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NEW POPE TALKS TO NIGERIAN CHURCHES
Pope Leo XIV, whose name is Robert Prevost, Stepped onto the perch of the Catholic Church last week in a breathtaking moment.
His choice as the first American tells me he was a counterfoil to Trump, and American cleric as “provost” of peace and unity, to help save the world from an American perdition.
It overstates it to think the Pope can do it alone, but it shows how the church can do good by its appeal to the righteous regions of our souls.
This new Pope visited Nigeria in 2016 as part of his evangelical work as an Augustinian.
The Augustinian hails from the theological philosophy of Saint Augustine, that loved to dissect the word and pay homage to the poor and help the sinner.
The new Pope follows Leo XIII because he united the people and helped the poor. Which is what is lacking in the Nigerian churches today when pastors, especially of the Pentecostal type, who elevate material splendor over the life of the spirit.
It reminds one of a cleric who said it is better to die a rich man than a poor man.
Another, one pastor Ibiyeomie, said Jesus hates the poor, and he hated them so much in his earthly ministry that he did not visit the poor at home. Well, the real poor don’t have homes.
He himself said, the birds have a home, but the son of man had no place to rest his head. If he hated the poor why did he live in poverty when he was on earth, so much so he cursed a tree for lacking a fruit.
He did not visit the poor in the house? Do you have to visit the poor in their home to empathise? Did he not dine with the publicans, who were regarded as poor?
When the Bible says he was poor so we might be rich, he was speaking of being rich in spirit according to James 2:5. To be rich is good. But to be poor is no sin.
Some of these pastors encourage terrorism, kidnapping and fraud in this society by talking down the poor in church. it turns meek worshippers into conniving villains.
Jesus himself was with poor people when he changed a few loaves of bread and fishes to feed a multitude. Were they rich? Jesus warned how hard it is for rich men to enter his kingdom. E.T Okere muses on this in his book, Church, Money and Power.
By materialising scripture, they have defrocked the word of its power and glory, and made it a secular gambit.
After all God said in the book of Samuel that He made the rich and poor, and in proverbs that the rich and poor should meet together because God made them all. (Proverbs 22:2).
Is the parable of the Rich man not to condemn insentivity to the poor. It is not enough to live with the poor, but to care.
That was the kernel of Pope XIV’s message, and our overabundant clerics will do well to learn.
