameroon said that they pray every day.

Bishop Fuanya was born in 1965 and ordained a priest for the Diocese of Buéa, Cameroon, in 1992, at the age of 26. In 2013, he was appointed as coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of Mamfe, becoming the diocesan bishop the following year.

Fuanya’s new see, Bamenda, was erected as a diocese in 1970 and elevated to a metropolitan archdiocese by St. John Paul II in 1982. In recent years, the archdiocese has shown clear signs of growth and evalgelization. While the population of the archdiocese remained stable at 1.4 million people between 2015 and 2018, the percentage of Catholics rose from 29% to 42% during the same period.

During the Synod on young people, Fuanya credited the Church’s growth in Cameroon to the alignment between Church teaching and the values of wider society, and the strength of the family as a cultural institution.

“People ask me, ‘Why are your churches full?’” Fuanya said in 2018. “Coming from Africa, the family is a very, very strong institution.”

“We come from a culture in which tradition normally is handed from one generation to the other.”

Fuanya has also spoken about the need for the Church to teach unambiguously on issues of morals and sexuality, remarking during the 2018 synod that he would not accept any usage of so-called LGBT terminology in Church documents because “99.9 percent” of the young people in his diocese would “stand at my door and say, ‘What’s this?’”

“Our traditional values still equate to the values of the Church, and so we hand over the tradition to our young people undiluted and uncontaminated,” he continued, noting that a strong sense of community in the Church is something “very important that Europe can learn from Africa.”

In Africa, the newly-named Archbishop said, “there’s still a lot of things we do as community. That is the difference..”

“What we are trying to do in these small Christian communities is to fight the in-creeping of individualism,” he said.

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