Yaoundé, Cameroon, Nov 21, 2018 / 03:08 pm (CNA).- A priest serving in Cameroon has been killed by military gunfire, amid a military and political conflict that has rocked the country for in recent years.
Fr. Cosmas Ombato Ondari was reportedly killed Nov. 21 in Mamfe, a city in the country’s southwest, CNA has learned. Onari, a member of the Mill Hill Missionaries, had been serving in the country since March 2017, when he was ordained a priest.
Ondari is the second priest killed in recent months in the country. Fr. Alexander Sob Nougi was killed July 20 in the same province where Onari was shot. Nougi was shot at close-range, in an attack that Church officials said was a targeted assassination.
In October, a 19 year old seminarian was killed in a neighboring province, the epicenter of the country’s military conflict.
Earlier this month, a group of religious sisters was kidnapped by guerillas in the country’s northwest, and released the next day.
Since 2017, guerillas in Cameroon have been fighting for the separation of the country’s English-speaking regions from its French-speaking territory. The fighters declared in October 2017 the independence of a new nation they have named ‘Ambazonia.’
This nearly conflict has led to several hundred deaths, on both sides, and sent 300,000 refugees to Nigeria. There are more than 80,000 internally displaced persons in Cameroon.
The separatist fighters are known to dig up trenches on the main road leading from Bamenda, the capital city of the Northwest Region, to many other villages and towns surrounding it, mainly in a bid to prevent military transport and soldiers from reaching their hideouts.
On May 30, 2017, Bishop Jean Marie Benoît Bala of Bafia, Cameroon disappeared from his residence. His body was recovered in a river two days later, although an autopsy determined he had not drowned.
Cameroon’s bishops’ conference maintains the bishop was murdered, and accuses the government of failing to investigate the crime. His death is not believed to be related to the country’s military conflict.
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Alfred Magero, Matthew Njogu, and Edward Chaleh Nkamanyi are three Catholic fathers from Africa who recently shared insights about being a present dad, protecting their families amid threats to the African family, and being a model of family values for their children with ACI Africa, CNA’s news partner in Africa. / Credit: Photos courtesy of ACI Africa
ACI Africa, Jun 17, 2024 / 12:37 pm (CNA).
On the occasion of Father’s Day 2024, a day focused on the celebration of fatherhood, four Catholic men from different African countries recently shared their experiences of impacting the lives of their children.
The Catholic fathers — who hail from Cameroon, Kenya, and Nigeria — talk about the importance of “being present,” of protecting their families amid threats to the African family, and of being a model of family values for their children, who they believe someday will become parents as well.
Tony Nnachetta, 68: Fatherhood is a full-time enterprise
Tony Nnachetta shares a moment with Pope Francis. The married father of four is a parishioner in the Catholic Archdiocese of Onitsha. Credit: Photo courtesy of ACI Africa
Tony Nnachetta is a married father of four who attends the Church of the Assumption Parish in Nigeria’s Archdiocese of Lagos. Nnachettahas been a parishioner there for 40 years, and he was wed there 38 years ago. A member of the Grand Knights of St. Mulumba, he originally hails from the Archdiocese of Onitsha.
I got married to my friend after we dated for four years. I was looking forward to fatherhood and I was mentally prepared for it. Here are the lessons I have learned along my fatherhood journey.
First, being a father means you watch your children grow and become independent. You watch them get to a point in their lives where they can engage in a debate with you and even disagree with you.
Fatherhood is a long process. You would be fortunate to go through the entire process and maybe see your children’s children. I have seen mine achieve excellence in school and even leave home and go across the world as they sought to become independent.
Wherever your children go, what is important for them is what they take away from home — what they take from mommy and daddy. I have always told mine to “remember the child of who you are.” This means that they are not allowed to break the Christian values in our family.
I taught them to always stand for the truth and never to flow with the tide. We have encouraged them to always say what they mean. These days, they have jokingly turned around the statement and they tell me, “Remember the dad of who you are,” and we laugh about it.
You can’t always be there to take the bullet for them, but you can support them through prayers. Our family relies a lot on the intercession of the saints. We call ourselves a family of Jesuits because the school my children went to is under the patronage of St. Ignatius of Loyola.
Fatherhood is a full-time engagement. It is not like you can be a father in the morning and take a break in the evening. You worry about your children even when they are grown and have left your home. They preoccupy you everywhere. You wonder whether they are warm and if they have had their meal. But all this brings a father immense joy.
Young fathers in Africa are overburdened by poverty. Because of poverty they don’t have a way to help their families. Others are scared to enter the marriage institution. Poverty has made young men weak and helpless. Some are leaving their young families and going to faraway places outside the continent to make a living.
Poverty is eroding family values because some fathers do what they do, including stealing, for their children to survive. In doing so, they are setting a bad example for their children …
It is important for our leaders to confront this situation. They must accept that they have let us down.
Matthew Njogu, 75: Tips on being a present dad
Matthew Njogu is the moderator of the Catholic Men Association at St. Austin’s Msongari Parish of Kenya’s Archdiocese of Nairobi. His children are now adults. Credit: Photo courtesy of ACI Africa
Fathers need to be present in the lives of their children. For a long time, it was assumed that it was the mother’s responsibility to take care of the young children; fathers kept off. But being absent in the lives of your children hurts your relationship with them. They end up growing up without you having any impact on their lives.
Unfortunately, some fathers assume that fatherhood ends at providing material things… They don’t pay attention to their children’s growth milestones. And when they eventually try to establish a connection, they find that the children are already all grown without knowing anything about their fathers.
Simple things like dropping your children off at school help you connect with them. While stuck in traffic on the way to school, you can talk about things that will help you understand your child and for him to know you.
Always try as much as possible to have dinner with your children and help them with schoolwork. And always try to make up for the time you don’t spend with them.
Edward Chaleh Nkamanyi, 53: Raising a Christ-like family
Edward Chaleh Nkamanyia runs a medical college in Doula, Cameroon. He is a father of two, though he tells ACI Africa that he is “a father of many” as he takes care of several orphans and other vulnerable children. Credit: Photo courtesy of ACI Africa
Nkamanyi runs a medical college in Doula, Cameroon. He is a father of two children ages 16 and 20. He tells ACI Africa that he is “a father of many,” as he takes care of several orphans and other vulnerable children. Here are his insights into nurturing a Christ-like family.
It is the joy of every responsible young man to be called “daddy” or “papa.” Having a Christ-like family is the greatest gift for a father; a family like that of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.
My appeal for Catholic fathers is to hold their families firmly, to provide for them, and to protect them from all dangers in the contemporary society, where values are being eroded.
I don’t believe that being a father is a challenging task. God already gave us the innate potential to be fathers. I believe that God can’t give you a role that you can’t perform.
It is unfortunate that many young men are choosing to be absentee fathers. From what I have seen, many children raised by a single parent end up adopting wayward behaviors.
Alfred Magero, 48: Being a present dad in a low-income setting
Alfred Magero belongs to the Catholic Men’s Association group of St. Joseph the Worker Kangemi Catholic Parish of in the Nairobi Archdiocese. The father of three has been married for 29 years. Credit: Photo courtesy of ACI Africa
Magero belongs to the Catholic Men’s Association group of St. Joseph the Worker Kangemi Parish of the Archdiocese of Nairobi. The father of three has been married for 29 years and shares his experience and that of other Catholic dads raising their children in a low-income neighborhood.
I am raising my children to become God-fearing adults. This is not an easy task in the community in which we live, where there is a lot of poverty, drunkenness, and other characteristics typical of a low-income [neighborhood].
Many fathers rarely interact with their children since their main focus is to provide for their families. They leave for work before their children wake up and come back at night when the children have already gone to bed.
The young men and boys we are raising are experiencing a different environment from ours when we were growing up. With the whole world brought to them on the palm of their hand by a simple tap on the phone, this generation is dangerously exposed. They need us, their fathers, to constantly give them direction. They need us to be their role models.
They need us to constantly remind them that they are in Africa and that they should not adopt alien cultures, especially those bound to destroy the family.
As fathers, we must remind our young ones to uphold African values that kept the family unit and the society glued together. Africans knew the importance of loving and caring for each other. Unfortunately, this value is being eroded, and in its place, now we have individualism. Older men in families would educate young men to be responsible adults. Unfortunately, we no longer have this kind of education.
Sister Suellen Tennyson, a member of the Congregation of the Marianites of Holy Cross, who was abducted in Burkina Faso April 4, 2022. / Diocese of Kaya.
Kaya, Burkina Faso, Apr 5, 2022 / 13:08 pm (CNA).
Prayers are being sought for the safe re… […]
Erbil, Iraq, Jan 8, 2020 / 11:48 am (CNA).- After Iran attacked an air base in Erbil early Wednesday, the Chaldean Archbishop of Erbil said the current tensions between Iran and the U.S. threaten the fragile Christian communities in Iraq’s Nineveh Plains.
“The current tensions between the two powers must not escalate. Iraq has been suffering from proxy wars for decades; they have torn our country apart,” Archbishop Bashar Warda told CNA Jan. 8.
In retaliation for the U.S. drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, Iran fired a more than a dozen ballistic missiles at the Al Asad and Erbil air bases, where U.S. troops are stationed. There were no casualties from the attacks, according to U.S. and Iraqi forces.
U.S. President Donald Trump said in a speech Jan. 8 that he is asking NATO to become much more involved in the Middle East, and said Iran appears to be “standing down.”
Warda said his Catholic community in Iraqi Kurdistan is tired of war and its tragic consequences. “They have continually suffered far too much and can no longer face an unknown future,” he said.
“We are a courageous people of hope. Since the defeat of ISIS in May 2017 by the coalition forces, our archdiocese has been working with other church leaders, Christian agencies, humanitarian agencies, governments and NGOs to help rebuild our fractured communities in Mosul and Nineveh Plain. It has been a very challenging road to raise funds and international support to help us to physically regain what we lost starting in August 2014. The current tensions are threatening the serious fragility of the communities,” Warda said.
Iraqi Christians “need the certainty, reassurance, hope and the belief that Iraq can be a peaceful country to live in rather than being victims and endless collateral damage,” he said.
The Archbishop of Erbil said he was united with the appeal from Cardinal Louis Raphael I Sako, Chaldean Patriarch of Babylon, prudently to seek civilised dialogue and to pray for peace.
“As Church leaders we will always follow the path of God in seeking peace, reconciliation, mutual dialogue and not conflict,” he said.
Fr. Benham Benoka, a priest of the Syriac Archeparchy of Mosul, said that he hopes the situation of Christians in the Nineveh Plains will be taken into consideration as Iran and the United States confront one another.
“We feel increasingly insecure, especially now that we are talking about the withdrawal of military forces,” Benoka said in an an Italian interview with Vatican Radio Jan. 8.
Fr. Benoka is currently based in Bartella, a Christian city fewer than 20 miles east of Mosul controlled by Shia militiamen.
Following Islamic State’s occupation of the Bartella, the city’s Christian population has been reduced to less than a third of what it was, according to the Associated Press, who reported in 2019 that Christians families were afraid to return to Bartella due to intimidation by the Shabak, a Shia ethnic group who make up the militias controlling the town.
“Since we returned, even if only partially, to our land, after the defeat of IS in October 2016, we have been engaged in the reconstruction of houses and churches. But there are other forces, such as the so-called ‘Thirty Brigade’ of Shiite Shabak Muslims, who have taken control of the Christian city of Bartella and every day we must suffer their aggressive acts against churches and against our Christians, especially against women. This is why we have been asking for a solution to our situation for some time,” Fr. Benoka said.
The Iraqi priest said that he was particularly concerned to hear that the Iraqi parliament voted to ask the government to end the presence of international coalition forces.
“We only have 24 soldiers from the so-called NPU, the Protection Units of the Nineveh Plain, that is, Christian popular mobilization forces, and these 24 soldiers will never be able to defend us. So how can we do it? Where should we go?” he said.
“We truly pray that the military solution is not the only solution, but that there is a diplomatic solution to protect Iraqi blood,” the priest said.
Fr. Benoka said that his community prays the rosary every day for solutions to the problems facing the Iraqi people: “We ask that everyone agree – politicians and everyone else – to solve the problems that our Iraqi people suffer from, instead of chasing the interests of other foreign agendas.”
“We ask that the situation of us Christians here in the Nineveh Plain be taken into consideration: we have neither weapons nor anything,” the priest said.
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