Mugisha, who is director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, said he hoped the Pope would bring a message that gays and lesbians should be “treated like any other children of God”.
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In Kenya, where a third of the population is Catholic, the pope will encounter outsize expectations. Nigerian nun Bernadette Duru says the African church hierarchy is indifferent to people in rural areas.
On November 29, Pope Francis flies to his final, and most risky, destination in Africa: Bangui, the war-torn capital of the Central African Republic (CAR), Bangui.
“I hope the Pope would say, ‘Love everyone, ‘ especially those who are still coming to church”.
Acayo, a member of the Little Sisters of Mary Immaculate from Gulu, Uganda who is internationally recognized for her work training Ugandan women to participate in civil society and promote forgiveness and reconciliation, said she hoped Francis will also urge Museveni to protect natural resources.
That he may address issues of corruption, tribalism, terrorism and encourage our political leaders to preach peace and unity instead of divisive politics.
While acknowledging the country’s continued instability and outbreaks of violence, the Vatican confirmed the pope’s busy schedule of 33 hours during which time he will visit a refugee camp, hold a meeting with evangelical Christians and visit a mosque in Bangui, the nation’s capital. Mukasa was imprisoned in 2014 in Uganda on suspicion of committing homosexual acts but the charges were dropped for lack of evidence. One of those men, Jackson Mukasa, was recently quoted by Reuters as saying he would like the pope to at least make people know that being gay is not a curse. Homosexuality is still criminalized under a colonial-era law banning sex acts against the order of nature.
Homosexuality is illegal, and attacks on gay people have seen many flee the country or go into hiding, to avoid further persecution.
The Catholic Church in Africa faces particular challenges, including conventional customs of ancestor veneration that clash with church doctrine and other Christian denominations offering the power to heal to congregations. Who were recruited when they were still young. We have to support them in the outskirts, not in the palace. “So I think the message needs to be service to the poor, and the responsibility that comes with the trust and faith that the people have put in these officials”.
“A war can be justified, so to speak, with many, many reasons, but when all the world as it is today, at war – piecemeal though that war may be – a little here, a little there, and everywhere, there is no justification”, the Pope said.
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He will reach out to “folks who are afraid, who’ve been terrorized, who have been subjected to a great deal of security checkpoints and all that”, said Rev. Stephen Okello, a Kenyan Catholic priest who also recalled unrelated ethnic violence following elections in 2007 that killed more than 1,000 individuals in Kenya.
