NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) — African Catholic leaders called for peace, dialogue and reconciliation amid persistent violent conflict on the continent at the 20th meeting of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences in Africa and Madagascar from July 30 to Aug. 4.
Over 250 bishops, 13 cardinals and more than 200 priests attended the meeting in Kigali, the Rwandan capital. The overarching forum of Catholic leaders in Africa considered the future of the church under the theme “Christ of hope, reconciliation and peace: The vision of the church family of God for the next 25 years.”
An estimated 280 million Catholics live in Africa, according to Vatican data. As the bishops spoke, more than 35 violent conflicts were unfolding on the continent.
“Interethnic and interstate tensions in various African regions result only in human impoverishment, which in turn triggers further deprivation that paralyzes the entire continent,” said Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, the archbishop of Kinshasa, Congo, and SECAM president, in the meeting’s final public statement that summarized talks, outcomes and calls to action from the gathering.
The bishops released their statement at a closing Mass in Kibeho, a lush and mountainous village in southern Rwanda where alleged supernatural Marian apparitions came to three young women between 1981 and 1989, which the Catholic Church declared authentic.
The statement called for “uncompromising and unconditional” peace among the continent’s Christians.
“No one truly wins in a conflict, whatever its nature. Reconciliation, forgi …