Pope Francis's first
apostolic visit to Africa begins Wednesday and takes place under
the rallying cry the pontiff sounded following the recent
terrorist attacks in Paris, when he declared that killing in the
name of God is blasphemy.
In the Central African Republic, Kenya and Uganda, Pope
Francis will face the challenge of the role various religions
must play together to find peace in Africa, where terrorism is
camouflaged within religious, ethnic and tribal differences.
"We expect the pope to help heal the divisions and that
interreligious occasions help bring understanding to the
believers of different faiths and to dispel fear," said
Monsignor James Maria Wainaina Kungu, bishop of Muranga in
Kenya.
The Kenyan bishop spoke on religious terrorism in his
country in the wake of the Garissa massacre on April 2 of this
year, when al-Shabaab militants stormed a Christian boarding
school, killing 148 people, most of whom were children.
"In Garissa, it was just terrorism," Kungu said.
"Al-Shabaab came into Kenya from Somalia and attacked
mainly tourists, so Kenyan military went into Somalia, to
respond to the attacks. It's terrorism. Religion has nothing to
do with it. And in any case it's not only Garissa. Al-Shabaab
even attacks supermarkets, kills Christians, Hindus and
Muslims," he said.
"They want to show that you can't live safely even where
there is security and control by the State. They want to bring
in an element of fear".
In the Central African Republic, the pope will encounter a
significant attempt to peacefully bring together different
religions, in the Interfaith Peace Platform programme created by
Catholics, Protestants and Muslims to defend civilians from the
uncertainty of violence between self-declared Muslims and
self-declared Christians.
"Until 2012, relations with Islam were peaceful, but they
started going into the mercenary countries of Chad, Sudan,
Senegal and Mali as anti-government Muslim rebels, which was
something new in the history of the country," said Father Hervè
Hubert Koyassambia Kozondo, a young Catholic priest from Bangui
who is studying in Rome.
"It wasn't simply a rebellion, they were armed to conquer
with the strong presence of foreign mercenaries, and they sacked
structures, carried gratuitous violence on civilians, began the
cultural destruction of the country, from administrative offices
to symbols of the nation. There's more than religious motivation
behind that," he said.
"This is what brought anti-Muslim sentiment to the
Christian population that had suffered a planned action against
its structures and churches - all the dioceses were damaged.
"From the anti-Muslim sentiment grew the self-declared
Christian resistance movement.
"They call themselves Christians, they have Russian
weapons, and the resistance movements are manipulated at a
political level. The bishops have always said this has nothing
Christian about it, neither its motivation nor its identity, and
without these anti-Christian actions there wouldn't have been
anti-Muslim hate," he said.
"We have great hopes for the Platform, but it works only up
to a certain point because, for example, the imam doesn't have
power over these aggressive Muslims. The work is so that the
pope can find a calmer and better situation. The problem isn't
whether or not the pope is safe in the mosque, but rather if
after the pope has left, anyone can be safe".
Religious manipulation for subversion is always in waiting,
not only in the Central African Republic with Seleka and Balaka,
but also in Somalia with al-Shabaab or in Nigeria with Boko
Haram - terrorists have always hit whoever puts up obstacles to
their objective, whether Muslims, Christians, or indigenous
people.
Numerically speaking, Father Giulio Albanese said Nigerian
terrorists in recent years have killed more Muslims than
Christians.
"Every time they attacked Christians, they did it because
it would be covered by the international press and would resound
worldwide. Religion often represents, in many contexts, the
excuse to affirm authoritarian interests, against the
recognition of human dignity," he said.
Africa's recent history involves a number of attempts at
interreligious dialogue for peace.
Since its founding in 1997 in northern Uganda, the
interfaith Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative has worked
incessantly to find a non-violent solution through talks between
Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the government in
Kampala.
In the 1990s in Sierra Leone, rebels with the Revolutionary
United Front (RUF) also committed unspeakable crimes against the
exhausted civilian population.
There, the Inter-Religious Council of Sierra Leone (IRCSL)
played a significant role in the difficult national peace
process, bringing together Muslim, Catholic and Protestant
leaders who volunteered as mediators in talks between the
Freetown government and the rebels.
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