Vatican City: Ghana’s Cardinal Peter Turkson The church of Africa is seen as one of the most influential men, where Christianity is growing quickly – and what believes that the next Pope may be the birthplace of the next Pope.
The 76 -year -old West African, born in a humble family of 10 children, is the first pastor to receive a red cap, which was made a cardinal by John Paul II in 2003.
The Turkson currently serves as a Chancellor for two Pontificial academies, who are of science and social science.
Even before the surprising resignation of former Pope Benedict XVI in 2013, Cardinal was considered to be the forefront of Africa for the Pope’s contender – to create countless speculative headlines about First black pope,
But Turkson said in an interview of 2010: “I would not like to become that first black pope.”
“I think he will have a thick time.”
The possibility of Turkson as the Pope reflects the transfer of church demographics from Europe, where membership is declining, for Africa, where Christianity is growing the fastest.
Born in the southern mining city of NSuta-Wassa, Turkson was the fourth of 10 children for a methodist mother, who sold vegetables and a Catholic father, a carpenter.
He was accommodated in 1975 before leaving Ghana to study in Rome and New York.
In 1992, the then Pope John Paul II named the archbishop of the Cape Coast of Turkson, a state of about 300,000 Catholics that increased under his watch.
In 2003, Pontiff promoted him to Cardinal.
Poverty, witchcraft
At Ghana in 2008, Turkson acted as a mediator in a peace council after close elections, threatening to burst into violence.
A year later he was chosen by the Bishop’s Dharm Sabha for an important role within a particular assembly for Africa by Benedict XVI, weighing on topics such as harmony, poverty, AIDS, brain drain and witchcraft.
The Benedict again accused Turkason of social justice and human rights as the chairman of the Pontificical Council for justice and peace in 2009.
As part of the reform of Roman Curia – Holy Sea Government – In 2016, Pope Francis named the Turkson Head of a newly created department, to promote the Integral Human Development, named the decostry to promote the Integral Human Development, which merged the justice and peace council with three others.
Francis, including the environment, Turkason, consider economic and social issues as priorities, who speak six languages-visited the World Economic Forum in Davos, which several times to convince the trading leaders of the dangers of trickle-down economics.
In 2016, he was sent as a Pope special envoy in South Sudan to try to cover the warning parties, and during the Kovid -19 epidemic, he led a task force to study the economic and social decline of crisis.
But Turkson resigned as a prefect of the decostry in the 2021 shakeup after an external review and rumored internal tension within the division, no Africans among the top positions of the Vatican.
Lively prayer
Although Turkson has criticized the anti -gay law in Uganda, he defends Catholic sexual morality and denied that homosexuality is a human rights issue.
On the major issue in the Africa of condoms, he has suggested that they may be useful for monotonous couples, with a fellow HIV positive, but also that money will be better spent on anti-retroversal drugs for people already infected.
Turqson was to apologize after a high-profile blunder in 2012 in which he showed a scare YouTube video about the rising rate of Muslims in the world during a bishop’s Dharm Sabha.
Regarding the Africans’ outlook about Catholicism, Turkson has suggested that the Group movement has done a better job in converting because the church has become a very brain, while the geosalism appeals with “heart, lively music, lively prayer”.
Turkson said in 2012, “Sometimes we make fun of Africans how European and American are such enthusiastic sports fans.”
“They can shout and scream in a football or football game and sing their hearts, but in the church also seem to have such a popular exercise to sing a hymn.”
