Catholic Church: Over 90,000 of Our Members are Displaced in the N’East
Displaced people
Michael Olugbode in Maiduguri
The Catholic church has lamented that over 90,000 of its members
remained displaced in the troubled North-east geo-political zone.
The church in a statement by the Director of Information, Catholic Diocese of Maiduguri, Borno State, Rev. Fr. Gideon Obasogie, yesterday also decried that over 14 parishes had been sacked in the zone.
The church said with about 20 priests displaced, some members were still searching for their loved ones in both Maiduguri and Yola dioceses.
The church in a statement by the Director of Information, Catholic Diocese of Maiduguri, Borno State, Rev. Fr. Gideon Obasogie, yesterday also decried that over 14 parishes had been sacked in the zone.
The church said with about 20 priests displaced, some members were still searching for their loved ones in both Maiduguri and Yola dioceses.
Obasogie said: “A good number of those trapped around the Camerounian
borders are gradually finding their way into Maiduguri. Counting their
ordeals, some will tell you how they fed on grasses and insects. A group
from Pulka community alone buried over 80 children who took ill in the
bush and died.
“As a church, we are really going through a severe moment of persecution. Our ecclesiastical circumscription has faced a sharp disintegration. For now, situation is still as before, no improvement whatsoever since our people are still displaced and have no much hope of getting home.”
“As a church, we are really going through a severe moment of persecution. Our ecclesiastical circumscription has faced a sharp disintegration. For now, situation is still as before, no improvement whatsoever since our people are still displaced and have no much hope of getting home.”
He said the church, which spent over N3 million on all internally
displaced persons (IDPs) at different locations in Maiduguri, took to
this because “the church must bear witness to the gospel both in word
and deed.”
Obasogie said the visit to the IDPs was “a practical show of that
authentic witnessing. They had over 200 sacks of maize, rice, cooking
oil, blankets, mosquito nets, rubber buckets, mats, cartons of Maggi,
beans, sugar among others.”
The church, he said: “Encourages the people to accept all that is
happening to them in humility and to see the hand of God at work even as
they are alive today,” calling on them “not to lose faith, but to use
this moment of trial and persecution as a golden opportunity to express
abundantly the faith they profess.”
The church insisted that there are two things the terrorists can never
snatch from them: their faith and their soul. “These they must never
give up even at the point of death.”
Comments
Post a Comment