Church is focus of government campaign
Archbishop charged with sedition

The government, the party in power (Front of Liberation for Mozambique, or Frelimo), and the media are organizing a campaign against the Catholic Church in Mozambique, the Fides news service has reported. Fides based its report on a communiqué issued on December 16 by IMBISA, the Inter-regional Meeting of Bishops of Southern Africa (Angola, Lesotho, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Sao Tome, and Principe).

The party and the official media, the communiqué says, are now trying to organize a plot against the Church, and Archbishop Jaime Pedro Goncalves of Beira is once again the scapegoat. Sensational accusations against the archbishop have been made by the secretary of the Frelimo party, Felipe Paunde, who suggests that the local Catholic Church leader supports the opposition party Renamo and the division of the country.

According to anonymous phone calls received by Fides sources, there is a concrete plan in place to eliminate Archbishop Goncalves from the scene. The sources say that an ambush had been planned for December 3, when the archbishop was scheduled to make a pastoral visit to a parish in Munhava; however the archbishop was informed about the trap, and sent his vicar general in his place. There were also rumors of an ambush on December 17, when Archbishop Goncalves traveled to Macuti to ordain a priest and deacon, but that trip went off without incident.

The political tension in Mozambique remains acute. On November 22, a group of 83 prisoners died under suspicious circumstances in the Montepuez jail. They were all members of the Renamo opposition, who had been taken into custody after demonstrations protesting electoral fraud in the nation’s elections. For more than a year, following the voting in December 1999, Renamo has been urging a recount, claiming that its forces actually won the popular vote. Speaking to the Fides service, Archbishop Goncalves conceded that his support for democracy has put him at odds with the government. “But I am only following the Church’s position regarding events,” he said. The archbishop explained:

After the demonstrations and arrests on November 9, the bishops of Mozambique, including myself, issued a communiqué entitled Dialogue for Peace. I am acting on what the document said. Dialogue must be employed to bring unity to the country; there must be democracy to put an end to conflict. And for this the government attacks me. I say we must work for the unity of the country and they say I want to “divide it.” I say there must be democracy to stop the conflict and they say I am inciting the people to war. The accusations against me are completely false.

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