Despite the
possibility of violence, the Catholic Church is relying on faith in God and
government assurances that the upcoming presidential election will not
interfere with the scheduled visit of Pope Francis in January, a spokesman said
yesterday. The presidential election has been fixed for January 8 – five days
ahead of the Pope’s visit. The Archbishop of Colombo, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith,
declined to comment but Spokesman, Rev. Fr. Cyril Gamini, said: “Nobody knew
that the elections will be held close to the Holy Father’s visit. We would have
been happy if the elections had been held well before the papal visit.”
Fr. Gamini,
who is the director of media and information secretariat for the papal visit
said, “There is already a security concern and we cannot dismiss that. But we
have complete faith and we hope the Government will keep its word.” He said the
Church was going ahead with the preparations.
“Nobody can
say there will or won’t be pre- or post-poll violence. But we are praying hard
for the papal visit and we have faith that God will make this visit go
smoothly,” Fr. Gamini said. “The preparations for the Pope’s visit are being
made by various committees and, therefore, the elections will not hinder our
arrangements. We have, however, appealed that nobody should make use of Pope
Francis’s visit in their election propaganda activities,” he said.
“We are
praying that there will be a peaceful election, but we cannot be certain of
anything,” he said. Earlier the Catholic Church in a statement said, “If an
election is to be held before the visit, it must be held in such a way that the
preparations for the visit should not be disturbed by such an event.” The
Archdiocese of Colombo has estimated a budget of 50 million rupees to be spent
on the Pope’s visit in January.
No comments:
Post a Comment