Build a Church without claiming privileges

Thursday, February 17th, 2022

The newly installed archbishop in the capital of the overwhelmingly Muslim country of Algeria is calling on Catholics not to claim any right other than to exercise duties and responsibility as citizens.

Archbishop Jean-Paul Vesco, during his homily, likened the Algerian Church with the Gospel episode of the Wedding at Cana. He said that the Catholic Church and the Algerian people are in a way “a marriage, an alliance”.

“We share the joy and the sorrows of the citizens of this country, and we want to be a fully citizen Church which does not claim any right except that of being able to exercise its duties and its responsibility as a citizen,” said the newly installed archbishop said, Fides reported.

“It is the particular colour of the evangelical witness of our Church.

“It is a unique colour that also espouses the discretion used by Jesus himself at the wedding at Cana, when, as a guest, he does not take centre stage and delicately performs a miracle which already announces, through this water transformed into wine, the gift of one’s own blood for the salvation of the world as we will remember during the Eucharist,” Archbishop Vesco explained.

“Nobody knows of the existence of this gesture which rejoices the hearts of all and saves the honour of the groom, except of course the employees who serve the table.

“Our Church in Algeria also wants to be discreet, not by calculation or by strategy, nor even by obligation. She wants to be discreet, not in the sense of being erased, timorous, fearful. She wants to be discreet in the sense that we say of a person who respects the privacy and the faith of others that she is discreet,” Archbishop Vesco said

“This is the reason why our Church, in its essence, is not and cannot be a proselytiser. In the cordiality at the wedding in Cana, said the new archbishop, we can also hear joviality, which sounds like joy, like happiness to be together, not only as a duty to be together,” he said adding that it will undoubtedly happen when “we transform water into good Algerian wine.”

“We Christians weigh almost nothing here, and our existence is constantly threatened. If fraternity can occur, it is only on the basis of prevention – that makes it all the more precious!”