AHIARA DIOCESE IN CROSSHAIRS: THE REAL STORIES …8 [EXCERPTS FROM A BOOK IN PRINT]

Chapter 2: Crisis Breaks Out [ii]

Another point we shared was the fact that Anambra bishops serving in Owerri province appeared to be terrible administrators. We cited examples with the terrible scandal that was going on in Aba Diocese between the bishop and his priests, a problem that had over the years reduced the diocese into numerous factions. Also Okigwe diocese was not being spared of division and factionalism as a result of the management styles of bishops from Anambra State. We wanted the people to know that all through the bishopric of Bishop Chikwe, Ahiara Diocese was relatively faction free. There was joy and harmony in our diocese. All that might change, we believed when Okpalaeke resumed as bishop of Ahiara Diocese. He would obviously not be different from the other Anambra bishops working in the province. He would introduce the same divisions and factionalism for which bishops from the region had become known all through the province.

However, the point that concerned us the most was the fact that Ahiara Diocese was not just a normal diocese. It was a diocese in a completely rural setting. Its income was dismal. Only those who could appreciate the nature of the diocese and where it came from could effectively run her, whether as a bishop, or as an administrator. I reminded the trio that the reason why Bishop Chikwe was very successful in Ahiara Diocese was because he came from the area. He knew the diocese through and through and was a part of its history and dilemma. Bishop Chikwe embodied and lived out the history and dilemma of Mbaise. He knew that Mbaise was often maligned and stereotyped unjustifiably by many non-Mbaise people for reasons best known to them. Bishop Chikwe spent his entire ministry and life trying to give a lie to all those wicked slander and stereotypes against his people.

Moreover, Bishop Chikwe, coming from a very humble background, was a first class economic manager. He only knew how to be poor. He was never flamboyant. He lived according to his means and understood that the people he was sent to shepherd were very poor. So he managed the people because he was one of them. Only a person who shares the vision and philosophy of Bishop Chikwe could administer Mbaise without much problem. People who were not well informed in the history of Mbaise were most likely to relate to her with loads of prejudices and stereotypes.

It is this very fact that scares every Mbaise person the most. We suffer a lot as Mbaise people throughout Nigeria. People love to give us negative labels and humiliate us for the fact that we are Mbaise citizens. How can we allow the same humiliation to be inflicted on us in our own homeland by a foreign administrator? Many thought that should such be allowed to happen, it would constitute the death of every Mbaise person. To save ourselves from such a sudden death in the hands of foreigners, there tends to be a unanimous resolution that we must always try to get people to recognize that we must be allowed to govern ourselves in our church according to the line laid down by Bishop Chikwe.

The popular saying when talking about the economy of Ahiara Diocese in general is encapsulated in a local Igbo saying which Bishop Chikwe used quite often and many other Mbaise citizens repeat today at will: anyi ji mmiri anyi emewe nwa-nkwu anyi. We use our little water to extract our little oil from our little palm fruits. The translation of this is we use the very little we have to accomplish what we can. Mbaise is a land of very little economically speaking. Unlike dioceses and parishes in Anambra State, it is not a place that counts in millions. It rarely counts in thousands either. It is a place where priests and bishops must learn the virtues of management, patience and prudence in spending.

This is why the general belief is that people who are not from Mbaise would not understand the strategy of survival in the place and would hardly make the sacrifices that get things done in our peculiar diocese. Such a foreigner in Mbaise would either discredit the people for not living up to the standards and expectations of other dioceses or he would inflict a heavy taxation on them. And when such happens there will be a terrible crisis in the diocese.

When the trio had noted a few points from our discussion, they zoomed off to try to talk to some lay people as we had agreed. As the leader of the trio would confess to me later, when the trio left my parish, they drove first to the leader of the Catholic Women Organization. After informing her of their mission, the CWO President was said to have declared that her type of spirituality would not permit her to cooperate in such a venture. So, the trio left her and started their consultation elsewhere. They reached out to the chairman of the laity council of the diocese who gave a qualified support for the move. But he would also later withdraw his support.

The Catholic Youths Organization of Nigeria, Ahiara Diocese, could not be immediately reached by the trio for their assent. So the youths were not properly consulted initially. This would result in their taking offense that they had not been consulted like the other bodies of the diocese. That was why it would take some time before the youths would be convinced to join the battle. They would continue to complain for some time to come how they were slighted by not being consulted for their cooperation in the fight against the threat of invasion of their fatherland.

After the trio had consulted with a few lay leaders without much success, they came to me that evening and declared that there was no way the laity would carry out the resistance without the full participation of the priests of the diocese. They told me that they were volunteering their priesthood to fight the cause. According to them, they would willingly relinquish their priesthoods if that would stop Fr Peter Okpalaeke from assuming the bishopric of Ahiara Diocese.

I wished them good luck and they left my parish.

When they had left my parish for the second time, they began a full time strategizing. The expert canonist among them warned that the success of the resistance hinged on preventing the administrator and the college of consultors from going to Awka to congratulate and pay allegiance to the bishop-elect. The journey had been scheduled for Monday morning. And the bus for the journey had been procured. Everything had been made ready for them to take off on their journey of allegiance to the new bishop-elect.

Once an alarm was sounded, the trio went to the administrator to inform him that it was not proper for the college of consultors to travel to Awka to pay allegiance to the bishop-elect, but rather according to Canon Law, it was the bishop-elect who should come and visit the college in the diocese. As the administrator did not seem to understand their argument, the trio embarked on visiting all the members of the college of consultors in their respective parishes. They also intensified their efforts to reach the other priests. By Sunday evening on December 9, the trio had met with all the members of the college and advised them not to come out to travel to Awka on Monday morning as was originally scheduled.

As this went on, the trio started to construct a petition letter that they wanted signed by every priest of the diocese and subsequently sent to the Cardinal Prefect of the Office of Evangelization of Peoples, Fernando Cardinal Filoni. And when on Monday the planned travel to Awka to pay allegiance to the bishop-elect fell through, the administrator began to take the trio seriously. He agreed to their suggestion that an emergency meeting of the Presbyterium of Ahiara Diocese be convoked on Tuesday, December 11. The chancellor sent a text message to all priests in the diocese summoning them to a very important emergency meeting at 10.00 a.m.

The Tuesday meeting would prove very contentious. The trio made their pitch to the Presbyterium on the need to protest and challenge the appointment of Msgr. Okpalaeke as the bishop-elect of Ahiara Diocese. Their suggestion raised hell during the meeting. Many did not see how viable such a challenge would be. About two elderly monsignors cautioned that such a position would be interpreted as challenging the authority of the Pope. They insisted that the diocese would be better off accept what the Pope had given them as coming from the Holy Spirit. One of them known for his cynicism about everything in the diocese told us that our failure to accept Msgr. Okpalaeke might lead to other dioceses rejecting Mbaise priests and possible future bishops from Mbaise land.

Another respected priest of the diocese who was bearing a personal grudge over what he believed was a personal injury to his name during the search for the bishop of the diocese vowed never to cooperate with the position of the trio. His position was informed by the fact that in November of 2010, two months after Bishop Chikwe’s death, a big rumour had been spread and repeated by some radio stations that he had been appointed the bishop of Ahiara Diocese.

The injurious rumour had originated from a mistaken announcement made at Heartland FM radio station. The blessing of the brand new Church of the home parish of the priest dedicated to St Thomas the Apostle Amaukwu Ihitte, Ezinihitte, had been scheduled to hold around the 25th of September 2010. But on September 16, barely a week before the inauguration ceremony of the church, Bishop Chikwe died. As a result of that tragedy, the ceremony at St Thomas the Apostle Church was cancelled. In November, it was rescheduled. In one of the radio announcements heralding the ceremony, the aggrieved priest who had been scheduled to preach at the mass was mistakenly described as a bishop by a Heartland radio announcer. It appeared that the announcer at the Heartland FM said that the person to preach was Bishop ---, mentioning the name of the aggrieved priest.

The mention of the name of the aggrieved priest with the title of a bishop would result in his being believed by his kinsmen and women to have been appointed the new bishop of Ahiara Diocese by the Holy Father. According to some accounts, the kinsmen and women of the aggrieved priest rolled out their drums and started dancing around their market squares in celebration of the fact that one of their sons had been appointed a bishop. Other accounts said that they shot cannons and Dane guns in celebration of the announcement on Heartland FM.

This very expensive rumour would cause all sorts of problems for both the aggrieved priest and his kinsmen. Unfortunately it would turn out to be just a hoax and a very expensive one for that matter. In his reaction to the unfortunate incident, the aggrieved priest felt that the rumour had been planted at Heartland FM by some priests of the diocese to discredit him and the people of his clan. As a result, he vowed that whoever was ultimately chosen as the bishop would receive his support no matter where the one came from. So, when the trio brought out their proposal to challenge the appointment of Msgr. Okpalaeke as bishop-elect of Ahiara Diocese, the aggrieved priest vowed to oppose them. From that day onwards, he would embark on a bitter and unrelenting opposition to the project of Ahiara Diocesan priests to challenge the appointment of Msgr Okpalaeke as the bishop-elect of Ahiara Diocese.

However, all the contrary views and oppositions notwithstanding, about 90 to 95% of the Presbyterium in attendance on that day would agree with the trio that the appointment of Msgr. Okpalaeke as bishop-elect of Ahiara Diocese needed to be vigorously challenged and rejected. Having secured the overwhelming support of majority of the Presbyterium, the secretary of the trio was called up to read the draft petition letter their group had composed. After reading it, the administrator and the Presbyterium decided that the draft needed to be edited so as to remove some personal attacks on the bishop-elect included in it. As a result, a few senior priests were appointed to work on the text so as to bring it up to the needed standard.

The race was to get the petition letter edited, signed and delivered to the Vatican by Friday of that week which would mark the first full week of the announcement of the appointment of the bishop-elect. People who were quite knowledgeable about the process advised that the petition must be on the table of the Prefect for the Evangelization of Peoples before the end of one full week of the announcement.

Working on another draft of a petition letter was a group of lay men and women representing the Catholic Women and Men Organizations of the diocese. Their own petition seemed to move more quickly and less contentiously than that of the Presbyterium. By the end of Tuesday, December 11, 2012, they had gotten their petition letter ready for delivery to the Vatican. It read in part:

We the Catholic Men and Women Organizations (ADCMO] and (ADCWO) of Ahiara Diocese, Mbaise, do hereby protest the appointment of Msgr. Peter Ebele Okpalaeke as bishop elect of Ahiara Diocese based on the following:

1. There was no proper consultation before the appointment

2. The culture of the people of Awka who are still romancing with pagan practices is quite different from that of Ahiara Diocese who has embraced Christianity – the Catholic Church in all its ramifications.

3. Language Barrier

4. The rural nature and poverty of Mbaise land makes Msgr. Okpalaeke unsuitable for Ahiara Diocese.

5. Neo-paganism: The people of Ahiara Mbaise have since done away with pagan practices but the people of Awka are yet to do so.

6. Ahiara Diocese has the greatest number of priests compared with Dunukofia where most of the bishops of Igbo land come from.

The petition claimed that “the announcement of a foreign bishop elect has demoralized the vibrant and enthusiastic laity of our diocese. It concluded by declaring that the appointment of Msgr. Peter Ebere Okpalaeke as the bishop elect of Ahiara Diocese is highly unacceptable.

By the end of that Tuesday, December 11, the petition letter of the priest was ready to be signed. And fortunately the next day being Wednesday was the day for a general recollection for all the priests of the diocese in Holy Ghost Parish, Omega Obizi, Ezinihitte Mbaise LGA. The edited petition letter was brought to that place, read once again and signed by the priests present. A few priests preferred not to sign the document. But the document had many signatures that represented a large segment of the Presbyterium of Ahiara Diocese.

The letter dated December 12, 2012, and addressed to His Eminence, Fernando Cardinal Filoni, Prefect, The Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, Vatican City, Rome, reads in paraphrase thus;

1. Acknowledgement of the news of the appointment of the new bishop-elect of Ahiara Diocese officially communicated to the Ahiara Diocesan Administrator, Rt. Rev. Msgr. Theophilus Nwalo, through the Apostolic Nuncio to Nigeria, Archbishop Augustine Kasujja.

2. Ahiara Diocese a unique rural diocese with peculiar history needing a bishop with good knowledge of the people and the diocese.

3. The difference between the faithful of Ahiara Diocese and the new bishop-elect, which is likely to stunt and impair the growth of the Catholic faith in the diocese.

4. The resentment the appointment is generating not only in Ahiara Diocese but throughout Owerri Province.

5. The undue influence and cronyism being fostered by Cardinal Arinze resulting in his kith and kin being made bishops to the exclusion of others

6. An acknowledgement of the finality of papal pronouncements but a plea for reconsideration of the appointment in view of the fact that it goes contrary to salus animarum.

Both the letters of the priests and the laity were copied to the Apostolic Nuncio to Nigeria, Archbishop Augustine Kasujja; the President, CBCN: Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama; the Metropolitan, Owerri Ecclesiastical Province: Archbishop AJV Obinna.

Having finalized the letters, the next challenge was how to get them to the Vatican office of Evangelization by Friday of that week. There were only two days left to do so. First, a person with a valid visa to Rome would have to be found so as to carry the document personally to Rome. But none could be found immediately among the priests and laity to do the job. And having ruled out the options of using speed post and courier services, a decision was taken to fly in somebody who was already in Rome to collect the document and head back to Rome immediately. This was done.

A person was flown in by the diocese from Rome. He was met in Abuja and handed over the document. And he boarded the next flight to Rome. And by Friday, December 14, the well-worded petition letters against the appointment of Msgr. Ebere Peter Okpalaeke were presumed to be on the table of His Eminence, Fernando Cardinal Filoni, Prefect, Congregation for the Evangelization of the Peoples.

Copies of the petition letters to the Nuncio and the CBCN President were sent by speed post in such a way that they would receive them only when the prefect of the Office of Evangelization was already in possession of his own. The copy for the Metropolitan was hand-delivered to him on Monday, December 17, 2012. With these done, the battles that would constitute the Ahiara Diocese bishopric crisis were fully joined.

To be continued....