TORONTO - “The evil one is still alive, wreaking havoc on the vast majority of humanity,” Cardinal John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan told his fellow Africans at Our Lady of Lourdes parish in Toronto Feb 2.
On the other hand, “Our Lady, who loves Africa so much, will continue to pray for us.”
Onaiyekan hit Toronto right after spending a week in Davos, Switzerland, speaking with finance ministers, bankers and economists at the World Economic Forum. The 69-year-old archbishop of Abuja, Nigeria, has been thrust onto the world stage since being made a cardinal at the last Vatican consistory Nov. 24.
The 2012 Pax Christi International Peace Laureate has also been appointed to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In the fall he was a synod father at the Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization.
By comparison, Onaiyekan’s Toronto and Ottawa visits were low-key affairs where he delivered lectures at Catholic universities (the University of St. Michael’s College in Toronto Feb. 5 and Saint Paul University in Ottawa Feb. 4) on Muslim-Christian relations.
For his audience at Our Lady of Lourdes the major question was the moral and practical disconnect between rich and poor, between the powerful and the nameless. When he opened the floor to questions people wanted to know how they could influence the world of the one per cent. They asked how the Church can hold politicians accountable.
“The Year of Faith is for all of us, even if we are not able to engage big leaders,” he said.
No one should imagine that the injustice human beings create is as everlasting as the justice God intends, he said.
“All is not lost, because the king is still sitting on His throne,” he declared to a round of applause.
The Church has the moral and spiritual framework to address the divide between rich and poor — a problem it has been dealing with since Jesus and His Apostles were travelling from Galilee to Jerusalem, Onaiyekan told The Catholic Register.
“A man like Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha, had a nice villa on the outskirts of Jerusalem,” said the New Testament scholar. “But his door is always open to Jesus and His followers. Regularly, he was feeding Jesus and His followers whenever they came to Jerusalem.”
That Jesus delivers His message freely to the poor, to Pharisees, to Romans, to rulers, to beggars and to lepers shows one thing.
“The preaching of Jesus was valid for everybody.”
Writing to the Church at Corinth St. Paul confronts rich Corinthians who want to turn the Church into their own private club.
“You cannot divide Jesus,” said the cardinal.
It’s a struggle that continues in the Church and the world today.
“There is one diversity that we cannot condone, namely the diversity of gross inequality — the huge gap between the rich and the poor.”
Social teaching found in papal documents and the Second Vatican Council’s decrees and constitutions are another attempt to make the Gospel’s radical message of justice and equality clear.
“Who will put flesh onto these documents?” Onaiyekan asked. “It’s not only that priests and bishops should preach the right kind of homilies to the people, rich and poor. But also the people themselves should imbibe these messages such that the rich should take responsibility for the common good, for the care and the needs of the most vulnerable. And also that the poor should not lose their sense of dignity and realize that as a child of God you are as good as anyone else.”
Globalization isn’t just the process of connecting capital in a global network of wealth. It’s also a movement to connect people.
“You can’t stop it. It is a fact on the ground. We are left with an option to either allow the negative side of globalization to take over or to see in the process of globalization God’s own potential for finally creating a human family where everybody belongs together, sharing and knowing one another.”
The Church isn’t about to back down from its commitment to the poor, he said.
“The Church at the highest level is working seriously on this. The Church has got the Academy for Social Sciences. The Church is involved in international finances at the highest levels. The Church sends experts to World Bank meetings so as to understand the language of these people and how decisions are taken,” he said. “At the end of the day it depends on how many people actually have imbibed all these social doctrines of the Church.”