LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Tablet
May 2, 2019
By Christa Pongratz-Lippitt
The Church in the whole of Africa urgently needs to catch up on the abuse issue, the Archbishop of Cape Town and former president of the South African bishops’ conference told the German Catholic news agency KNA on 24 April, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt.
“An honest, transparent and open process” was called for, Archbishop Stephen Brislin said.
Few countries in Africa had obeyed the Vatican’s call for regulations on how to cope with clerical sexual abuse, he recalled. He also regretted the fact that local churches had received little help with this. There were also differences in understanding how to cope with abuse.
Brislin said the Church was going through “the most difficult time since the Reformation” on account of the abuse crisis. It was imperative that the Church in Africa committed itself more seriously to dealing with the problem.
“We can only deal with abuse in one way, namely as a crime.” The abuse of nuns in the Church in Africa would increasingly preoccupy the Church in future, he predicted.
Regarding the twenty-fifth anniversary of democracy in South Africa this year, Brislin said the Church had not done enough to abolish still extant traces of apartheid. Not much had changed in terms of poverty and inequality in many places, such as Cape Town, he noted. Church communities were still often black or white or Coloured (mixed race).
“Some of our parishes traditionally still have three churches – one for each skin colour,” he noted.
After the national elections, on 8 May, it was essential for the president to tackle social inequality in South Africa, he underlined.
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