Harare, 12 September, 2019 / 11:40 pm (ACI Africa).
Following the death of the former president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, the Catholic Bishops in the landlocked Southern Africa country have reflected on the attributes to their former political leader and the wrong direction their country seems to have taken over the years under Mugabe’s protracted leadership.
“We, the Bishops of the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe, agree with most of (the) attributes (to Mugabe) but they (attributes) also raise a key question, ‘What went wrong?’” the Bishops have noted in their September 11 pastoral statement.
“Some dwelt on his broad education and others on his achievements from the liberation struggle to State House as a principled person, liberator, his empowerment of the black majority, pan-Africanist, etc.,” the Zimbabwe Prelates acknowledged the positive qualities that have been received following the death of their former president, who ruled for 30 years.
The Bishops have expressed their dissatisfaction in the way Mugabe might have achieved the attributes saying, “The intentions and the objectives were good but the manner of achieving them raised a number of ethical questions.”
“This is where we, as a country, went wrong and continues to go wrong to this day,” the Catholic leaders lamented and cited the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) to justify their criticism of Mugabe’s means of reaching particular ends.
