Bishop expelled for speaking out on oil and politics
October 18, 2012: An Italian Catholic bishop expelled from Chad for criticising the
mismanagement of oil revenues returned to Italy on Sunday after 36 years of missionary
work in the impoverished central African state.
“Monsignor Michele Russo has
arrived here in Rome,” a member of the Comboni missionary congregation told AFP. An
airport official in Chad earlier said he had left the country late on Saturday on
a flight via Paris. The government on Friday announced the expulsion of Russo, who
has been bishop in the oil-rich southern Doba region for 23 years and has campaigned
for ordinary people to receive a much greater share of Chad’s new oil wealth.
Chad
authorities said a sermon delivered by the 67-year-old Russo and broadcast by a private
radio station was “likely to disturb public order” and that the bishop had “engaged
in activities incompatible with his status”. The Vatican missionary news agency Fides
on Saturday quoted Church sources in Chad saying that Russo’s words had been mistranslated
by the radio station, adding that the government of Chad appeared “open to dialogue”
on the case.
Chad’s conference of bishops has expressed “great sadness” over
the expulsion of the prelate, saying in a statement that it “regrets this situation
that is without precedent in the history of the Catholic Church in Chad”.
Russo’s
small diocese has 10 parishes and some 400,000 inhabitants, of whom around 20 percent
are Catholic. A majority of Chadians are Muslim. A member of the Comboni congregation,
Giulio Albanese, told Vatican Radio: “Behind all this, according to some observers,
there are the interests of local politicians and oil companies, which have been suspicious
of him for a while.”
Russo has long been critical of the government of the
country that began producing oil in 2003 and in a statement to Fides earlier this
month he said Africa’s natural wealth had been mismanaged for decades by “human greed.
The riches, because of human greed, have turned from blessing into curse for the local
population,” he said. “The natural wealth of Africa should be used to build the future
of the daughters and sons of the continent.”
“After 50 years of uncontrolled
exploitation, with the complicity of local governments and indifference towards the
African people and their future, I think it’s time to become aware of these facts,”
he added.