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“Religious violence requires a religious solution”: Missionary on Insurgency in Mozambique

Credit: ACN

By ACI Africa Staff

Maputo, 08 January, 2024 / 2:44 pm (ACI Africa).

A Missionary Priest serving in Mozambique’s Catholic Diocese of Pemba has proposed the creation of an interreligious committee that will be mandated with mediating dialogue in the ongoing insurgency in the Southern African nation. 

According to Fr. Eduardo Roca, a Spanish-born Catholic Priest responsible for interreligious dialogue in the Mozambican Diocese, the violence in the country which is mainly religious-based, can only be solved through religious means.

“Religious violence requires a religious solution,” Fr. Roca has said in a reflection he shared with the Catholic Pontifical and charity foundation, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) International.

He highlights the urgent need to establish “an interreligious committee for peace, which is free from interference and as autonomous as possible, competent and efficient to work on dialogue and mediation in religious conflicts”. 

The seven-year insurgency in Mozambique, especially in the country’s Cabo Delgado Province, has reportedly led to 4,802 casualties as of December last year. Additionally, over a million people have been displaced from the Mozambican Northern Province where the Islamist group, Daesh, has pitched camp and is attacking Christian populations.

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ACN has reported that that on January 3, terrorists, who claim to belong to Daesh, attacked a village in Mocímboa da Praia, a town in Cabo Delgado, looting stores and causing people to flee. 

In December 2023, the Islamist group claimed three attacks, which resulted in several deaths; in one of the attacks, the group claimed to have “beheaded a Christian”, ACN has reported.

In his January 5 reflection, Fr. Roca underlines the urgent need for work to be carried out at the level of dialogue between religions. Without this, the Missionary Priest writes, there will be no true peace.

“The challenge is to train leaders in this spirit of active respect capable of guaranteeing true peace, and this work is still lacking in our religions,’ he says.

“If there is no peace between religions there is no peace in the world,” the Catholic Priest, who founded the Interreligious Centre for Peace in Pemba Diocese asserts.

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He adds, “And simple tolerance of others, without respect, until a conflict breaks out because of speeches of exclusion and hatred from others, is not peace.”

“True peace has justice at its foundation, requires giving in to others who do not have it, and is based on active respect, on the firm will to want the path to God that others follow to be recognized and legitimized, and on the willingness to give life itself so that it may be so,” Fr. Roca explains.

The Catholic Missionary Priest invites those in Religious Life to reflect critically on the way they live their religion, saying, “Religion is a dimension that touches the world of symbols, desires, and hopes of people, and therefore it is easily manipulated, sometimes at the service of interests and ambitions that have nothing to do with the true meaning of religion.”

“We need to stop looking at our religion as a competitor to others, focusing our efforts on gaining territorial or political advantages, neglecting the true mission we have of caring for souls,” he says in his reflection shared with ACN International. 

ACI Africa Staff

ACI Africa was founded in 2019. We provide free, up-to-the-minute news affecting the Catholic Church in Africa, giving particular emphasis to the words of the Holy Father and happenings of the Holy See, to any person with access to the internet. ACI Africa is proud to offer free access to its news items to Catholic dioceses, parishes, and websites, in order to increase awareness of the activities of the universal Church and to foster a sense of Catholic thought and culture in the life of every Catholic.

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