ZIMBABWE:Ireland's Catholic bishops have joined the growing chorus of Catholic Bishops Conferences worldwide to express their "deepest concern and dismay" at the worsening political and humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe. The country is 10 per cent Catholic, including its Jesuit-educated president, Robert Mugabe.
The Irish bishops called on the Zimbabwean government "to provide urgently-needed shelter and food for its population and to facilitate the efforts of aid agencies including those sponsored by the churches, to provide humanitarian and development assistance to the dispossessed."
They urged the Irish people to continue supporting Trócaire and such agencies in Zimbabwe.
Last April Zimbabwe's Catholic Bishops issued a pastoral, God Hears the Cry of the Oppressed, which condemned the crisis there.
"As the suffering population becomes more insistent, generating more and more pressure through boycotts, strikes, demonstrations and uprisings, the state responds with ever harsher oppression through arrests, detentions, banning orders, beatings and torture," they said.
The Irish bishops yesterday also called on the Zimbabwean government "to address the crisis of governance and leadership" as outlined in that pastoral. They referred to "the long history of friendship which unites Irish people with Zimbabweans, which is due in no small measure to the ongoing dedicated work of Irish missionaries in partnership with the people of Zimbabwe."
Prior to the 2005 elections in Zimbabwe, one of the country's most consistent critics of the regime, Archbishop Pius Ncube, called for "a non-violent popular uprising" to overthrow Mr Mugabe.
Archbishop of Bulawayo Dr Ncube was described by Mugabe's Zanu-PF party as "a mad, inveterate liar", while Mr Mugabe said: "His prayers are not as pious as his name suggests apparently. He is . . . a half-wit."
Archbishop Ncube visited Ireland twice in 2004 and in an interview with The Irish Times in July that year said what Mr Mugabe was doing was "very evil".
As to his own safety in Zimbabwe, he said: "what will be will be, but I believe God is mightier. I will continue to stand up to him [ Mugabe]."