Julien Dreshenga, Africanews reporter in Bangui, CAR
Central African indigenous clergymen held a general assembly at Bangui Cathedral on Sunday opposing a move by the Holy See to sanction one of them. Father Paulin Pomodimo, Bangui archbishop, is under fire for adopting "a moral attitude which is not always in conformity with his commitments to follow Christ in chastity, poverty and obedience."
The scandal started when an investigative mission deployed by Vatican and headed by Father Robert Sarah, Rome Ducaster, concluded that many local priests have official homes, children and have accumulated private properties.
Meanwhile, news just in from our CAR reporter said Father Pomodimo resigned on Tuesday with no apparent reason.
Cardinal Ivan Dias, Prefect for Peoples Evangelization Congregation, addressed an open letter to Central African priests saying, “many bad things have been done to the body of Christ through poor and scandalous comportments.”
Cardinal Diaz continued in his letter published in the local daily called Le Confident of 20 May: “It is pointless to deny what every body knows. There is no need judging the motives and circumstances of the evil that has been committed. Members of the national clergy, diocesans and religious, you are, in one way or the other, accomplice of the current situation, but each of you shall assume his own culpability proportionally to his own responsibility.”
Another local daily called L’Hirondelle of 23 May reported that it is in connection with the affair that Rome refused to give to the Central African Church, during the last papal visit in Cameroon, the Instrumentum Laboris - a basic document for the next African synod that each country is supposed to have. L’Hirondelle continued that since then a vast readjustment process has been launched by Vatican. The seat of Father Pomodimo of Bangui is waddling. It is said that Pomodimo is requested to resign in favor of Father Armando Diani of Bouar.
It is in reaction to the foregoing that indigenous clergymen coming from nine Central African dioceses held the sacerdotal solidarity meeting at Bangui Cathedral on 24 May. They opposed the removal of Monsignor Pomodimo and accused the apostolic nuncio of being discriminatory, partial and selective in the assessment of the situation, since white priests and bishops are also guilty of the same practices.
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