President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has appealed for a stronger relationship between the church and the state, saying this will help to build a progressive and prosperous Ghana.
“Our nation relies on you [the church] to form your congregants on nation-building, for them to see the importance of the social implication of the Gospel as it relates to national cohesion and development and the relationship between spirituality and work ethics,” Akufo-Addo said.
Speaking at the 28th national and 16th biennial congress of the National Union of Ghana Catholic Diocesan Priests Association on Wednesday (4 January 2023), the president reiterated his strong belief in the “positive relationship between church and state”.
“In the course of my presidency, I have relied on your support in seeking your intercession to address the myriad challenges that we have gone through together as a nation, prominent among which was the management of the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.
“You will recall that, on 19 March 2022, I hosted a breakfast meeting for all religious leaders at the presidency, during which I entreated the need ‘for us to join together and pray to the Almighty God to protect our nation, heal this land and save us from this pandemic’. God heard us.”
The president thus asked the church to continue to pray for the country, “so that we can surmount the current socio-economic challenges we face together”.
He reiterated his determination to see a prosperous Ghana where justice and peace embrace, where the common good is safeguarded and promoted, and where the bonds of fraternity are strengthened, as called for by His Holiness Pope Francis in his encyclical Fratelli tutti.
President Akufo-Addo reassured guests and participants in the congress of his determination, as a fully committed democrat, to ensure that Ghana continues to follow the path of democratic engagement that the country has travelled in the past 30 years since the start of the Fourth Republic.
“It is important that all of us, priests and laymen, continue to uphold the democratic values whose application has produced this healthy result, and which provide us with the most effective means of resolving our contemporary difficulties and, thereby, preserving the freedom, progress, stability and unity of our nation,” he said.
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