I am sure if you googled “Sodom and Gomorrah”, you
would find quite a number of places so named around the
world; one such place is the biggest slum settlement in
the centre of the Accra Metropolis of Ghana. I first
heard of and visited this slum area during the 2005
Christmas season in the company of a St. Francis-like
Italian Franciscan Friar, by name Arcadio Sicher OFM
Conv., who had taken up living with and ministering to
the dwellers of Sodom and Gomorrah. It was a shocking
experience of extreme contrasts coming into contact
with very simple but beautiful people from different
parts of Ghana and from the West Africa subregion who
had been compelled by difficult social and dire
economic circumstances to eke out a living in those
atrociously insanitary environments and conditions of
life.
Overwhelmed by the spiritual beauty and deep community
spirit of the dwellers, we decided to change the name
of the place to City of God in the determination to
help bring these our brothers and sisters to a better
self-esteem of themselves, of who they each are in the
eyes of God and to empower them to gradually better
their sorts by the grace of the Holy Spirit. That is
how the project “City of God” came about.
Behind this novel of Claudio Turina is the very
challenging but equally fulfilling pastoral care and
ministry of some of our benefactors home and abroad,
men and women volunteers, youth and adults, missionary
and diocesan Priests and Religious Sisters, Catholics
and non-Catholics, Christians and of other faiths and
beliefs, etc., all of which are giving unfathomable
love and commitment, training in health-care and
sanitation, in fire-fighting preparedness, offering
night-school and ICT programmes in youth and adult
literacy and numeracy formation, beads-making, sewing
and other skills training for those willing, and of
course religious and moral formation, not forgetting
programmes of civic education to equip them with
knowledge of their social rights and responsibilities.
Let me thank Rev. Fr. Arcadio and other Religious
Sisters who started this ministry of the City of God.
I thank Rev. Fr. Subash Chattilappilly, a Missionary of
Christ from India for taking it up and inviting his
friend of long standing in social work Claudio Turina
to visit Accra and to help him minister to the
beautiful people in our City of God. I congratulate
Claudio for his infectious enthusiasm and persevering
spirit in writing this novel to bring the naked reality
and yet great big dream of this project to the world
out there.
Just google www.cityofgodaccra.com and know more. It is
a project worth your support and love.
Most Rev. Archbishop Charles Palemr-Buckle
