Fighting witchcraft in African Republic

During a recent visit to the international headquarters of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), Bishop Peter Marzinkowski of the Diocese of Alindao, a German Holy Ghost Father, described the "fight against witchcraft" as one of the biggest problems for the Church in the Central African Republic. Bishop Marzinkowski told ACN that in the consciousness of many people in the Central African Republic, there is "no natural explanation for death, sickness or natural disasters." Instead, people always look for a scapegoat who must in their view have caused the misfortune through witchcraft. It can happen to anyone, he explained, to be accused on the smallest pretext of having practiced witchcraft in order to harm someone, and they may even be killed in punishment. Such cases can even occur among Christians, he added, for among many of them the Christian faith is not yet sufficiently rooted, with the result that "at the least difficulty they relapse back into their traditional way of thinking." The Church is strengthening her pastoral commitment in order to better convey the Good News of Christ, which rests above all on forgiveness, said Bishop Marzinkowski. "We must help the people to acquire a new image of God and man." Many parishes are already very active in this field, he added, and of their own accord exclude people from the parish community who have accused others of witchcraft, until they finally forgive those who have supposedly harmed them. Nonetheless, he cautioned, at the present time only 38,000 of the 240,000 inhabitants of the diocese are Catholics.