Nairobi, 10 June, 2020 / 2:00 am (ACI Africa).
Catholic Bishops in Kenya are cautioning the people of God in the East African nation against the temptation to disregard values cultivated in families such as love and forgiveness amid COVID-19 challenges ranging from job loses, reduced income, and restrictions to movement among others.
“Worries of access to food, money, rent and job security have characterized the lives of Kenyans, deepening the anxiety of what the future holds for us,” the Bishops said in a collective statement read out on Trinity Sunday, June 7 in which they express their “great pastoral concern” about the current situation.
The Bishops note that the worries occasioned by existential challenges are contributing to different forms of conflict including gender-based violence, reckless behavior, different forms of abuses, indifferences, and separations, among others.
“We are living in extraordinary times with changing roles within our families, our homes and our workplaces,” Bishop Norman King’oo Wambua said on behalf of the Bishops in Kenya at the end of the televised Mass, which he presided over at Holy Family Minor Basilica in Nairobi.
In the statement, the Bishops “urge all Kenyans not to take this pandemic as an opportunity to deviate from our family values.”
