catholics-from-nigeria

"Many Nigerians are traveling to the developed world to enjoy the development put in place by their governments, but we have refused to develop our own country. Let us start to develop ours to make it attractive and conducive for living, so that foreign nationals will want to come."

"Our excellent relationships with other faiths are a viaticum to help ease tension and prevent clashes."

"The Church of God in Africa or elsewhere is being asked to grow to see herself as a family. The Church can do so if we intensify our catechesis on the meaning of the Church."

"There are more prospects for survival in Nigeria than we think exist in Europe and other places. In the midst of so much wealth and resources we have in this country Nigerians should not become beggarly and only decide to fly out of Nigeria in search of the elusive greener pastures. Many Nigerians are traveling to the developed world to enjoy the development put in place by their governments, but we have refused to develop our own country."

"Everybody letting you be yourself. There wasn’t any air around us and not that we had everything we wanted, but we were contented. We never lacked anything when we were growing up. It was all very peaceful and there was no cause for complaints from the parents’ side."

"But with my mum, I got everything I needed. I got the father’s love, the mother’s love and the sister’s love. I remember my younger days, when it rains, my mum will say, "what are you people doing in school? Just sit down/""

"Where am I even going? It’s already wet, outside is wet. Just sit down and rest, another day, you can always pick it up."

"I am not so sure that’s what God has called you for, but we’ll put it in prayers. I’ll keep praying and when I return, we’ll revisit it."

"These people are working for God and humanity. They are not being paid. They rely solely on people's assistance, goodwill and kind gestures for their survival. Why go after those working out your salvation? I cannot understand it."

"The use of the electronic media along with the print media must continue unabated as we face the gigantic task of evangelising Africa."

"Since the clergy will continue to play a key and central role in the evangelisation of Africa, it is imperative that clerics and future clerics be formed in the dynamics and strategies of the total and all-inclusive evangelisation. The programme of formation in the seminaries will have to be so restructured as to prepare the seminarians to grapple with the life situations and problems of Africa and her people. Thus the ministers of the Gospel emerging from these seminaries will be imbued with Christ-like compassion that will enable them to respond in a committed way to the problems besetting their people."

"The example of life of Bishop will motivate and inspire other agents of evangelization to be true disciples of Christ and stewards of the Gospel. In order to ensure continuity in the work of proclaiming the Gospel, the Bishop can profitably associate some of those agents of evangelization more closely to himself as did Christ and the Apostles and form them in the manner of African apprenticeship system as future apostles."

"Pay pastoral attention to the family as the domestic church because that is where everyone's faith experience is formed."

"Community is at the center of our faith experience and journey. Jesus calls us into the community of the Church. Community is therefore integral to our faith in God, who is a Trinity of Persons. Happily, despite imperfections and challenges therefrom, the community is still a central value for many Africans and the key point of our episcopal ministry."

"There exist the "fanatic" Muslims — to use a bad word — just as there are also fanatic Christians; they have terrible ideas, which I absolutely do not agree with. But we always say: This is the price to pay for religious freedom, to let everyone speak. But then it's up to us to work toward necessary moderation, having a nonpartial vision of what religion is, and to do our work."

"Most of the young people who leave home do so not because home is unbearable, but because they are seeking a greener pasture, often with the naïve conviction that "no matter how, it will be better out there". They are deaf to any advice that they see as blocking their destiny. What is necessary is to work hard to make our nation a better place for us, and for anyone who may wish to come and live with us."

"Peace is the bedrock of development. There is no sustainable development without peace. Peace takes root when people are free from hunger, poverty, unemployment, oppression and exploitation. We have to work together to save our people from the prevailing scourge of violence and insecurity that have brought unimaginable grief, trauma and fear to our fellow citizens in the State. Consequently, I call on the gladiators in the State to shield their swords, for violence begets violence."

"The Church in Africa is to stimulate "ecological conversion" through intensive education. She is to educate people in Africa to be more sensitive to the increasing disaster caused by environmental damage and the need to minimise it. All are to be made ever conscious that future generations have a right to live in an environment that is intact and healthy and to enjoy its resources."

"I imagine that each one of you come from a family, therefore, you should respect it, support it and strengthen it. Especially in a country that has its dynamism founded on it."

"If you don't understand a person's religion, you haven't even begun. And if you are not able to listen, you are only able to talk, then you are still on your own. You are lecturing everybody who comes near you, but you are not dialoguing with anyone. There are some desires of the human soul which that other person is looking for. There are, maybe, mistakes in the way that religion is looking for those things. But the human heart, created by God, is looking for Him."

"It becomes a great concern to a country if a high number of its young people, or of its professionals like graduates or medical personnel, want to go to another country. If many Young Africans migrate to Europe or America, who will guarantee them proper employment, choice of a marriage partner, and future life? Are these young people not among those most needed to develop their country? Should Europe and America not be helping the leaders of African countries to motivate their citizens to stay at home and develop their nation?"

"Peace that is imposed is only war that is postponed, while peace that is agreed, peace that is reached through dialogue, is lasting peace."

"Our role as God's ministers is that of inspiring hope. The pain is great, and the wounds will take time to heal; without faith we cannot please God and this faith must be practical. As leaders, the challenge we face demands that we take practical steps of faith to heal and restore the hope of the people. We must demonstrate the required tenacity to remove the humiliation from our brothers and sisters whose dignity and rights have been constantly abused by a people bent on exterminating them simply because of different beliefs."

"The way we practice religion today poses security problem in the country. If we take holiness serious, we will be able to tackle the problem of bombings in the country. There should be no sacred cows in the society. Everybody should look for the common good of the masses."

"We are just on our own doing things individually. We encourage isolation when people keep to themselves. So, it can be the cause for things like that. We are members of one another. We should move from social network community to human community. What we really need to do is to be sensitive to people around us."

"It has not been easy taking care of the internally displaced persons who have been living at our Diocese for about six years now. The people are also tired and they want to start their lives afresh."

"Please, know that Nigeria is a gift by God to the black race. Therefore, it is my hope and prayer that someday and in our waking moments of God-given opportunity, our gifted children will see the daylight in which they will soar to their peak moments in actualising their dreams. Africa looks up to Nigeria as the most populous Black Country with potentials beyond measure. God loves Nigeria. It is not a dream but a reality to be attained."

"Catholic education aims at forming the whole person. It is involved in the training of the head, the heart and the hands of any individual. It does not concentrate on the intellect alone but also aims at building up other aspects of the human individual. To be fully human and genuinely responsible citizen founded on solid faith sums up the goals of Catholic education."

"I am so happy that I have this opportunity to take this vaccine today. I advice everyone who love his life and is a child of God to do the same. Forget all the propaganda going around, we have taken other vaccines for yellow fever and the rest and I advice people to go for this so we can stem the spread of this thing. We are appealing to everyone, every Catholic and every Christian to go and take this vaccine. It will help us worship better and will help us return to normalcy."

"The early Christians compared the human mind to a constantly grinding millstone; it is up to the miller to determine what it will grind: good wheat or worthless weeds. Our minds are always grinding, but it is up to us to choose what to feed them."

"Justice and peace go together. Anyone who wants genuine peace must work for justice. For peace and security to reign in Nigeria, there must be political justice, religious justice, ethnic justice, economic justice, judicial justice—justice for everyone."

"We keep appealing to the authorities to do what is needed, and we pray to God because He is the optimal security that we have. We can’t depend on human security!"

"The time of the virus is both a gift and a provocation for Christians – not only for our personal faith, but for what we have to offer others."

"I equally charge all users and abusers of guns and deadly weapons to stop the killings, to renounce violence, and denounce any show of pride in killing fellow human beings."

"It is depressing that our Middle Belt region has truly become a vale of tears, a region where mass burials are very common!"

"My new responsibility is higher, it requires renewed vigour, commitment and strength, the prayers of my brethren are needed. I need your prayers to succeed, I need your prayers to take catholic church and the society to the promised land."

"Reconciliation brings about the personal healing of survivors, the reparation of past injustices, the building or rebuilding of non-violent relationships between individuals and communities, and the acceptance by the parties to a conflict of a common vision and understanding of the past. In practice such all-encompassing reconciliation is not easy to realize. The experience of a brutal past makes the search for peaceful coexistence a delicate and intricate operation."

"I see a rosy future with regard to evangelisation in Calabar archdiocese, in fact vocations are flourishing and our local Catholic community is vivacious and active. Interreligious relations are not a problem. There is a small community of Muslims in Calabar with whom we have a good understanding. At the level of ecumenism, we have a large Pentecostal community with which we have dialogue, it is not always easy but we persevere."

"You may have your own wisdom but that wisdom is nothing compared to the wisdom of God who appointed you as the King over his people therefore you need to call on him before you take any decision that affect the people."

"Archbishop Ukpo was a self-sacrificing shepherd, a caring father, a mentor, a wise counsellor, a generous benefactor, a passionate crusader of human rights, a peace maker and a white head patriarch who stood out as a legendary figure."

"All of us are responsible for the communication we make, for the information we share, for the control that we can exert over fake news by exposing it. All of us are to be witnesses of the truth: to go, to see and to share."

"Christians have every reason to feel insecure and also there is a general feeling of their marginalisation from the political process. If the principles of our religion were different, there would be a civil war by now. It is the glory of our religion that this hasn’t happened. It is difficult to preach peace in this context. Any resolution depends on how Christians decide to react. They won’t use violence but what will they do?”"

"If the people in power don’t do enough to integrate Christians then they give oxygen to Islamism. If they have countries where everybody is Muslim in power then you give vent to the idea that Islam should be supreme."

"Things started to fall apart when my brother, Jaja, did not go to communion and Papa flung his heavy missal across the room and broke the figurines on the étagère."

"There was a helplessness to his joy, the same kind of helplessness as in that woman’s despair."

"(Which writers — novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets — working today do you admire most?) Tash Aw, Niq Mhlongo, Rachel Seiffert, Mary Gaitskill, David Szalay, Leila Aboulela, Dave Eggers, Tracy K. Smith, Tessa Hadley, Richard Flanagan, Claire Messud, James Lasdun, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Vivian Gornick, the late Bharati Mukherjee, Deborah Levy, John Gregory Brown, Amit Chaudhuri, Nawal El Saadawi, Margo Jefferson, Jesmyn Ward, Lynn Nottage, Janet Malcolm, Jamaica Kincaid, Alice Walker, Peter Orner, Susan Orlean."

"Eugene has to stop doing God's job. God is big enough to do his own job. If God will judge our father for choosing to follow the way of our ancestors, then let God do the judging, not Eugene."

"The white missionaries brought us their god,” Amaka was saying. “Which was the same color as them, worshiped in their language and packaged in the boxes they made. Now that we take their god back to them, shouldn’t we at least repackage it?"

"There are many social-media-savvy people who are choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion, who can fluidly pontificate on Twitter about kindness but are unable to actually show kindness. People whose social media lives are case studies in emotional aridity. People for whom friendship, and its expectations of loyalty and compassion and support, no longer matter. People who claim to love literature – the messy stories of our humanity – but are also monomaniacally obsessed with whatever is the prevailing ideological orthodoxy. People who demand that you denounce your friends for flimsy reasons in order to remain a member of the chosen puritan class."

"Because we write fiction we mine our souls. Of course you put yourself into your fiction, your fiction is you."