By Eunice Hilda A. Mensah
Accra, Sept.09, GNA-Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, a prelate of the Catholic Church, has called on the world, particularly Africa to give children, especially the homeless a dignified life free from abuse or unmet needs.
“The reality is that we cannot love somebody when we show no concern about his social condition. Without concern and care, our love is in vain,” he said.
Cardinal Turkson made the call at the opening of the 21st Biennial Pan-African Association of Catholic Exegetes (PACE) Congress 2024 in Accra on the theme: “The Bible and the African Child in the Post-Pandemic Age”.
The Congress is slated for September 9 to 16, 2024, and would also serve as an opportunity to honour Cardinal Turkson who has turned 75 years, for his dedication and hard work as a Catholic Biblical Scholar.
The Cardinal, also a Chancellor of the Pontifical Academies of Sciences, said streetism had become a feature of almost every African town, and such homeless children became victims of sexual violence and abuse.
“Wherever you go, you find children on the streets begging for their livelihoods in Accra, Kinshasa, Cairo, Lagos and others. Children on the streets also become victims of sexual violence and abuse and sometimes are forced to watch their colleagues being abused by others,” he said.
Cardinal Turkson, speaking on the topic: “The African Child, the Despised Little Ones Who Must Have Angel in both Heaven and on Earth,” said children fell prey to a lot of inhumane acts around the world such as being trained as soldiers to have no compassion, kindness or mercy towards anyone including their parents to the extent of being able to take away their lives, child trafficking, and killing and sale of their organs for transplant.
Children also were also used in the mines, forced to work on the lake or fisheries and to marry to enable their parents to get capital to start a business or be freed from the burden of having to cater for them.
The Cardinal said many children were also abused and forced into child pornography and child-adult pornography, child drug peddling, while innocent babies were also stolen or sold in hospitals, as a result of the existence of such markets.
Cardinal Turkson explained that child abuse was a perversion of God’s creation and made children’s lives expendable.“Every child is a person, not a mere commodity to be abused. A human being is a nature with a language and it is important to listen to their language and support them as such,” he added.
He said homelessness was a tragic global phenomenon and special attention should be given to children to curb the challenge.
The Most Reverend Emmanuel Kofi Fianu, SVD, Vice President of the Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference, commended PACE for holding the conference in Accra for the first time to impart some positive knowledge to the African child in the post-COVID-19 era and for honouring the Cardinal.
In the current digitised world, he said it was prudent to devise means to bring up young ones in the fear of God amid all forms of globalisation and modernisation.
Dr Mary Anane-Mensah, the Acting Registrar of the College of Counselling and Psychology, who chaired the opening ceremony, said it was now common for children to ask Google, “how to find what to eat, how to eat, how to dress, among others, a situation that made the Bible get relegated to the background.
“The world cannot be governed successfully only by the digital age. For your information, digitalisation is not new. God in the beginning said, let there be light and there was light, let there be this and there was that,” she said.
She said Christians ought to know that the Bible is bigger than digitalisation and science and could not be abandoned on the shelves.
“I believe some of us don’t even remember where our Bibles are in our homes, but we can readily locate and find out mobile phones even in the dark,” she said.
Dr Anane-Mensah said the Bible was the standard for total growth and development to ensure that children got trained according to principles where patience was a virtue, where love for one another was preached, and where there were universal rights of every human being (Mathew 7:12 – Do unto others what you want them to do unto you).
The Registrar called on older people to serve as good models for children to believe and learn that the Bible had an answer to all questions.
“Is it architecture, no architecture can match the construction of Noah’s arch, if it is multiplication, we know that God is the master.
“Through innovative means, let’s make the Bible more appealing and practicable in our lives without changing the facts of it,” she advised.
Bishop Raymond Ahoua, President of PACE, admonished Christians to emulate the example of God in caring for humanity towards everyone, especially children who were more vulnerable.
“If you want to know, ask the scriptures how and you will know. Let us raise and educate our African children in the lights of scriptures,” he added.
GNA