Voice of the Family welcomes major pro-life initiative of Ghanaian bishops

24 July 2015

The Bishop in Charge of Health on the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference (GCBC), Most Rev. Joseph Afrifah-Agyekum, launched a Pro-Life Conference, on Wednesday, July 22, 2015. The conference is on the theme: Promoting Life and Family Values in the Continuing Culture of Death.

The two-day Conference, in which John Smeaton, Voice of the Family co-founder and Chief Executive of Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, will participate, will be held at the Holy Spirit Cathedral in Accra from Saturday, August 7 to Sunday, August 8, 2015
Launching the Conference at the National Catholic Secretariat, Bishop Afrifah-Agyekum said that recognizing that Ghana is at the heart of the storm and struggle between the culture of life and culture of death in Africa necessitated the organisation of the Conference.

“Realizing the urgent need for the Church in Ghana to rise up and promote the Gospel of life in speaking against the emerging culture of death in Ghana,” was also one of the reasons for the conference, he added.

He noted that the purpose of the Conference was to strengthen the witness of the faithful and to promote the dignity of life from conception to natural death; promote long cherished values of family life such as unity, indissolubility, openness to life and hoped to incorporate government, leaders and all people in the project of building an authentic culture of life in Ghana.

He said that “The Catholic Church acknowledges the important role she has to play in concert with other like-minded Christian groups and Civil Society Organisations in renewing a pro-life mission in the world and calling on contemporary society to a deeper reflection of the Gospel of life.”

He said “as the leadership of the Catholic Church in Ghana, we the Bishops recognize that a grave responsibility is imposed on us by our apostolic mandate to reiterate the Church’s true and beautiful teachings on the sanctity of life, the beauty of love, the purity of marriage and family life and the dignity of human sexuality.”

Bishop Afrifah-Agyekum, said the Conference was aimed at teaching and training the faithful to understand the Gospel of life and to stand up and defend the pro-life position of the Church.

In an interview after the launching, the Bishop said that the unconditional respect for the right to life of every innocent person from the moment of conception to natural death is one of the pillars upon which every society stands and therefore the State has the primary duty to defend life.

He lamented that the culture of death was emerging in Africa in a form of population control measures being proposed and propagated in African Nations by some multi-national Organisations which had implanted themselves in Africa as a Family Planning Organisations.

He noted that in reality, these organisations were promoting unnatural and artificial means of birth control such as abortion, sterilization, vasectomies, the use of condoms over and above the natural methods of birth regulation the Catholic Church upholds.

Activities lined-up for the two-day Conference include: a prayer campaign in all parishes, rectorates and stations from July 22, 2015, lectures by both local and international speakers on August 7, 2015, a pro-life/pro-family march from the from the Holy Spirit cathedral through some of the principal streets of Accra on August 8, 2015 and the issuing of a communiqué and the encouragement of the mass media to take up the pro-life campaign throughout the country.