ADDRESS OF POPE FRANCIS TO THE BISHOPS OF THE EPISCOPAL CONFERENCE OF ZIMBABWE ON THEIR “AD LIMINA” VISIT

[…] The Church in your country has stood fast with her people both before and after independence, now also in the years of overwhelming suffering as millions have left the country in frustration and desperation, as many lives have been lost, so many tears shed. In the exercise of your prophetic ministry, you gave dramatic voice to all the struggling people of your country, especially to the downtrodden and the refugees. I think particularly of your 2007 Pastoral Letter God Hears the Cry of the Oppressed: “The suffering people of Zimbabwe are groaning in agony: ‘Watchman, how much longer the night?’” There you showed how the crisis is both spiritual and moral, stretching from colonial times through the present moment, and how the “structures of sin” embedded in the social order are ultimately rooted in personal sin, requiring of all a profound personal conversion and a renewed moral sense enlightened by the Gospel.[…]