Fight fiercely to protect your land from racketeers — Bishop Fianu

The Catholic Bishop of Ho, Most Reverend Emmanuel Kofi Fianu, SVD, has called on traditional leaders and local townsmen in the diocese to rise up and fight fiercely to protect their land from racketeers who are poised to invade and destroy lands in some communities to illicitly prospect for minerals.  

“Our ancestors preserved the environment for Centuries and bequeathed to us; we must also keep it intact for the future generations,” he maintained. 

Bishop Fianu was speaking at Sokode-Gbogame, near Ho, after Reverend Sisters from the Convent of the Sisters of Mary Mother of the Church and other congregations took part in a route march on the streets of Sokode, in defiance of a rainfall, to affirm their stance against the reckless and unmitigated destruction of the environment by selfish individuals in the country.

The route march was a prelude to the 2025 Jubilee Year of the entire Catholic Church, declared by Pope Francis. As part of the celebration, the Conference of Major Superiors of Religious, Ghana, selected the Protection of the Earth/Environment, which was among three topics of the jubilee year celebration.

The jubilee celebration is on the theme: Send forth your spirit and renew the face of the earth.” It is also focused on: Protecting the environment, our responsibility, our future.
Bishop Fianu said radical steps needed to be taken to protect the environment which had been destroyed with impunity by those who should rather be protecting it, for far too long.

He said the current trend of environmental destruction must be curbed without compromise to ensure that future generations became inheritors and not just survivors.

Bishop Fianu commended the chiefs of the Santrokofi and Akpafu areas for their firm resolve to protect their land from marauding and greedy individuals who were seeking to annex the area to prospect for minerals, and urged the people of Abutia to take a similar position against some groups who were planning to enter the Kalakpa Game Reserve to prospect for lithium.

The President of the Religious Men and Women working in Ho Diocese, Reverend Father John Helu, CSSp, urged communities to wake up and take good care of the earth, mankind’s common home, and ensure generations after generations would find the earth a healthy environment that supported life.

Some of the placards carried by the reverend sisters during the route march, which ended with a tree planting exercise, read; There is no planet B, Protect the Environment for our children, More plants, less plastics, and Please recycle.