Shendam, Nigeria, Jan 19, 2017 / 00:04 am
A prominent Nigerian archbishop last week advised his fellow clergy against a sense of complacency and security which ends up damaging the Church.
"I have observed among us priests and religious is a lack of proper sense of mission, a lack of serious missionary commitment and a lack of missionary creativity," Archbishop Mathew Man'Oso Ndagoso of Kaduna said in his Jan. 11 homily for the episcopal consecration of Philip Davou Dung as Bishop of Shendam.
Archbishop Ndagoso said he has seen a lack of pastoral planning and implementation, which proceeds from a nonchalant and lethargic attitude, calling it "the deadly virus of complacency".
He lamented a pastoral mindset which relies on pews being filled because of an established Catholic identity.