Emeritus Archbishop Peter Sarpong who is the current head of the Kumasi Archdiocese of the Catholic Church was born on 6th February 1933 in Offinso, Ashanti.
He was ordained Catholic priest on the 11th of December 1959. Approximately 10 years after his ordination to the priesthood, he was appointed Bishop of the Diocese of Kumasi (as it then was); and ordained Bishop on the 8th of March 1970, aged just 37.
As the bishop of the Diocese of Kumasi, he was, at the time, in charge of the Catholic church in both the Ashanti Region and the former Brong-Ahafo Region.
On 17th January 2002, he was appointed the first Archbishop of the then newly elevated Archdiocese of Kumasi by His Holiness Pope John Paul II.
He retired from the Archbishopric on 26th March 2008 at the age of 75.
Before retiring, he held various appointments at various times at the Vatican, including being a long-term member of the Peace Council.
He is one of the most distinguished academicians in Africa and the world, and the most cited social anthropologists in Ghana, Africa and the world at large.
Shortly after his ordination in 1959, he made his way to Italy where he obtained a Licentiate in Sacred Theology (S.T.L.) from St Thomas Aquinas University, Rome, in 1962, and a Doctorate degree in Sacred Theology in 1963.
He also obtained Diploma in Anthropology and Master of Letters (M.Litt.) in Social Anthropology from Oxford University, England in 1965.
He has written over 1,000 books and articles on Anthropology, Theology and African Culture, among others.)
He once said:
“For many of them ( Europeans), the African was only a near Sub-human person, without any sense of decency; his customs and practices were superstitious and lacked any sense of true religion”.
In other words, they saw nothing good in our indigenous African culture.
Hence they asked us to adopt their culture so we can become civilized, enlightened and more to it ‘to become like them ‘. They therefore initiated two mechanisms for these operations.
And they are Education and religion.
Through formal education, they were to train our illiterate and unenlightened minds, and with religion they claimed they were going to make us religious persons.
These were only the good reasons but beneath they had their real reasons.
First, the real reasons for giving us the formal education and religion was to help us to reach a standard that we can understand and accept them as our masters, especially their language since they were very interested in trading with us.
On the other hand, they introduced religion in order to be able to tame us.
Since language is the the vehicle to every culture, they foreknew that by teaching us their language we will begin to admire their culture and hence regard it as superior to ours and this they have achieved over the centuries.
Telling us that our culture is inferior, we also came to believe it that indeed our culture is inferior through their repeated lies to us.
And this reminds me of the words of Mahatma Gandhi and he says “If you repeat a lie enough, people begin to think its true”.
By destroying our culture they destroyed our past. (What past was that?? Will soon talk about it)
As one famous Catholic priest, lecturer and philosopher Rev Father Ave Maria O.P. once said when he was admonishing his seminarians to be careful of the enemy he said
“if you want to destroy your enemy, don’t touch his future but only destroy his past.”
With this in mind, they only destroyed our history, our rich indigenous culture and our identity and its effects are still very hurting till date on the African continent.
Consider the depth of how they have infested our rich godly culture with germs of inhumanity and the canker in our society now.
They made us believe that our polygamous system of marriage is evil and they are now asking us to accept same sex marriage based on human rights and individual difference.
They also made us believe that we are simply incompetent for anything good, yet they took us to go and develop their less endowed sectors which is now yielding for them billions of dollars.
Isn’t it ironical ?
Even though almost all African countries on the continent can now claim independence yet we together with our political leaders are still under the worst form of colonialism.
Simply because we have failed to realize and adjust our system of education for it to be able to fit and benefit our economy.
And so in actual sense, the ideas and intentions of our colonial masters still live on.
Yes! even though they refused to touch our future but by destroying our past they detained the future of the bright black star.
It is high time we begun to stop being myopic and naive.
The former president of Ghana John Agyekum Kufuor was a genius in patronizing the Ghanaian and for that matter the African culture, to the extent that he even initiated the “Friday Africa Wear” for almost all the institutions in Ghana.
Imagine how some of our own African women dress exposing their nakedness as if there is nothing at stake, all in the name of civilization.
Haven’t we lost our identity and heritage as Africans..???
Narrative Account by: Archbishop Emeritus Peter Kwesi Sarpong (Distinguished International Social Anthropologist).
