AFRICA/GHANA - "Ritual killings are a threat to national security" denounce the Bishops

Monday, 12 April 2021 youth   bishops   witchcraft  

Accra (Agenzia Fides) - "We need to protect our youth from certain things. So some of what the media carries out there should be censored for the youth. Because if things like ‘how people can come by quick money’ is put out there they would want to experiment it", said His Exc. Mgr. Philip Naameh Archbishop Tamale, President of the Ghanaian Bishops' Conference (GCBC), in a statement on ritual killings, after the police arrested two teenage boys, 16 and 18 years of age, who were remanded into police custody for allegedly killing a 10-year-old. The suspects, Felix Nyarko, 16, and Nicholas Kini, 18, are alleged to have gruesomely murdered Ishmael Mensah Abdallah with the intention of using his body parts for rituals. This sad and gruesome incident, which took place in a suburb of Kasoa in the Central Region, challenges us as a people and as a nation, and requires urgent action to prevent a reoccurrence of the act, says Mons Naameh. "The horrific action of these teenagers should serve as a wake-up call to discover that perhaps we have lost our moral compass as individuals, people and nation".
Archbishop Naameh called these pseudo magical practices "a threat to national security". In his statement, the GCBC President accuses local media for broadcasting programs in which alleged "sorcerers" teach magical practices with the promise of making people rich in a short space of time. "This means that we have not taken sufficient precautions to assess what we are feeding in the minds of our young people to the point that they think the possibility of killing someone for wealth is not wrong".
Mgr. Naameh on behalf of all the Bishops of Ghana asks "all the main interested parties to repress the activities of these spiritualist swindlers who through their audiovisual contents continue to propagate evil and 'easy money illusion from television broadcasters and social media platforms".
The Bishops condemn the tendency to celebrate wealth, manifested in the worship of the rich without questioning the source of their wealth, equating donations with good leadership and the belief that money must be made "by hook or by crook", and urge the Ghanaians "to trace a new path towards genuine values, such as hard work and honesty.
"We commend the soul of the young Ishmael Mensah Abdallah to God's mercy and pray for the consolation of parents and the whole family and that the Lord guide adolescents in our modern world", he concludes. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides, 12/4/2021)


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