Accra, 26 January, 2021 / 5:34 pm (ACI Africa).
The late former President of Ghana, Jerry John Rawlings, inspired multiple virtues that can be emulated, a Ghanaian Archbishop underscored at Rawlings’ Requiem Mass, highlighting the virtues of “probity, accountability and transparency.”
In his homily during the Eucharistic celebration Sunday, January 24 ahead of Rawlings’ burial, Archbishop Charles Palmer-Buckle called on Ghanaians to foster the virtues that defined the former President in his efforts “to sanitize our country and society.”
“Let us take oath today in the presence of God to work conscientiously to establish these virtues of probity, accountability and transparency in our own individual lives, and in the social and political life and in service to our country Ghana,” Archbishop Palmer-Buckle said.
The Archbishop added, “This will be the most worthy legacy and monument we can build to his name and for posterity not to forget that once there lived in Ghana, a man, Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, who so abhorred unrighteousness and tried to sanitize our country and society, albeit, in his own way.”
The former President “was always hungry and thirsting for righteousness,” the Local Ordinary of Ghana’s Cape Coast Archdiocese recalled and explained, “He fought for the poor; he longed for the kingdom of heaven, for justice to be established for the underprivileged, and could not tolerate the slow pace at which this was coming to birth, nor suffer those who seemingly deliberately were thwarting its manifestation.”