Addis Ababa, 07 March, 2023 / 11:48 AM
African values are relevant to the Synodal process in the ongoing preparations for the Synod on Synodality and can bring lessons to the people of God across the globe with “great impact”, a Catholic Bishop in Ethiopia has said.
In his homily on the final working day of the March 1-6 Plenary Assembly of the Symposium of Episcopal Conference of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Bishop Musie Ghebreghiorghis highlighted the diverse values among the people of God in Africa.
“We speak different languages; we have different cultural backgrounds; we have different liturgies and yet we feel we are all members of the one family of God here in Africa,” Bishop Ghebreghiorghis said during the March 4 Eucharistic celebration at the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Cathedral of Addis Ababa Archdiocese.
The member of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin (O.F.M. Cap.) said that the “African society is a vibrant society with rich cultural values that need to be carefully preserved” and that African values “need our full attention”.
“African values should not be diluted by the dictatorship of democracy or globalization because these values have much to teach to the whole world,” Bishop Ghebreghiorghis reiterated during the Orthodox Liturgy.
The 73-year-old Ethiopian Catholic Bishop who has been at the helm of Ethiopia’s Emdeber Eparchy since his Episcopal Ordination in February 2004 further noted that “our synodal journey should help us to deepen further on these African values, which may have a great impact on the world.”
Reflecting on the Synodal process that is at the continental stage, Bishop Ghebreghiorghis said, “It is an invitation to reawaken our baptismal promises and to be attentive to what the Holy Spirit is saying to each one of us, to our local churches, to the whole of Africa and the world at large.”
He expressed his awareness of the “different challenges at this time in history” that the people of God in Africa are going through, highlighting “the challenges of governance, ethnic conflict, fundamentalism, or religious and ideological extremism, poverty, and climate change.”
He pondered if the people of God in Africa “are part of the problem or they have proposals for solutions to these problems.”
“Are we credible witnesses?” he posed, and continued, “People claim to be Christians yet they don't live as Christians. They claim to be the people of God and at times they have no mercy among themselves.”
Bishop Ghebreghiorghis said he found it regrettable that “most of the wars, most of the conflicts that are going on in Africa at times are among Christians themselves.”
Through the Synodal process, he said, “Pope Francis wants to tell us that our synodal journey should give an answer to these problems and to these question marks.”
The Local Ordinary of Emdeber further said the spiritual exercises during the ongoing Lenten Season “will increase the faith, hope and charity of the people of God in Africa.”
“We need radical conversion that will enable us to be attentive to the voice of the spirit, to be attentive to the voice of each one of us, to be attentive to listen to our people, seeking for us to be open to dialogue, to accept everyone as he is with all his gifts, with all graces that God has given him,” he said.
Such attentiveness, Bishop Ghebreghiorghis said, can foster “living together as a society in Africa, marked by justice, reconciliation, and peace.”
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