Zimbabwean president warns country's bishops are on 'dangerous path'

Published: 2007-05-04

LONDON (CNS) -- Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has warned his nation's bishops that they are treading "a dangerous path" by criticizing the government. He said he was angry about the Easter pastoral letter in which the bishops said Zimbabwe was in "deep crisis" and "extreme danger" because of the country's "overtly corrupt" leadership. Mugabe, a Marist-educated Catholic, told the London-based New African magazine that he was not at Mass on Easter to hear the bishops' letter read. "If I had gone to church and the priest had read that so-called pastoral letter, I would have stood up and said 'nonsense,'" he said in an interview in the May edition of the magazine. Mugabe, 83, said the letter is not "something spiritual, it is not religious," and the bishops "have decided to turn political." He said, "And once they turn political, we regard them as no longer being spiritual, and our relations with them would be conducted as if we are dealing with political entities, and this is quite a dangerous path they have chosen for themselves."

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