Pemba, 04 December, 2020 / 6:08 pm (ACI Africa).
A Bishop in Mozambique says the Catholic Church in the Southern African nation has become the voice of the country’s poor people who are suffering “the most” amid armed conflict in the region of Cabo Delgado that is part of Pemba Diocese.
“The Church has lent its voice to be the voice of the poor, of those who have no time, of those who do not have the opportunity of being in front of a camera, as I am now, and of being able to speak,” Bishop Luiz Fernando Lisboa of Mozambique’s Pemba Diocese says in an interview with Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) International.
In the report about the interview published Thursday, December 3, Bishop Lisboa says speaking on behalf of the poor “is the first work” and that “the Church is committed to the truth because we follow Jesus, who said: ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’.”
“We are not afraid because we are telling the truth,” the Bishop, a member of the Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ (CP), popularly known as Passionists says in the interview report obtained by ACI Africa.
By speaking up against the violence, Bishop Lisboa says, the Church in Mozambique is doing “what Pope Francis speaks about so often: we want to save people’s dignity; we want social justice; we want people to have their rights respected, we want people to live in peace.”