In a bid to fulfil Pope Francis’ call to address environmental challenges across the world, the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference (GCBC) has launched a five-year Laudato Sí Action Programme (LSAP) spanning from 2022 to 2026.
As an environmental protection campaign by the Catholic Church in the West African country, the programme is aimed at replicating and modeling in Ghana the 7-year LSAP launched by Pope Francis to galvanise actions by the Church and all people of goodwill, to address the looming environmental and social calamities.
The Most Rev. Charles Gabriel Palmer-Buckle, Vice President of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference and the Episcopal Promoter of the five-Year LSAP, said it was to sustain the annual tree-planting agenda of the GCBC by mobilizing all the Ecclesial Communities at Diocesan and Parish levels as well as the lay societies to take concrete actions.
According to him, it was designed to promote a culture of pastoral planning by the local Church in Ghana, which is inspired by the spirit of Laudato Si and to establish an effective programme management infrastructure within the National Catholic Secretariat to facilitate a well-coordinated implementation, monitoring, reporting and evaluation of the GCBC Laudato Si Programme of Action from 2022 to 2026.
Archbishop Palmer-Buckle, who is the Local Ordinary of the Cape Coast Catholic Archdiocese in Ghana’s Central Region, noted that the five-year programme was also to put together to proactively seek partnerships with the Government of Ghana and other faith groups in Ghana to agree on a framework of working together to address national environmental concerns and other related issues for the transformation of our society and our common home.
Launching the Programme, which was supported by Caritas Korea and Caritas Ghana, the Most Rev. Henryk M. Jagodzinski, the Apostolic Nuncio to Ghana, recapped the invitation of Pope Francis to all people of God to actively join in the care of our common home.
The Nuncio congratulated the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference for the initiative to develop a 5-year Laudato Si Action Plan. “As you already know, the LSAP is an important Agenda of the Holy Father Pope Francis to awaken a new spirituality and faith action for both humanity and environment,” he said.
In a remark via Zoom, Fr. Joshtrom Isaac Kureethadam, Coordinator of the Ecology and Creation at Vatican’s Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, headed by Ghana’s Peter Cardinal Appiah Turkson, asked Catholics not to wait for the future but prepare the future together against the destruction of the ecological system.
He said the Laudato Si Action Plan was to respond to the cry of the earth and listening to what the scientist say, throwing light on research by scientists, which shows that the earth’s temperature has increased by 1.5 degree Celsius, which, he said, posed a threat on security, human health and migration.
There were goodwill messages from Caritas Korea the Regional Episcopal Conference of West Africa (RECOWA) the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) and some individuals who participated via zoom.
In a goodwill message, Very Rev. Fr. Terwase Henry Akaabiam, the Secretary General of SECAM called for practical actions in tackling environmental challenges and condemned excessive noise making.
He, therefore, asked that noise making should be looked at critically as an environmental issue as well as emission from cars, which he said, also contribute to the dangers of the climate. “The more cars we drive, the more dangers we put to our health,” he added.
On his part, Rev. Fr. Dr. Emmanuel Abbey, a priest of Ghana’s Cape Coast Archdiocese currently based in the USA, who recently defended his Doctorate thesis at the Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pa., USA, recommended the training and forming of Priests, Religious, Catechists and society leaders in ecological spirituality based on his research findings..
He also proposed the teaching of the care of the environment as a necessary component of the teaching of Catechism in parishes and outstations in the West African country of Ghana.
Dignitaries at the launch included the Most Rev. Joseph Osei-Bonsu, Episcopal President of Caritas Ghana; Very Rev. Fr. Lazarus Anondee, Secretary General of the National Catholic Secretariat and his Assistant, Rev. Fr. Dr. Charles Boampong Sarfo Jnr. and Mr. Samuel Akologo, Head of Caritas Ghana and Coordinator of the GCBC five-year Laudato Si Action Plan.
