AFRICA/ZIMBABWE - "Let’s help the people to help each other", says the President of the Episcopal Conference
Rome (Agenzia Fides) - "The Church is close to the people especially helping them to help each other, creating networks of solidarity. Our action is addressed especially to the family. We make sure that groups of families who support one another are created, both in spiritual and material terms", says to Fides Agency His Exc. Mgr. Michael Dixon Bhasera, Bishop of Masvingo and President of Zimbabwe's Catholic Bishop's Conference, who is in Rome for the ad limina visit.
Receiving the Bishops of the African Country, Francis Pope recalled that "the Church in your Country has been close to its people both before and after independence, even in these years of immense suffering in which millions of people have left the country for frustration and despair, in which many lives have been lost, as so many tears have been shed".
Zimbabwe has been facing serious political, economic and social difficulties for years. A situation in which the Bishops of the Country and neighboring countries have focused on several occasions (see Fides 9/12/2013 and 12/4/2012) . Pope Francis cited the Pastoral Letter of 2007, "God hears the cry of the oppressed", in which, the Holy Father says, "you have shown how the crisis both spiritual and moral, from colonial times to the present, and how the 'structures of sin' inserted in the social order are ultimately rooted in personal sin, and asks us all a deep personal conversion and a renewed moral sense enlightened by the Gospel".
"We live in difficult times, concluded Mgr. Masvingo speaking to Fides - but hope has never abandoned us. Moreover, as the Holy Father reminded us, prayer is our strength because God hears the prayers of his people". (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 05/06/2014)
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