Kaigama Advocates Training of Clerics to Curb Religious Radicalism

Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja

The Catholic Archbishop of the Abuja Metropolitan See, His Grace, Ignatius Kaigama, has urged religious organisations to ensure proper training of preachers to avoid communicating inflammatory messages that could create tension and violence.

Kaigama, in his homily yesterday at a special mass service at the Holy Ghost Parish, Saburi, a satellite town in Abuja, said it was expected that religious preachers should preach hope and salvation and not incite followers to violence.

Speaking against the background of a raging controversy over the previous preaching of the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Pantami, the cleric said mistaken or faulty positions held by preachers and communicated to followers could contribute to unnecessary tension and violence.

He said: “The raging controversy about what a serving minister preached or did not preach years ago only goes to show the sensitivity of religious matters in Nigeria, which we must always approach with very great caution.

“It is a clarion call for the proper training of preachers. Mistaken or faulty positions held by preachers and communicated to followers can contribute to unnecessary tension and violence that could even lead to the waste of human lives.

“As a doctor must attain full professional knowledge before practising, so must preachers attain the height of religious formation before preaching, as ignorantia legit non excusat (ignorance of the law is not an excuse).”

Kaigama stressed the need for religious organisations to set the correct criteria for preachers, “so that no one with the improper understanding of scripture or only with superficial and distorted truths of our faiths will cause religious friction and tension.”

“We should preach the message of hope and salvation and not to incite followers to violence or to call others offensive names or to look condescendingly on adherents of other religions,” he added.

According to him, religious organisations should identify potential and capable persons to be trained and also set aside resources meant to nurture and develop them.
He stated that in the Catholic Church, the training of priests was taken seriously, adding that being a religious leader is a calling, not a profession or a part-time enterprise.