Kinshasa senior most clergyman Tata Cardinal Ambongo, who is on a working visit to Kigali has tasked politicians in Kinshasa “to find middle ground with the people they call enemies”, arguing that the church’s role in conflict resolution is not political.
Cardinal Ambongo – who is attending the Symposium for African Bishobs in Kigali – was responding to noisy Congolese back home who were blasting him for “having disregarded their plight”, which they allege is caused by “Rwanda and its leaders.”
Ambongo said that people in Kinshasa should differentiate politics from religion.
The man of God who even officiated a mass at Saint Paul Chapel, accompanied by his Kigali counterpart Antoine Cardinal Kambanda, later explained that critics who bash him on his stance towards Rwanda should know that the Church even tried to advise politicians in Kinshasa, but their advice fell on deaf ears.
People who know the Cardinal very well will quickly understand that though he tried very much to be diplomatic, the very message he was telling Tshisekedi was that the Congolese ruler should mature politically, and stop whining about miseries he himself caused.
Not a long ago, the same man back in Kinshasa was wondering why a leader of a country like DRC should waste much resources and energy seeking to change the constitution instead of catering for an abandoned and hopeless youth which often resort to criminality in search for simple living.
Obviously Cardinal Ambongo is one among few Congolese that have openly voiced his position with regard to Tshisekedi’s bad governance that pitied the country into anarchy, violence and perpetual conflict. We can only pray he is not betrayed and eliminated by the incompetent regime of Tshisekedi for punching sense into their madness.