By Andrew Irumba
Kampala: Uganda’s President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has urged the Church to encourage Christians participate in wealth creation projects to foster development and raise people’s standards of living.
Museveni made remarks while addressing a congregation at Rubaga Cathedral, where African Bishops under the umbrella association of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) converged for mass on 21 July 2019.
According to President Museveni, Africa is doing well spiritually than any other continent in the world, He noted that in other continents, the flock and shepherds seem to have lost focus and allowed evils like homosexuality to penetrate the Church.
He however, worry that although Africans have developed spiritually, the continent is still locked under formidable poverty which needs to be checked by efforts and forces from the political and religious arena.
President Museveni patiently waiting for the mass to start. (File)
The President said, although Africa has a big portion of land and big population as compared to the United States, its productivity rate is too low as many people are stuck in subsistence farming over the years. “Here in Uganda, you find that a person produces 5.3 tonnes per hectare of land yet a nearby research institute produces 53 tonnes on the same size of land. People are producing 10 times smaller than what comes from that land and this hurts us,” he said.
The president stresses that the poverty of the people on the continent hurts the government and the Church in equal measure since it is difficult to preach to the poor.
“The problem you find in families is that we are stuck on two points. One, they still leave in subsistence farming. They only work for the stomach. They don’t know how to work both for the stomach and money. And when they try both, they do so without evaluating the profitability of what they are doing,” he added.
Over 300 African prelates are in Uganda for the 18th Plenary Assembly and Golden Jubilee-SECAM which will run up to July 29. In their plenary which will be held at Speke Resort Munyonyo for a full week, the Bishops expect to deliberate on how far the Church in Africa has come in its evangelizing mission.
Discussions of the assembly will deliberate on the new pastoral priorities for the Church in Africa by reviewing the journey of SECAM and give direction on where the Church in Africa should be in the next fifty years, in terms of pastoral priorities.
