Roman Catholic Bishops in many countries in the world have reportedly barred prominent political figures from receiving Holy Communion and in some cases the Bishops have asked the politicians to confess and receive absolution of their grave sins in the sacrament of Penance. This has never been the case in Cameroon where Roman Catholic clerics are regularly killed and their bodies dumped in waters.

Last year, Cameroon Concord News Group challenged Cameroonian bishops to begin prohibiting corrupt and vicious political figures from receiving Holy Communion, but the Bishops including Archbishop Andrew Nkea and Bishop George Nkuo insisted that it would be inherently political, not pastoral. The Metropolitan Archbishop of the Bamenda Ecclesiastic Province in a conversation with this reporter opined that in as much as the Holy Roman Catholic Church is concerned about public policy, its main focus is on the spiritual care of individual Catholics. Well, that is exactly why the butcher of Yaoundé, 89-year-old President Paul Biya is still receiving Holy Communion.

The Bishops have maintained that conversation with the failed regime in Yaoundé is always better than exclusion and that the church prefers dialogue and persuasion. But regarding Mr. Paul Biya, we of the Concord Group think that for forty years in power, the policies of dialogue and persuasion have clearly been made. It is now time to bar Biya from receiving Holy Communion.  

All what Biya has done for forty years as head of state ranges from plain fiction to the most absurd and for more than six years now, Cameroon has been battling an insurgency in the country’s two English-speaking regions which is hard to overcome though the Yaoundé government has thrown everything it has at the insurgents.

More than ten thousand Cameroonians, including four thousand soldiers, have died because of the conflict in the country’s two English-speaking regions and the country’s economy is still reeling from the government generated chaos.

We of the Cameroon Concord News and the Cameroon Intelligence Report are appealing to all Cameroonian Bishops to come to the understanding that there is nothing more that can be done by the Holy Roman Catholic Church at this point to help President Biya and his ruling criminal gangs to understand the seriousness of the evil his forty year old regime is perpetrating on the Cameroonian nation. In barring President Paul Biya from receiving Holy Communion, we of the Concord Group believe that the Cameroonian Bishops will have the complete support of the Cameroonian people and the Holy Father Pope Francis who in a recent revision of the canon law spoke of responding to the demands of justice, moving the offending party to conversion, and repairing the scandal caused. Biya should even be excommunicated from the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

The Bishop of the Kumbo Diocese, His Lordship Bishop George Nkuo acknowledged some years ago in the city of Essen in Germany that he has struggled with what he should do regarding a pastoral situation in Cameroon where so many Roman Catholic political figures were in jail charged with corruption. Bishop Nkuo left the ex-students of Sacred Heart Mankon with the normal Roman Catholic prescriptions: prayer, fasting, and consultation with a broad spectrum of Catholic leaders-nothing have changed ever since the Bishop left the North Rhein Westphalia region of Germany.  

Allowing Mr. Biya to continue receiving the Holy Eucharist, the Cameroonian Bishops are apparently saying that Cameroon’s Misruler-In-Chief President Paul Biya is a good Catholic.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai