At SECAM Plenary, Cardinal Lopez Emphasizes Three Things Africa's Catholics Need to Embrace from St. Alphonsus Liguori

“Every baptised person, every person, is called. Let's help lay people to live their lives as a response to a call, vocationally.  Only then will there be Christians in politics, Christians in the world of art and communication, Christians as doctors and entrepreneurs,” he added.

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The Archbishop of Rabat, since his Episcopal Ordination in March 2018, further said, “Christians as a noun, not as an adjective to be dropped and eliminated. Christians who are witnesses to the Gospel at work and in their family and social lives. The primacy of witness over verbal evangelism.”

The third thing, Cardinal Romero said, “Let's go back to the source, which is Christ and his Gospel. And that means placing love and mercy above everything else. Love one another.”

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He recounted that in Saint Alphonsus' time, there were “rigorist tendencies; the rigidity of the Jansenists prevailed over mercy and compassion. Rubricism was more important than the profound meaning of the liturgy.”

“Ritualism displaced personal and creative faith. The supremacy of some, who believed themselves to be pure and better than others, was translated into intolerance, puritanism, and Pharisaism, with contempt for the poor and ignorant,” the Catholic Church leader told SECAM members.

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He continued, “In the face of all this, Saint Alphonsus was able to transform the morality of his time, by proclaiming the primacy of mercy over judgement (mercy mocks judgement) and the primacy of conscience over the law. The primacy of the Kingdom, the primacy of mercy and compassion, the primacy of witness and conscience.”

“Let's not allow ourselves to be robbed of tradition; let's be more traditionalists than anyone else, and let's not leave such a beautiful reality in the hands of those who make it consist of certain rites, the way communion is received or the positions adopted for praying, and who in wanting to go back to the 19th century stop short of the Gospel and Christ,” he said.

Cardinal Romero urged Catholic Bishops in Africa to “beware of the danger of the self-referentiality of the Church, a danger that Pope Francis has warned us about many times. The Church does not exist for herself; she was founded at the service of the mission, which consists in announcing and collaborating in the building of the Kingdom of God.”

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“Following the example of her Lord, the Church does not exist to be served but to serve. Like Mary, who declared herself the handmaid of the Lord, the Church, for which Mary is a model, must be the handmaid of the Lord and of his Kingdom,” he said.

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In his opening remarks at the start of Mass, Cardinal Romero said, “Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori was a Bishop like most of us, and more importantly, he was a baptised Christian like all of us.”

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“Following his example, we should all be good Christians and good pastors, but we're not. That's why we must always ask for forgiveness. We do so in a moment of silence and interiority,” he added.

Jude Atemanke is a Cameroonian journalist with a passion for Catholic Church communication. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of Buea in Cameroon. Currently, Jude serves as a journalist for ACI Africa.