AHIARA DIOCESE IN CROSSHAIRS: THE REAL STORIES …5 [EXCERPTS FROM A BOOK IN PRINT]

Chapter One: Breaking News... [i]

It was Friday, December 7, 2012. The day had broken just as lousily as the previous one before it. The sun was despairingly making its dingy appearance that morning. The Harmattan wind that had long delayed its usual attack during the drearily months of November and December began to pick up speed. The annoying dusty wind intermittently threw up greasy dusts into the skies from the patchy-rugged roads that had become a part of the identity of Mbaise land. The day was not promising to be a good one for poor Mbaise folks who appeared both physically and psychologically drained as a result of the general uncertainty that had become a part of their spiritual lives for the past two years. People coughed and sneezed as they made their ways to their respective destinations.

From every indication, Mbaise people were generally in a bad mood that Friday morning. People felt grumpy and sick not only as a result of the sticky Harmattan dusts hanging loose in the air and causing all sorts of respiratory inconveniences, but also, because of their general angst over lack of any meaningful resolution or progress on the lingering bishopric vacancy in the diocese. The long delay by the Vatican in giving the usually over-zealous Mbaise Catholics a bishop had resulted in a terrible bad mood and short-tempers among the otherwise peaceful Mbaise Catholics. Mbaise people were wondering what could be holding the Vatican back from announcing that one of their illustrious sons had been promoted to the rank of a bishop to continue from where their pioneer bishop had stopped.

Since the end of the Owerri Provincial Centenary Grand Finale in early November of 2012, when hope for the announcement of the long-overdue bishop of Ahiara Diocese had crested and subsequently crashed, each succeeding day in the diocese had been vying to outdo the preceding ones in drabness. Catholics in the diocese had grown profoundly weary and despondent about the emergence of the one who would succeed their amiable shepherd, late Most Rev Victor Adibe Chikwe, who passed away on Thursday, September 16, 2010. Both the clergy and the lay faithful of the diocese were beginning to suspect that something fishy might be happening that was delaying the announcement of the would-be bishop of the diocese.

The Papal legate in Abuja, His Excellency, Most Rev. Augustine Kasujja, a Ugandan-born Papal legate who in February of 2010 became the first African and black Nuncio in the history of Nigerian Catholicism, and the Vatican Office for the Evangelization of Peoples, with her Prefect, Fernando Cardinal Filoni, that oversaw the appointments of bishops of the dioceses of the mission countries, had spent more than two years presumably searching to no avail for the rightful person to be appointed bishop of Ahiara Diocese, Mbaise. The people of the diocese had become united in their disgust that those two eminent professionals in the business of appointing bishops were not responding quickly enough to the urgent need for a credible bishop in the rural diocese of Ahiara, Mbaise. In fact, suspicion had reached sky-high whether those usually reliable professionals and organs of the Church for the selection of bishops were searching in the right places and directions regarding the Episcopal vacancy in Ahiara Diocese.

The search for a bishop for Ahiara Diocese had gone on for so long that the people had begun to wonder what was really hard in selecting a good candidate from the large pool of Mbaise priests numbering more than five hundred who were either incardinated into the diocese or trace their parental origins to it. Over the years, the common belief had grown among Mbaise Catholics that if merit would ever become a factor in the appointments of bishops in Nigeria, Ahiara Diocese alone was capable of supplying the total number of credible bishops needed to staff more than half, if not all the Catholic dioceses of Nigeria. In the face of an abundance of Episcopabiles, or potential bishopric candidates in the diocese, what on earth would be responsible for the delay in announcing one of them as the successor to the late Bishop Chikwe in Ahiara Diocese? Many Mbaise people had wondered loudly and despairingly to no avail.

For all the period the search had lasted, the great Catholics of Mbaise had had a faith-filled hope that the straight-forward procedure provided for in the Canon Law [Canon 377 and others] for the filling of a vacant Episcopal See and selection of a new bishop would be followed to the letter in the case of Ahiara Diocese. Long before the death of Bishop Chikwe and the emergence of a vacancy in Ahiara Episcopal See, the procedure for appointing bishops was thought to be as simple as the papal legate in Nigeria or in any other country enjoying diplomatic relations with the Holy See initiating a process by which the clergy and the lay faithful of the diocese would indicate in utmost secrecy the person they believe should be appointed their bishop.

Though the appointment of bishops in the Catholic Church was by law and tradition reserved to the Supreme Pontiff as an exclusive right, the views of the clergy and lay faithful of a vacant diocese, though not decisive and definitive on the matter, had traditionally been considered a major factor in determining the final outcome of the process. This held true even in spite of the fact that the papal legate sought by law the suggestion, concurring and confirmatory views of the other stakeholders in the process such as those of the metropolitan of the province, the bishops of the province and the officials of the national Episcopal Conference, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria [CBCN].

But the propelling view that is usually considered crucial in ensuring a fair conclusion to the process of selecting a diocesan bishop remained that of the clergy and laity of the vacant diocese. This is said to be based on two important principles. First, the Supreme Pontiff whose duty it is to appoint bishops of the universal Church does not reside in every diocese of the Church. He lives and discharges his duties as the universal pastor from the Vatican City. He is first and foremost the local bishop or ordinary of the Episcopal See of Rome.

However, as Supreme Pontiff, the Holy Father acts directly or with ordinary powers in every diocese of every country through his legates and bishops of local churches who hardly maintain any residency in the vacant diocese. As a result, such papal representatives may lack personal and adequate knowledge of both the potential bishopric candidates in the vacant diocese and the particular factors and needs that must be factored in so as to ensure a wise choice of a bishop for the needy diocese.

Second, Catholics of every diocese as a part of the universal Church that enjoys an inerrant sense of faith [sensus fidei], deserve the trust, the respect and the benefit of the doubt of the universal Church in the process that selects their bishops. Allowing them to contribute to the process and taking their suggestions very seriously are indeed ways to confirm the operation of the Holy Spirit in their midst and the authenticity of their Catholic faith. To attempt to exclude them and their views from the process that selects their chief shepherd usually amounts to handing down a negative judgement against the people’s faith. It is in essence saying to the people, even though you are Catholics, you are not yet spiritually mature enough in your faith to contribute in the determination of who could best serve you as your leader. You are yet toddlers in your faith that you still need to be fed with milk and not solid food.

Moreover, the process of selecting a bishop in the Catholic Church is built to ensure some mutual respect between the clergy and laity of the vacant diocese on the one hand, and those that make the final recommendation of a candidate to the Supreme Pontiff, on the other. The more-than-two-thousand-year-old tradition of the Catholic Church and the Canon Law do not support and neither do they envisage a situation whereby one of the two parties would act arbitrarily or disrespectfully towards the other party in the process that selects a bishop to lead a vacant see.

Rather, the process is built to spring from the base of the vacant see right up to the Supreme Pontiff who makes the final determination and pronouncement of a new bishop. The canonical provisions dealing with the appointments of bishops, while preserving the prerogative of the Supreme Pontiff in this regard, do not envisage a situation whereby the clergy and the laity of the vacant dioceses are completely shut and shunted out of the process that produce their bishops through trickery, contrivance, negligence or omission. Such a situation would be termed a canonical abnormality.

Against this backdrop, the people of Ahiara Diocese, even though clearly worn out and leery while waiting for the announcement of a new bishop, were cautiously and warily hopeful that whenever it would please His Holiness, the Supreme Pontiff, to make the announcement, it would accord with their expectation and suggestion that one among their numerous Mbaise sons in the priesthood be considered worthy to step in so as to succeed their extremely successful first bishop, Most Rev Victor Adibe Chikwe.

The expectation was quite high that there was no way a new bishop for the diocese would not emerge from the numerous clergy of Mbaise origin. The local proverb that was constantly on the lips of both the clergy and the laity of Ahiara Diocese was that it was not possible that among the large heap of palm fruits in Mbaise one chewable bunch [osukwu] would not be found [A naghi egbucha ihi nkwu ghara na ihu osukwu n’ime ya]. The translation of this proverb is that it would not be possible that among the large pool of Mbaise priests numbering more than five hundred, not one credible person could be found to be appointed the bishop of Ahiara Diocese.

That had been the unspoken implication of the prayer that was being said throughout the parishes of the diocese since the Ahiara Episcopal See became vacant in September of 2010. The people of the diocese had prayed most fervently that the good Lord might give them a bishop after His own mind. In the understanding of the average Mbaise Catholic, theirs was a prayer that God might give the diocese a bishop from Mbaise who would treat them fairly and without the usual prejudices held out against Mbaise people throughout Igbo land and Nigeria as a whole. Mbaise Catholics were also fervently praying for one who would continue leading the diocese in the glorious path whose trail was first blazed by their first bishop of blessed memory. This was the mood every Mbaise Catholic woke up with on that fateful Friday, December 7, 2012.

To be continued......