Participants at the Season of Creation Vespers service Sept. 1, pose with Bishop Gabriel Edo Kumordji, SVD, of the Diocese of Keta-Akatsi, Ghana, Africa, center, at St. Anthony Parish in Davenport.
By Barb Arland-Fye
The Catholic Messenger
While visiting a parish in his diocese recently, Bishop Gabriel Edoe Kumordji, SVD of Ghana, Africa was dismayed to find the church building without a roof. A strong wind blew it off in the coastal community of West Africa. Just a year ago, he advised the parish to plant trees to serve as a windbreak to protect the building. Trees had not been planted.
Bishop Kumordji, bishop of the Diocese of Keta-Akatsi, shared that story with participants after a Vespers service Sept. 1 at St. Anthony Church in Davenport that opened the month-long, worldwide celebration of the Season of Creation. He spoke of the devastating effects of a changing climate on his country and the proactive, yet challenging efforts to adapt to those changes.
The bishop was in the Diocese of Davenport last weekend for a mission appeal visit at St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Davenport. He spoke to parishioners about the work of the 32 parishes in his diocese to spread the Catholic faith and of the financial needs to support those efforts and the work of the schools and hospitals in the diocese. Donations also support seminaries and the formation of priests and religious communities. Deacon Kent Ferris, diocesan director of the Social Action Office, oversees mission appeals in the Davenport Diocese.
While Bishop Kumordji’s diocese is the beneficiary of financial donations from other dioceses through the mission appeal, other dioceses benefit from the ministry of priests from his diocese serving as missionary priests in the U.S. and other countries, he said.
Connections between the mission appeal and the Season of Creation became evident in his talks in the Davenport Diocese. Both apply to Laudato Si’ (subtitled “On Care for Our Common Home”), the 2015 encyclical of Pope Francis in which he stressed essential relationships — people’s relationship with God, with each other and with the earth.
Mission appeal visits are important in helping people in their local parishes to learn about Catholics around the world and to celebrate the universality of the Catholic Church, Bishop Kumordji told The Catholic Messenger. “We learn from other churches in other communities. … We are not alone. They are brothers and sisters who we have not seen. They say prayers with us and celebrate Eucharist with us and continue to support us and we support them.”
That is why it is important to share with people in the Davenport Diocese the effects of climate change on the people of Ghana. The World Bank Group reports “coastal erosion and flood resulting from the impacts of human activities, inappropriate systems put in place for managing coastal ecosystems, climate change and sea-level rise remain major threats to coastal dwellers and their livelihoods.”
Bishop Gabriel Edo Kumordji, SVD, of the Diocese of Keta-Akatsi, Ghana, Africa, center, visits with retired priests of the Diocese of Davenport at St. Vincent Center and St. Ambrose University student, Father Egidius Kataruga of Africa.
“… Erosion has affected the social and economic life of local populations, threatened cultural heritage and hindered coastal tourism in addition to the destruction of houses and other physical infrastructure. Some of the most affected communities are found in the Keta Municipality, which forms part of the eastern coast…,” the World Bank Group reported.
Harm to the earth is a grave concern in Ghana where the people embrace “God as creator and the earth as our mother,” Bishop Kumordji told the gathering at St. Anthony Church. Plastic waste, illegal logging, burning wood for charcoal and use of chemical pesticides all contribute to the harm, he said. Another major consequence: the two rainy seasons — major and minor — have changed, which makes it extremely difficult for people trying to grow food crops. “We use a lot of herbs in health and also in meals. They are vanishing,” Bishop Kumordji said.
Efforts to respond proactively are under way, he said. The bishops’ conference of the 20 dioceses in Ghana, embracing Laudato Si’, has commissioned a group to promote solar energy in parishes, schools and hospitals. “It is very expensive,” Bishop Kumordji said. Organized protests of plastic waste are happening. The collection of electronic waste is also under way.
Also as part of a commitment to Laudato Si’, “the school children in my diocese are planting 1 million trees and this year the whole diocese will plant 10 million trees. In the last year, my diocese planted 500,000 trees.”
