Archbishop of Jos: Religious leaders must bring down tension in Nigeria
In Nigeria, a suicide car bomber attacked a Catholic church in the city of Jos last
night in the middle of Mass, killing at least 10 people.
Jos and surrounding
Plateau state have been torn apart in recent years by violence, and has been targeted
by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram.
“The situation is bound to escalate,
and then suspicion is bound to escalate,” said the Archbishop of Jos, Ignatius Kaigama.
“The young people become very angry and very restless. Yesterday it took our intervention
to calm them down, because they kept saying ‘enough is enough. We have been attacked
again and again when we have nothing wrong.’”
He said religious leaders must
step up and preach peace.
“There is definitely tension, and I see that it is
our duty as religious leaders to work hard to bring down the tension, even though
out of sentiment and out of anger many people are saying ‘enough is enough we must
do something’, our message is consistently that of the Gospel,” he told Vatican Radio.
“The
effort to overcome evil with love, overcome evil with good, and then to allow God
to take control of the situation, while at the same time asking God’s men to something
urgently to bring this to a final conclusion.”
Listen to the full interview
by Alessandro Gisotti with Archbishop Kaigama: