Dr. Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist and evangelical pastor from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), is one of this year’s recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. He is cited for his work in a hospital he founded that specializes in treating women and children victims of rape by armed rebels in his war-torn country.
His haunting, courageous, and inspiring acceptance speech evokes a remarkably parallel situation in the Philippines. Like he describes his country as one of the most resource-rich countries in the world yet his people are some of the poorest in the world. Even without oil isn’t the Philippines very rich in natural resources? Yet are not 40 percent of Filipinos poor, 15 percent of them dirt poor?
Dr. Mukwege next traces his country’s troubles to, in his spine-tingling words, “a predatory oligarchy” whose armies fight for control of the country’s resources, in the process killing and raping women and children with impunity. Isn’t our own predatory oligarchy’s unjust treatment of ordinary Filipinos the sole lingering cause of our poverty? They might not be debauched rapists like their Congolese counterparts but don’t they also kill and plunder with impunity?
His final appeal is for retribution because there is “no lasting peace without justice.” Isn’t that what we want but our oligarchs refuse to do, return to us what they stole of the country’s patrimony or at least stop the killing and the plunder?
The final yet most deplorable parallel is that the DRC is 80 percent Christian (36.8 percent Catholics and the rest Protestant and other denomination Christians). It is downright deplorable because Christianity is a religion of love, justice, and peace, yet here are two predominantly Christian nations that are not enjoying peace and prosperity because their respective predatory oligarchies, most of them ironically Christians, deny their peoples the prerequisite to peace, justice.
I don’t know about other Christian Congolese church leaders but at least Dr. Mukwege is not taking sides and instead assailing with angry public courage all of his country’s oligarchs. This is unlike our Catholic Church leaders who side with that faction of the oligarchy they belong to and denounce only the other faction. No wonder, we’ve been Christians longer than the Congolese yet we still have to produce a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
It’s Christmas and I must ask how hypocritical is it for us to celebrate Christ’s birthday when we are either siding with a faction of the “predatory oligarchy” or watching them utterly disregard the birthday celebrant’s gospel of love, justice and peace?
My next write is after Christmas. So, here’s wishing peace to folks of good will. May your tribe grow to conquer the world.