Peter Cardinal Appiah Turkson, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development at the Vatican granted an interview to the Managing Editor of The Catholic Standard, Ben B. Assorow during his recent visit to Ghana on vacation.
Question: Your Eminence, could you kindly talk about your courtesy calls on the President and his Vice recently?
I was not in the country after the elections and at the inauguration and I think it is of a filial duty and a basic gesture of citizenship to congratulate the New Government, the President and his Vice on their assumption of governance and direction in this country.
Through the elections, Ghanaians have decided to entrust the well-being, governance and care of this nation in their care and this is a sign of trust on the part of the people of this land. Since the elections signaled a change of government, it is also indeed an indicative of the will and power of the people to express a change when they feel it is due or necessary.
Sense of Judgement
This does not imply any sense of judgement but still, you cannot talk about the change of government without judgement. The people must have perceived the need for a change and they expressed that through the ballot.
So it was not up to me to comment on the people’s judgement or need for a change but mine was to simply congratulate the new President and the Vice for their leadership of this country for the next four years and to give them the prayerful wishes of God’s guidance and help in this regard and to assure them of the support of my small and modest Office in the Vatican in whatever we can do to help realise their vision and goals for the well-being of this country.
Common Good
This is very significant for us because my Office in the Vatican places a lot of emphasis on the common good of people and the need for Government and Civil Society to work together for the common good of the people. Therefore, I thought it was in order to congratulate the President and to encourage him in the many programmes that he has adopted and on this particular occasion I had the chance to congratulate the President in his campaign against galamsey not because he wants to take away jobs from Ghanaians but because of the care that he shows for the environment, the well-being of the land and all.
Since this is an issue for which I have travelled around the world talking about, the environmental concern, integral ecology among others, the President’s gesture resonated very loudly well with the efforts of our Office and I pledge the support of our office and indeed I will try to find a concrete way of making this fight about maintaining a very healthy environment possible. To push and to work for the well-being of the environment is not pure sentimentalism but it is something that touches very closely and to the core.
Human beings are made from the substance of the earth and our lives are also nourished by the resources of the earth. Our bodies are from the clay of the earth and we are sustained by the fruit produced by the earth.
Everything of ours is so closely bound to the earth but this does not mean we should regard it as mythical or a god but it means that the earth or creation is worthy of our great respect and when we respect it, it just means that we do not treat it abusively but in a way that enables us to ensure that the earth supports our lives and those who will come after us.
The concern of our Office is not simply to ensure the well-being and the care for the earth and so not to treat it abusively as if it is only for us today but also recognise that we hold the earth in trust for future generations. We call this essentially the generational solidarity.
Environmental Abuse
One of the areas where the environment is abused especially in Ghana is our care for water which is poor. The way of waste disposal is very poor, plastic waste are poorly treated and used in this country which chokes the water ways and causes floods every year and when the flood is over, we go back to our lives as if nothing has happened.
We need to change that culture; a place like Rwanda has discovered how plastic can be a menace and has moved away from the use of plastics and so has Kenya. Aljazeera showed a slaughter house of cattle and how within the bowels of the cattle you see some plastic materials. This is on land, but also know that the same thing happens in the sea; sea creatures when disemboweled, also have a lot of waste including plastics.
Therefore, it is not simply about the harm that they cause to the environment but the worst part is the micro plastics which we do not see but ingest through animals we eat that ingest these plastics. It is a question not simply of food security but food safety; it is not a question of water security but water safety, it is about the quality of water that we use.
Pollution of Water Bodies
We have polluted all our water bodies because of mining and other activities and that is why we are in full support of the President and his campaign to restore wholeness and wholesomeness to the water bodies and the land we have around us.
Therefore, considering what we want to do, Pope Francis has come out with an Encyclical, Laudato Si which is about the environment. My Office had the privilege of preparing the draft of that Encyclical so I think the first thing or the most natural thing to do is to share this treasure with Ghana and the people of this land so we should study the occasion and plan how we can organise a Conference to share with the world this Encyclical which I had the chance of taking to Paris for COP 21 and to Morocco for COP 22 and I am preparing to take it again to Bonn for COP 23; why not bring this also to our own land and explore the wealth of this Encyclical with our own people?
The Vatican essentially is a Church though it is known as a State and the corresponding group of the Vatican in the country is the Bishops’ Conference so that is where everything must begin. This is an activity which must be planned with the Bishops of Ghana who can make it inter-religious and inter-faith by bringing other Faith Groups on board.
Question: Corruption has been a problem of all time. What do you think is the problem in Africa and Ghana in particular with regards to the fight against corruption?
The phenomenon we call corruption is like a hydra. It had got very many heads and many manifestations too. Corruption therefore is something that defies a single designation so we rather talk about the phenomenon, a character, an attitude which makes the person less human and his relationship with others also less human.
That is how we can say sometimes that corruption corrupts. Corruption therefore is something that is corrupting the individual. Corruption is disintegration, decomposition, meaning that the parts do not gel or stick together. And when things decompose, sooner or later, they get spoilt, that basically is the character. This means that when we talk of corruption in the society, the form of disintegration we talk about is essentially an attack against the sense of justice and the common good in the sense that the one thing that binds us all together in every community is relationship.
Living a Just Life
When people respect the demands of the relationship which they live in, they are just. However, when people abuse the demands of the relationship in which they live, they are unjust. This is biblical and I cite this because so many Bible preachers exist in this land and it is good to remind ourselves about this. That is why redemption in the Bible is called justification which means that the relationship between us and God has to be proper and the relation between us and our neighbour has to be proper, meaning that we have to respect the demands of that relationship.
Therefore, when a student passes his examination and to get admission to a Secondary School, someone who did not perform well pays money to someone and as a result the one who performed better does not get admission into a Secondary School, the demands of the relationship is not respected. This is called corruption. It is abuse of relationship, it is abuse of the dignity of other people, it is abuse of respect for the dignity of other people manifested in the display of power or authority.
Corruption
Another form of corruption can be related with structural deficiency. It is clear here in Ghana that our salary levels are very low and so basically, it is a miracle how people live in Ghana because when you look at how people live and the salaries or wages they earn, they cannot make it. During the election campaigns, there was a lot said about high electricity bills which should not be the case. The cost of living far exceed the wages people earn. The question now is how are people supposed to live? Everybody now goes in for the extra that is necessary to make him live hence they resort to cheating, stealing and whichever way you can get what you need.
So, in that sense, corruption can become an Institutional Problem that promotes this attitude within people. Regrettably, we can talk about structures within the society which promote corrupt practices. It is not excusing anybody for being corrupt but people need to resort to certain things to make a living. How much does it cost to send your child to a private school since there is a lot of distrust in public schools; and the Secondary School and talk about University and yet these are places where we are supposed to send our children and have our children study.
I do not say all these as a criticism, blame or anything to any government because this government inherited this from the past so I do not lay this at the doorsteps or anything like that, no.
But it is useful even now and then to sit back and look at the situation and do a healthy analysis of it and see if it is really just and fair to have people live the way that they live and to subject people to situations which force them to cheat, steal and try whatever and still worse those Pastors who also therefore present this as an ideal where being prosperous is ideal. How does this happen when somebody has no business or entrepreneurial skills?
Question: What is the role of the Church in this fight?
We need to resort to Christianity. The role of the Church is the role of Jesus. He came to make disciples, nothing more, nothing less. The call to discipleship is the nature and function of Christian religion. To learn from Him and to imitate Him and live as He lived.
Respecting Religion
The thing is we have made religion a dispensing machine. You go put in anything and get out whatever you are looking for. That is not religion. Religion is about relationship between us and God. With one another by way of promoting justice and proper way of living together with one another.
In other words, respecting and working for the common good of each one. Our basic vocation on this earth as God created us in fraternity is that together in our co-existence, we should work for the common good of everyone. Therefore. when this is not possible and we betray ourselves instead of being concerned about our brother, we betray our sense of humanity and the fact of God having created us and called us to a life of Brotherhood.
Question: There have been complaints about heavy traffic in the country. What suggestion do you have for the government and the people of Ghana?
Our cities are never planned well, although we all know that the challenge of development here in Ghana is a tension between the land tenure system which invests land in the hands of Chiefs and Clan Leaders etc. and the planners. There is the need for the two to come together to work out a system which allows development and at the same time respect the ownership of the land. What is lacking is the planned system of development.
Intelligent Urban Development
Our town planners who attend courses outside these days are exposed to what is called Intelligent Urban Development. I have participated in Habitat Conferences where this is discussed. Intelligent Urban Development means introduction of a system where we live together, one on top of the other. We grow up instead of growing out (high rise building). The point is that people may say that culturally Ghanaians are not used to that.
Culturally we were not used to a lot of things, but we now do them. Our children grew up learning to speak the local language but now everybody sends his or her child to school at a very early age and they speak English.
So culture, yes, but the situation forces us to be intelligent and to be clear about what we do. In a way, we perpetuate a system of everybody trying to own a piece of land which he walls and develops his small house inside which is forcing us to grow out. The question is, can we have land enough to support all of this demand?
Land is limited, and if we put all our lands in the development of houses, we shall lack the land on which to farm. So we may have houses but not have enough food. The thing of putting all the precious lands into house building means that sooner or later, we are going to have the challenge of where we are going to grow food.
Transportation System
Second thing is how we solve transportation problem. Everybody therefore needs to travel longer hours to go to their working places and I know stories of families that wake their children up at 3:00 am because they need to drive out to get their kids to school so that the parents can go to their offices at the required time.
So the child is woken up barely putting a dress on. It is only when he gets to the school compound that he is given a bottle of water to brush his teeth. This has become necessary because their parents live far away that they need to spend two, three, four hours driving before they get to their places of work. Is this necessary and is it sustainable and most importantly is it reasonable or sensible? This is not.
Certainly, a time is coming that we should adopt new urban development modules. If this calls for real estate, let the government lead us in real estate to get affordable housing because the way we develop our housing system is not sustainable.
There is not going to be enough land to accommodate all that. We are going to spend a lot of time in traffic, burn more fuel, polluting the environment and drive to work tired and back home exhausted.
Liveable Cities
The other thing is we need to make our cities livable. Our cities are not livable because of noise levels. I have nothing against Religions, so Muslims calling to prayer at 4:00 am you do not even know when people went to bed and got sleep. At 4:00 am they are forced to wake up because you must call people to prayer. Should we not modernise religion? Should we not use our watches and alarm clocks more than a call to prayer?
I respect whatever the tradition behind this but the reality is to confront it the modern way and see what is best to do. Our neighbours the Evangelicals find any small space and do Churches and use loud speakers. Tema had a very beautiful module of concentrating the places of worship in an area and let the residential places free of worship centres. All the religious people can go to such places allocated to them and exercise their religion in freedom and leave the residential areas free of noise for people to rest, think and get their lives together.
The type of development in our urban cities are not humanly friendly and not supportive of sustainable healthy lives and we need to change that.
