The Conference Major Superiors of Religious, Ghana in collaboration with the Archdiocese of Accra, has organised a mini-jubilee celebration for members of the Consecrated Life on the theme: “send forth and renew the face of the earth, a call to stewardship” on the October 5, 2024 at Mary Mother of Good Council Catholic Church, Airport west, Accra.
Rev. Fr. Joseph Blay, OFM Conv., who gave a talk on the theme admonished the Religious on the Genesis account and told them that God repeatedly affirmed that His creation was good.
The first day God created light and darkness and it was good. Next, God created heaven and earth. On the third day, God created the dry land, the oceans and the vegetation, I was also good! On the fourth day, God created the sun, moon, and stars, it was so good! On the fifth day, God created all the water and flying creatures so good indeed! On the sixth day, God created all the beasts and, finally, human beings. The last verse of Genesis chapter one says, “God saw all that he had made, and indeed it was very good” (Gen 1:31).
He noted that God entrusted his good creation to human beings as stewards saying: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28).
The stewardship role is further reiterated in Gen. 2:15: “Yahweh God took the man and settled him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and take care of it.”
He noted that, the over 70% Christian population of Ghana has looked on for this environmental carnage to occur; that the over 10% Catholic population has tolerated this ecocide in Ghana, and that the Christian caucus in Parliament condones the sacrificing of citizens’ well-being on the altar of gold is a big disappointment to God.
He said, “we will all agree with Pope Francis that “Our common home is falling into a serious disrepair” (LS 61). At the time. I wrote my dissertation in 2021, the cost of reclaiming the devastated lands was estimated at 5650 billion.”
He added: “We have not researched the cost of desilting our river bodies and dams, including roads caved in because of illegal mining. What a pity that a nation could sink so low as to render its water bodies unusable and uninhabitable by aquatic beings! This is worse than the slave trade.
I was impressed and shocked by the misgiving a rural dweller shared with me during my research: “The Christian Council should voice out some of the things going wrong in the country. Nevertheless, the Church is politicized. We members can easily tell the political party to which the pastors belong” (Blay, 2022).
The Catholic Church in Ghana should blush more for shame for this national human-made disaster than any other Christian denomination.
“If the simple fact of being human moves people to care for the environment of which they are a part, Christians in their turn ‘realize that their responsibility within creation, and their duty towards nature and the Creator, are an essential part of their faith” (LS 64).
He further underpinned that our Popes foresaw and forewarned us long ago. In his Laudato Si, Pope Francis enumerates the clarion prophetic calls by different Popes: “Due to an ill-considered exploitation of nature, humanity runs the risk of destroying it and becoming in turn a victim of this degradation” (Pope St. Paul VI, 1971)
“[Human beings] See no other meaning in their natural environment than what serves for immediate use and consumption” (Pope St. John Paul II).”The deterioration of nature is closely connected to the culture which shapes human coexistence” (Pope Benedict XVI).
What Pope Paul said in 1971 that humanity risks becoming a victim of the harm it does to the environment is realized in Ghana today. Where on earth would any nation destroy its water bodies in pursuit of gold? How do reasonable people destroy what they get for free and go to beg for money to purchase the same commodity? In 2010, the Ghana Statistical Service reported that 56% of rural dwellers in the Wassa Central Municipality depended on rivers and streams. 17.9% depended on boreholes. Today every river/stream in that Municipality, like many others, cannot be used for anything. The 2018 District Report of Amenfi Central revealed that the Municipality spends so much on drilling water for communities when it could have gotten water for free from River Ankobra had it not been for galamsey activities (Blay, 2022).
If a foreign nation masterminded what was happening to Ghana, it would have been accused of genocide. If water is life, then promoting, inciting, and condoning water poisoning is a war crime and genocidal. Yet our political parties, without exception, are saying, “Destroy your waters because we want you to vote for us so that you will catch eases and die after the election. We are in a sinking boat, and to paraphrase Pope Francis, we can only be saved together or we perish together (FT 33). Besides galamsey, plastics also threaten our existence. Countries like Rwanda and Kenya have banned plastics but Ghana politicises the menace.
He posed some thought-provoking questions like; Did you know Ghana produces 840,000 metric tons of plastic waste annually? Did you know 8 million tons of plastic waste enter the sea annually? Did you know that on average every Ghanaian produces 470 grams of plastic per day? Did you know that a rubber gallon takes 1000 years to decompose? Did you know that plastic water bottle & cups take 450 years to decompose? Did you know that plastic straw takes 200 years to decompose? Did you know that plastic bag takes 20 years to decompose?
Fr. Blay urged the religious and lay faithful to remember what the great scientist Einstein once said, “The world is not going to be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who look at evil without saying or doing anything about it.”
In Laudato Deum (18) Pope Francis says, “What is being asked of us is nothing other than a certain responsibility for the legacy we will leave behind, once we pass from this world.
As pilgrims of hope, St. Augustine advises everyone to pray as if everything depends on God and to work as if everything depends on us.
The Religious Sisters were encouraged to join all Catholics in their veils and habits to participate in the prayer walk against galamsey in Ghana on October 11, 2024.
By Sr. Sheila Adombire, HHCJ, Sr. Judith Segla, NDE, Sr. Alberta Rabbles, HDR (Sister Communicators)
