Mozambican bishops want national reconciliation project, congratulate Nyusi and Dhlakama on search for peace

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Mozambican bishops want national reconciliation project, congratulate Nyusi and Dhlakama on search for peace

3:30 CAT | 02 May 2017

Noticias / From left to right: Archbishop of Beira Cláudio Dalla Zuanna, Archbishop of Maputo Francisco Chimoio, Bishop of Chimoio João Carlos Nunes

Mozambique’s Catholic bishops have congratulated the president, Filipe Jacinto Nyusi, and the Renamo leader, Afonso Dhlakama, on the steps taken in the dialogue to secure an effective peace in the country.

Speaking in the city of Beira on the sidelines of the Bishops’ Conference of Mozambique (CEM), which ended on Sunday, Archbishop Francisco Chimoio said that his congregation approved of moves towards pacification in the country.

Speaking alongside the secretary general of the CEM and Bishop of Chimoio João Carlos Nunes, the Archbishop of Beira, Archbishop Cláudio Dalla Zuanna and Archbishop Francisco Chimoio, president of the Bishops Conference, characterised the dialogue as a gesture of goodwill.

Archbishop Chimoio said peace must be built from dialogue in which the two parties share their ideas and differences and accept one another. There was need for reconciliation so that the wounds opened by the war would finally heal.

Bishop João Carlos Nunes said that the bishops valued the dialogue aimed at building an effective peace.

“We want a national reconciliation that is a clear project, because if [reconciliation project] it does not occur it [peace] will be a chimera, because there are wounds that have been provoked that can only heal if there is a meeting to talk about justice,” he said.

Archbishop Cláudio Dalla Zuanna said that the bishops had been following the course of the negotiations and hoped that everything would work for a definitive peace.

“We are hopeful, and hope is the last thing to be lost,” Dalla Zuanna argued.

The episcopal conference discussed the problems of land ownership in the country, culminating in a pastoral letter urging all stakeholders to participate in this process in order to avoid possible conflicts.

The episcopal conference, which rounded off with a Mass in the parish of Our Lady of Fatima in Beira, also announced that a cycle of conferences would take place across the country to spread the social doctrine of the church as a transforming force in society.

Source: Noticias