AHIARA DIOCESE IN CROSSHAIRS: THE REAL STORIES …7 [EXCERPTS FROM A BOOK IN PRINT]

Chapter 2: Crisis Breaks Out [i]

As many of us left the emergency meeting on the evening of Friday, December 7, confused and dejected, a few other priests, especially the former class and school mates of the bishop-elect from Ahiara Diocese felt that the consequences of Msgr. Okpalaeke’s appointment in the diocese would be too risky to ignore. Most of them believed in their hearts that with Msgr. Ebere Peter Okpalaeke’s appointment, a veritable disaster was well on its way towards the diocese. They saw it as their solemn duty to find a way to head it off. So, as most of us spent the night lamenting our fate and licking our wounds on what had happened to us and our beloved diocese of Ahiara, a few other priests embarked on making phone calls all night long searching for advice on what they could do to reverse the appointment.

The following day was Saturday. After the usual 7.00 a.m. Mass in our parish of St Gregory the Great Church, Ihitteafoukwu, I sat in my living room peering onto the ceiling and thinking about the fate of our diocese in the light of the new bishop that had just been announced for her. I would discover that I was as much confused as I had been since the appointment was made official through the Apostolic Nuncio’s email read by the administrator the previous day. I still did not know how the diocese was going to fare during the episcopacy of a Bishop Okpalaeke in Ahiara Diocese. Both Fr Vitalis and I had spent the night drawing up all possible scenarios of what might happen to the priests and lay faithful of Ahiara Diocese during the Episcopacy of a Bishop Okpalaeke.

After a while, my attention was drawn to a greenish Camry saloon car pulling up in front of our rectory. I peered through the window to find three middle-aged priests of my diocese emerge from the car. They asked of me and were ushered into the living room upstairs where I was staying. The three priests walked up to me and whispered that they would want to meet with me privately. Since the rectory was a little bit noisy and crowded at that very hour because the young altar girl-cleaners of the church were all over the place doing their normal Saturday duty of cleaning the rectory, I took them into a room I usually treated as my study. I locked the door to avoid anybody overhearing what they had to tell me.

We would spend an hour and a half in this airless room that housed my books and other stationery that I use for my studies and writing. What would keep us that long in the room was the issue that had brought the three priests to my house. The three were not just any young priests who could be hyperactive and volatile about certain issues. Rather among the three was a specialist in Canon Law who got his doctorate from Rome. The other was a systematic theologian with a doctorate degree and the other was a priest whom I would describe as a social activist with many years of experience canvassing for issues ranging from social justice to fair treatment of all human beings created by God.

The three had come to consult with me and seek my advice, according to them, on how to challenge the appointment of the new bishop appointed for Ahiara Diocese. They told me that they chose to visit me first because they considered me as somebody who could be objective about things of that nature. The trio informed me that they had on their way to my house paid a visit to Msgr. D.S. Okoro to confer with him but could not meet him at home. They told me that their contacts with people in Rome and Europe in general had informed them that the diocese had about a week from the day of the announcement to make her feelings of objection known to the Holy Father and the officials of the Office of Evangelization of Peoples.

I would discover to my surprise that the three were loaded with reasons why the appointment of Msgr. Okpalaeke as bishop-elect of Ahiara Diocese should not be allowed to stand. They told me that they knew the new bishop very well as he had been one of their class or school mates during their seminary days. They told me that having the new bishop as the bishop of Ahiara Diocese would spell disaster for the priests and laity of Ahiara Diocese. And because of what they knew about him, his personal life and his style of administration, they had dedicated their entire lives going forward to stopping him from assuming the position as bishop of Ahiara Diocese.

I was absolutely horrified that some people were thinking along that line. But they assured me that they had consulted with many people from abroad who were knowledgeable in the matter. Such people they said had assured them that there was room for the diocese to make her feelings on the appointment known to the Holy Father and other church officials both at the Vatican and locally. I told them that common sense dictated that people could make their feelings on the matter known, but that the issue was who would be the right groups of people to do that. I told them that I did not believe that we priests had any wiggle room to challenge an appointment already announced by the Holy Father.

Furthermore, I informed the three priests that what had been coming up my mind since the announcement was made was the old Latin adage which says Roman locuta, causa finita [est]. I told them that since Rome had spoken on the bishopric vacancy in Ahiara Diocese our case was foreclosed and sealed. What was left for us in the diocese, I said, was to find a way to cut our losses and move forward with perhaps our tails in-between our legs like a dog caught in a criminal act. The three priests told me that they knew all about what I was saying, but that they would do all in their power to use whatever means available to them to challenge and stop a Bishop Okpalaeke from becoming the bishop of Ahiara Diocese.

When I saw that they were determined and resolved for action, we moved into a higher consideration of the way forward. I told them that as far as I was concerned, the priests did not have much of leverage on the matter since we were all employees of the Vatican which could descend on all of us with venom. I advised that if it became necessary that the diocese should make her feelings known on the appointment, the people best equipped to do so would be the lay people who had nothing to lose on the matter. I advised that they talk to the Christian mothers, Christian fathers, youths and Mary League girls and get them on their side if they wanted the diocese to make her feelings known to the Holy Father and the relevant officials in Rome.

After a lot of argument, the trio appeared to appreciate my point-of-view. The issue became what to tell the lay people as our reasons for challenging the appointment. The trio had a lot of personal stuff to say against the bishop-elect whom they knew when they had studied together with him in the seminary. But I was most uncomfortable with all that. And I let them know about my discomfort with such a strategy of putting personal stuff of the bishop-elect front and centre. I told them that even though the bishop-elect might in their view have a lot of personal issues, our going personal against him would ultimately backfire, destroy our case and alienate us from many who might abhor such a strategy and think that we had gone too far. I insisted that our strategy would not be to destroy the credibility of the bishop-elect who had been adjudged worthy of the bishopric by the Vatican but to prove to the world and the Holy Father how unsuitable he would be for our diocese.

When we had gone back and forth on this matter for some time, we zeroed into providing concrete reasons for the unsuitability of the bishop-elect for our diocese. I told them that there were about two or three issues that immediately jumped out on my mind regarding the appointment. The first was the inherent injustice involved in the fact that not one Mbaise priest was judged worthy to be made a bishop of our home diocese from a pool that consisted of more than five hundred priests. I argued to them that by ignoring the more than five hundred priests of Mbaise origin in the appointment, the Vatican and the Nuncio had more or less passed a vote of no confidence on the indigenous priests of Mbaise. They were more or less telling the world and the lay faithful of Mbaise that the local clergy of Ahiara Diocese were of no good and did not have the right stuff to be made bishops. And by so doing they had attacked the credibility and morale of the said priests for the apostolate.

After talking at length on the issue of injustice entailed by the appointment, the trio asked for some plain sheets of paper to take note of the reasons we would be adducing to challenge the appointment of Msgr. Okpalaeke. I quickly made available to them a few sheets of copy paper. And there and then, one of them was appointed secretary of the group. And with the secretary in place, we began serious work on the reasons why Msgr. Okpalaeke would not be suitable for Ahiara Diocese. One of the reasons I had suggested to the trio was informed by my experience during the inauguration of the Owerri Provincial Centenary Celebration, the advent period, on January 19, 2010. During our preparation for the liturgy of that occasion, the metropolitan of our province, Archbishop AJV Obinna had advised that we try to reconnect with the people who brought the faith to our province.

The Holy Ghost Fathers Congregation [Spiritans] was the missionary congregation that brought the faith to the people of our province. In recognition of that, Archbishop Obinna requested the only bishop from the Holy Ghost Congregation in the province, Most Rev. Vincent Valentine Ezeonyia CSSp. of Aba Diocese, to deliver the homily during the centenary inauguration Mass. During the homily, Bishop Ezeonyia said a few words in Igbo language using Onitsha-Anambra dialect. But he apologized that he would not continue the homily in Igbo language because according to him, he would not want to repeat the mistake made by the late Bishop Godfrey Mary Paul Okoye several years before.

According to Bishop Ezeonyia, the late Bishop Okoye once came to celebrate an important Mass in the Owerri area of the central Igbo zone. He preached the homily, made all the jokes he knew and laughed to and at himself only to discover later that nobody in the congregation understood what he was saying. Bishop Ezeonyia said that since he did not want to repeat such an embarrassment, he would preach his homily in English language. And that was what he had done. Bishop Ezeonyia of Aba Diocese preached the entire homily of the Owerri Provincial Centenary inauguration on January 19, 2010, in English language.

I informed the trio that experiences from our neighbouring diocese of Okigwe where Bishop Solomon Amatu from Awka administers as a bishop demonstrate that there are real linguistic issues involved with an Anambra bishop coming down to Owerri Province to serve. I related to the trio a constant feature whenever Bishop Amatu was celebrating mass for his people of Okigwe. Because of his awareness that his flock might not understand his dialect of the Igbo language he would ask them many a time during his homily whether they understood what he was telling them. Many a time, he would either repeat himself severally, or he would mutter some words in central Igbo dialect that he had learned. In my view, that was clear evidence that there was a real linguistic issue in having Okpalaeke serve as the bishop of Ahiara Diocese.

The consequence of Okpalaeke coming to Ahiara Diocese to serve as a bishop would be quite severe from the linguistic point of view as I insisted to the group. While as both Aba and Okigwe are urban and semi-urban areas respectively, Ahiara diocese is whole and entire rural. The people of Ahiara Diocese do not interact much with foreigners. They do not enjoy the influences of cosmopolitan dwellers. As a result, any priest coming from Anambra State into rural Mbaise to serve as a bishop will find it almost impossible to reach the people because of a major difference in dialects. And the people who will ultimately suffer in such a situation are the rural dwellers of Mbaise who will not enjoy the love and interaction of their bishop as a result of a language barrier.

To be continued....