The president of Zimbabwe’s Catholic bishops’ conference has joined other Christian leaders in calling the departure of Robert Mugabe an “opportunity for the birth of a new nation”.
The Zimbabwe Heads of Christian Denominations, which includes Bishop Michael Bhasera, conference president, and Fr Frederick Chiromba, its general secretary, appealed for an interim government to be formed to “oversee the smooth transition to free and fair elections”.
The Christian leaders said many Zimbabweans were “confused and anxious about what has transpired and continues to unfold in our nation”. But they said there was “no way we can go back to the political arrangements we had some days ago. We are in a new situation.
“While the changes have been rapid in the last few days, the real deterioration has been visible for everyone to see for a long time,” the Christian leaders said.
Last Saturday hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in the capital, Harare, to celebrate the expected end of Mr Mugabe’s reign as one of Africa’s longest-serving heads of state. As the Catholic Herald went to press Mr Mugabe had refused to resign and was facing impeachment proceedings.
He has been widely blamed for Zimbabwe’s economic decline over the past two decades. Millions of economic refugees have left the country, most going to South Africa.
Members of the Church hierarchy strongly supported Mugabe in the early days of his regime, with one prelate, Archbishop Patrick Chakaipa, suppressing a report about the massacre of 10,000 civilians in Matabeleland.
French Catholics to use a revised form of Lord’s Prayer
French Catholics will begin using a revised version of the Lord’s Prayer next month.
The new version replaces a translation in place since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.
In the modern French version of Notre Père, produced in 1966, the sixth request to God, rendered in the King James version as “Lead us not into temptation”, was “Do not submit us to temptation” (Ne nous soumets pas à la tentation).
The new version, which was agreed by the French bishops in March, reads: “Do not let us enter into temptation” (Ne nous laisse pas entrer en tentation).
Bishop Guy de Kerimel of Grenoble, who oversees liturgy for the French bishops, has said the previous version was ambiguous.
The new translation of the Latin ne nos inducas in tentationem has also been approved by French-language Protestant churches.
It will be used in all Catholic churches in France from December 3, the First Sunday in Advent.
The new translation was introduced in Belgium and Africa in June.
Francis praises Benedict’s teaching
The theological work and papal teaching of Benedict XVI are a “living and precious heritage for the Church”, Pope Francis has said.
The Pope told the winners of the Ratzinger Prize that Benedict was a “master and friendly interlocutor” for those using reason in search of the truth. This year’s winners were theologians Theodor Dieter and Fr Karl-Heinz Menke and Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.
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