Catholic Church still in CAN – Bishops’ president

President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria, Most Rev. Ignatius Kaigama, has said the Catholic Church is still a member of the Christian Association of Nigeria.

The church, he said, simply withdrew from CAN activities at the national level because the association had deviated from its spiritual roles.

Kaigama, who spoke to our correspondent in Jos on Sunday, said CBCN was amused when it read about the purported pull out of the Catholic Church.

 The CBCN president, who is the Catholic Archbishop of Jos, denied that he called CAN leadership names, saying the report was the figment of the writer’s imagination.

He said, “We read with great consternation, surprise and apprehension all the newspaper headings that Catholics have pulled out of CAN. I am the president of the Bishop’s Conference of Nigeria, I did not issue a press statement to that effect and nobody consulted the Catholic secretariat or me to know if we have pulled out.

“So it is either somebody, who has an ulterior motive or a grouse against the Catholic Church that brought up that because all we asked for was dialogue.

“There is no doubt that we have problems with CAN leadership and the vision of CAN that tend to be distorted. The essence of CAN is Christian unity and we feel that that was not paramount in the present constitution of CAN. There is no dialogue either at the spiritual, theological or pastoral level.

“There is more emphasis on secular activities and we say no let’s come back to our original vision so we wrote a letter to CAN president to say look considering all that have been going on, we will not attend national meetings for now until these issues are resolved and we are open to dialogue.”

Kaigama said if the Catholic Church had withdrawn from CAN, it would have directed all its members at the state level to do the same.