Welcome Ceremony, Cameroon

On Saturday, 10 August 1985, the Holy Father responded at the Welcome Ceremony at the Yaoundé Airport, Cameroon, speaking of the Christian missionaries, Protestant and Catholic, who had brought the Faith to this country 90 years ago.

1. Praise God!

My joy is great and my emotion is profound in being able to make the visit to Cameroon that I have long wanted to make and that this country deserves.

Mr. President, I turn first of all to thank you for the noble words you have addressed to me. Your intentions demonstrate the high sense you have of your office, as President of all Cameroonians, and also the profound consideration you have for the Catholic Church, which is familiar to you, for the Holy See whose spiritual mission and action in favor of peace in the world you emphasize so well. I thank you for the warm welcome you have prepared for us. And I respectfully greet all those who surround you here, the civil authorities and my brothers in the episcopate.

2. In coming among you, I am responding to an invitation long expressed by you, Mr. President, as well as by the Bishops of this country. In fact, during the “ad limina” visit of the Bishops of Cameroon, on 13 November 1982, Archbishop Jean Zoa said to me: “Cameroon burns with joyful impatience to see you set foot on our soil. You have approached it and even flown over it, on several occasions. This hope for your much-desired visit is shared by all strata of the population, both Christian and non-Christian, and by the national authorities”. I am grateful for these invitations, which I am happy to honour today, as I will do in six other African countries. The culmination of our pilgrimage will be in Nairobi, at the 43rd International Eucharistic Congress, in the worship given to Our Lord Jesus Christ present in the Eucharist. But the stage in Cameroon takes on particular importance because it involves a visit to the four ecclesiastical provinces.

3. Cameroon is like a miniature Africa, a melting pot of many ethnic groups with rich traditions, a crossroads of all the major religions of the African continent, at the crossroads of the Francophone and Anglophone worlds, with a notable demographic expansion, a very numerous youth. This country has been spoken of as an island of peace.

Indeed, thanks be to God, Cameroon today knows peace, and shows a tenacious will to develop all its potential, in a climate that harmonizes respect for groups, social justice and national unity, appealing to the active and loyal cooperation of all citizens and to the moral and spiritual values ​​that every conscience can appreciate. You are aware of the great challenges to be accepted, especially on the economic and cultural level. We share the hopes of your nation in full growth. I personally express my best wishes for its harmonious and fully human development and I express my sympathy to all Cameroonian citizens. Almost all of them honor God, according to the Christian faith or according to Islam, or according to traditional religions. This religious sentiment, believe me, is appreciated by the one who comes to you as a spiritual leader, successor of the apostle Peter, designated by the Lord Jesus as pastor of the Church of God.

4. In this regard, I come in particular to gather together my Catholic brothers and sisters. The Christian faith was proposed to the inhabitants of this country, at the end of the last century, by Protestant missionaries and Catholic missionaries. They came without knowing you, with the sole desire to share with you what they themselves had received as good news and which formed their joy and their salvation: dedication to Jesus Christ the Savior. And the Cameroonians welcomed them. The beginning of Catholic evangelization in Marienberg, the mountain of Mary, was very humble, like the small mustard seed of which the Gospel speaks. But this grain was a divine seed that bore marvelous fruits, the fruits of a Christianity with an African flavor.

5. Today, after ninety years of Catholic evangelization in Southern Cameroon and barely forty years in Northern Cameroon, I am welcomed by Cameroonian bishops and priests, who work fraternally with their brothers from other countries, and, at their head, by Monsignor Christian Tumi, President of the Episcopal Conference. I appreciate all the spiritual and other preparation that preceded my journey to each diocese.

Responsible for the unity of the universal Church, I come to give thanks to God with you; I come to confirm your faith, to encourage another stage of evangelization, always in full respect of the conscience of each Cameroonian, so that the light of Jesus may shine ever brighter in this country and so that his love may satisfy hearts. I am happy to follow in the footsteps of the pioneers of the Gospel, to gather the people that God has acquired in this country, to seal the alliance with Jesus Christ through the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Orders, to meet priests, men and women religious, families, young people, intellectuals at all levels, political leaders and all those who work for the good of the Church and society.

May God bless my ministry throughout this visit! May he bless your land that is dear to him and that I have just kissed, because it has become the place where he spreads his grace! May he bless all Cameroonians, making his truth, his love and his peace shine upon them! 
 

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