African bishops tell priests to stop acting as traditional healers

Published: 2006-08-15

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- Southern African bishops have told priests they can no longer act as traditional African healers. Priests must "desist from 'ubuNgoma' (traditional healing) practices involving spirits and channel their ministries of healing through the sacraments and sacramentals of the church," said the bishops of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference, which represents South Africa, Botswana and Swaziland. In an Aug. 11 pastoral letter, the bishops expressed concern that "many African Christians, during difficult moments in their lives, resort to practices of the traditional religion: the intervention of ancestral spirits, the engagement of spirit-mediums, spirit-possession, consulting diviners about lost items and about the future, magical practices and identifying one's enemies." Fear of the spirit world is intensified "instead of the love of the ever merciful God definitively revealed by Christ through his death and resurrection," they said. "More disturbing" is that some priests, religious and lay Catholics have "resorted to becoming diviner-healers" and "call on the ancestors for healing."

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