Op Ed : The Biya / Church Stage Play Playing Out

Let’s be clear. The church has been here before, and nothing happened. Take it from someone who knows firsthand.

Let’s dispense with a few things. A papal visit program written exclusively in French for Bamenda is, intentionally or not, a symbol of the very marginalization decried for a lifetime now, though ancillary to the root causes that to date remain unaddressed by the international community.

Even as some would say the “Anglophone” crisis began with the lawyers and teachers killed, disrobed, imprisoned, or exiled while protesting the use of English in their region.

This Papal visit, just months after last November’s disputed elections, and President Biya’s mass killings of protesters, and the forced exile of the presumptive winner, Issa Tchiroma, a former Biya operative, hands Biya a diplomatic platter of gold, not to mention the great photo-op with the world’s most powerful ‘President’ leader, not only on moral issues but on all things justice and peace.

This gift comes at a time when the 93-year-old President, who has single-handedly autocratically ruled for 43 years, is widely believed to be at his most vulnerable. Many had clung to the hope that either through natural justice—death—or through popular uprising, the people of the Republic of Cameroon would emerge under his blithe.

But here comes the Catholic Church’s most powerful leader, believed not to be naïve about the question of President Biya’s human rights record, who is biblically called to go toward the sinner.

The question is whether Pope Leo will speak the gospel to an already heavily proselytized people or speak justice first and peace plainly, and deny Paul Biya the propaganda win, the stated photo-op dubbed the peace-at-all-costs mission to further entrench himself and his regime.

Sources say the visit includes meetings with an internally displaced family, a Mankon traditional leader, a nun, and an imam. If you have lived in this part of the world, it would be naïve to believe the fox in the henhouse behaves. The list is Biya’s artfully curated cast to further the blanchisement.

The Nuncio accredited to Yaounde was jeered during a high Mass for seemingly being oblivious to the crisis in Bamenda. He, along with the government-appointed Governor of French extraction and the Archbishop of Bamenda, chose who would sit and talk with the Pope, not the leaders in jail, not the armed groups, and not the people of Bamenda. Suffice to say, access to any head of state is often privileged, negotiated, and fraught with optics.

But lives and limbs are at stake, and the man of God seeks justice above the peace of the grave. Any dialogue choreographed by the very actor(s) perpetrating violence is papering over the problem.

One must ask: where are the representatives of the prisoners and armed factions, for none are at the Bamenda meeting. Any prayers for peace without those forced into the bushes, now carrying arms and fighting the government, is a photo shoot of high value. And the advantage goes to Biya.

When the dust settles and the Republic of Cameroun looks to its 5th Papal visit, the world will remember Pope Leo’s visit for its controversial timing. The meetings, for their choreographed nature, will be remembered, with the first meeting with Biya, a man whose hands many believe are bloodied by his government's belligerence, not with the poor, the meek, the lowly. That handshake is what the world sees and remembers, and everything that follows flows from that.

Bamenda will host a High Mass of Papal importance, a coat of whitewash paint, and the people will be asked to pray harder for peace. Yet praying our problems into submission remains the only thing left for the people of Bamenda, even as each knows that faith without action is dead.

About the Author

Emma Osong, D.M., is the Executive Director and Founder of the Advocacy Network for Justice and Peace (ANJP), a justice advocate and author of Unraveled. ANJP is a member of the Coalition for the ICC. She has participated directly in Swiss- led (HD) and Canadian-led peace pre-negotiations on the Cameroon Anglophone crisis, including direct engagement with Church/Vatican leadership — experience that informs the firsthand perspective expressed in this piece.

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