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Women “forced to hate motherhood, life”: Angolan Bishop on International Women’s Day

Bishop Dionísio Hisiilenapo of Angola’s Namibe Diocese. Credit: Radio Ecclesia

On the  annual event of the International Women’s Day (IWD) marked March 8, a Catholic Bishop in Angola has lamented the forcing of women into “modern” thinking patterns and identities that foster hatred of motherhood, life, and family.

In his Friday, March 8 homily at the Chapel of the Bishops' Conference of Angola and São Tomé and Príncipe (CEAST) in Luanda, Bishop Dionísio Hisiilenapo of Angola’s Namibe Diocese said March 8 should be a day to reflect about the fate of women with extraordinary love, who are being destroyed by the modern world. 

“Today, the modern world forces women not to be themselves. They are forced to hate motherhood, hate life, and to hate her family,” Bishop Hisiilenapo said.

The Angolan Catholic Bishop added, “She is forced to think that she is more beautiful from a physical point of view, and she is forced to put on make-up, kill her cells.”

“She is subjected to tremendous violence, because the world is forcing her to think that she is an object,” he further lamented, adding, “Now the woman is made to live a life of Styrofoam with areas of her body injected to gain new artificial physical forms.”

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“The world is watching this woman, who is our mother, being destroyed,” the 57-year-old Angolan Bishop who has been at the helm of Namibe Diocese since his Episcopal Consecration in September 2011 further lamented.

He also lamented violence against women, with the negative effect of not even being able to “realize that she is being used as an object.” 

The IWD, Bishop Hisiilenapo said, “should be one of reflection on where the woman is going.”

“This figure who is our mother, who nourishes us and gives us life, was a woman who carried us for nine months, breastfed us and looked after us; her love is extraordinary,” he added.

João Vissesse is an Angolan Journalist with a passion and rich experience in Catholic Church Communication and Media Apostolate.