Roman Catholic bishops marked Easter with an unprecedented message to President Robert Mugabe to end oppression and leave office through democratic reform or face a mass revolt. "The confrontation in our country has now reached a flashpoint," said the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops Conference in a pastoral message pinned up at churches throughout the country. "As the suffering population becomes more insistent, generating more and more pressure through boycotts, strikes, demonstrations and uprisings, the state responds with ever harsher oppression through arrests, detentions, banning orders, beatings and torture," the nine bishops said.
Although the Catholic bishops -- especially Pius Ncube, the Archbishop of the city of Bulawayo -- have criticised the Government in the past, the tone of this year's pastoral message was the most strident since independence from Britain in 1980. The Pope, in his traditional Easter address from the central balcony of St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, singled out Zimbabwe among other troubled countries. "Zimbabwe is in the grip of a grievous crisis," he said.
The bishops' letter, entitled God Hears the Cries of the Oppressed, likened human and democratic rights abuses under Mugabe to the oppression of biblical pharaohs and Egyptian slave masters. The conflict was "between those who only know the language of violence and intimidation, and those who feel they have nothing more to lose because their constitutional rights have been abrogated and their votes rigged", it said.
The bishops called for a day of prayer and fasting for Zimbabwe on Saturday and said there would be a prayer service for Zimbabwe every week after that. |