.- Cardinal Christian Wiyghan Tumi, Cameroon’s first cardinal and a devoted advocate for peace within the nation’s Anglophone disaster, has died on the age of 90.
Archbishop Samuel Kleda of Douala introduced in a letter on the morning of April 3 that the cardinal had died.
Tumi had been energetic in looking for a peaceable decision to Cameroon’s violent Anglophone disaster. He devoted a lot of the last decade after his retirement as archbishop of Douala to peace efforts and is credited with serving to to create the Anglophone Normal Convention, a framework for dialogue between all events to the battle.
The cardinal made headlines final November when he was kidnapped by armed separatists in Cameroon’s Northwest Area.
He was held in a single day by his captors, who recorded a video of the cardinal being interrogated.
Within the video, one among Tumi’s captors confronted the cardinal about his requires fighters in Cameroon to put down their arms after which instructed him to share the separatists’ message with the general public.
To this, the cardinal responded: “I’ll preach what’s the fact with pastoral conviction and Biblical conviction.”
“No person has the proper to inform me to evangelise the opposite as a result of I used to be referred to as by God,” Cardinal Tumi stated.
At one other level within the video, the cardinal advised his captors: “Once I communicate, I communicate like a pastor and that I can by no means cease doing. If I cease doing that, then I can’t be devoted to God, the Almighty.”
Tumi’s kidnapping got here amid a battle between separatists and authorities forces within the English-speaking territories in Cameroon’s Northwest Area and Southwest Area.
The disaster in Cameroon is rooted in battle between the English- and French-speaking areas of Cameroon. The realm was a German colony within the late nineteenth century, however the territory was divided into British and French mandates after the German Empire’s defeat in World Warfare I. The mandates had been united in an unbiased Cameroon in 1961.
Tensions escalated in 2016 after Francophone academics and judges had been despatched to work within the traditionally marginalized Anglophone areas, and the dispute has come to be often known as the Anglophone disaster.
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin visited Cameroon in February and stated that the Holy See is working to see an finish to the protracted battle within the two Anglophone areas.
“I’m right here to point out the eye and solidarity of the Holy Father Pope Francis in the direction of the Cameroonian individuals, particularly in these tough moments,” Parolin stated.
Cardinal Tumi was born in what’s now Northwest Cameroon on Oct. 15, 1930. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1966 within the diocese of Buéa.
He studied in Nigeria and the UK earlier than happening to earn a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from a Catholic institute in Lyon, France and an extra diploma in philosophy from the College of Fribourg, Switzerland.
Tumi served as a bishop in Francophone areas of the nation from 1979. He was president of Cameroon’s bishops’ convention from 1985 to 1991 and president of the Symposium of the Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) from 1990 to 1994.
Pope John Paul II named him a cardinal in 1988 and three years later appointed him archbishop of Douala, a put up he held till his retirement in 2009.
Cardinal Tumi acquired the Nelson Mandela Prize in July 2019 for his efforts in selling peace and human rights.
Tumi revealed a memoir in on the finish of 2020 entitled, “My evening in captivity,” by which he wrote: “All I need is for the weapons to fall silent and for peace to return to the nation.”
