AGGRESSIVE KNOCKDOWN VERSION. By The Independentist editorial desk
A Church Bleeding While Its Shepherds Choose Convenience
Your Excellency,
This letter is written because our people are bleeding while those charged to defend them have chosen ceremony over conscience, diplomacy over truth, and political proximity over pastoral responsibility.
For nine years, the people of the Ecclesiastical Province of Bamenda have buried their dead, fled from burning homes, and watched their future collapse into graves. And during these nine years, the Church — the one institution that should have been their refuge — has been repeatedly found standing beside the persecutor, not the persecuted.
Your recent actions have confirmed what many feared: The Apostolic Nunciature has traded moral clarity for political convenience.
When Rome’s Representative Echoes the Dictator’s Script
On 15 September 2024, Cardinal Pietro Parolin taught that an Apostolic Nuncio must preach peace and justice. You arrived in Cameroon preaching only peace — the type of peace dictators love: the silence of the oppressed, the burial of truth, the denial of suffering.
Your ministry has echoed state talking points while ignoring the screams of the wounded. You have spoken of reconciliation while refusing to speak of responsibility. You have preached harmony while ignoring nine years of state-inflicted horror. A Church that speaks peace without justice merely baptizes oppression.
The Cathedral Incident: A Turning Point You Created
On 14 November 2025, at the rededication of St Joseph’s Metropolitan Cathedral, the sacred pulpit was used to whitewash the image of a regime responsible for mass killings and displacement.
You stood there, shoulder to shoulder with Archbishop Andrew Nkea, and delivered a message that felt less like a pastoral exhortation and more like political choreography.
You knew the cathedral renovation was financed in part by the Biya regime. Yet you watched deception flow from the pulpit.
You knew the papal parchments were standard documents any Catholic may request.
Yet you allowed the faithful to be misled for spectacle.
You knew the faithful expected truth. Yet they received theatre. Your Silence Toward the Oppressor Has Become a Sermon of Its Own
Your Excellency, you have never publicly acknowledged: the burning of villages, the killings, the disappearances, the torture, the systemic targeting of communities in the North West and South West Regions.
You have met with government officials behind closed doors. You have visited the Unity Palace with smiles. You have shielded your homilies from the truth the people live every day. Silence is not neutrality. Silence is a choice. And in a context of mass suffering, silence becomes partnership with injustice.
Archbishop Nkea: Your Chosen Companion in Error
Your alignment with Archbishop Andrew Nkea has damaged your moral authority more than any critic could. This is the same Archbishop who: justified parishes being taxed into exhaustion during wartime poverty, misled the faithful about the renovation funding, used the Church’s moral platform to normalize the Biya regime, and repeatedly dismissed the grievances of the people he is supposed to shepherd.
When you embraced his approach, you embraced his contradictions. When you defended his choices, you absorbed his liabilities. When you followed his script, you forfeited your own prophetic voice.
Apostolic Nuncio or Diplomatic Chaplain of the Regime?
It is now widely believed — and understandably so — that the Apostolic Nunciature in Cameroon has become a chaplaincy for the regime, not a voice for the suffering. Your pastoral presence has not challenged the regime; it has soothed it. Your speeches have not confronted injustice; they have avoided it. Your diplomacy has not defended the vulnerable; it has blurred their reality. This is not the mission Rome entrusted to you. This is not the mandate of the Gospel.
The Faithful See Everything — Even What You Think Is Hidden, You unfriended me on Facebook when I refused to sanitize the truth. Yet you continued to follow my writings — silently, cautiously, almost anxiously. It is not me you fear. It is the truth that frightens those who prefer comfort to conscience.
Your credibility has collapsed not because critics exist, but because the faithful have eyes. They saw the smiles at Unity Palace. They saw the evasions in your homilies. They saw your proximity to the very structures crushing them. The faithful are not blind. They are simply patient — until patience becomes betrayal.
This Is Not Hatred. This Is Accountability.
I am not writing to destroy your reputation.
It is already damaged — by your own choices. I write because the Church in Cameroon is drifting toward moral irrelevance at a moment when the people need her most. If you have any fragment of pastoral conscience left, then hear this clearly: The Church cannot reconcile with the state until the state reconciles with the people.
The pulpit cannot be used to sanitize a regime that has burned villages. The Nunciature cannot remain silent while the faithful bury their loved ones. And you — as the one who represents Rome — cannot preach peace while refusing to preach truth.
A Call to Step Back From the Cliff
Your Excellency, the damage can still be repaired, but not by continuing on the path you walked in Bamenda. The people demand — and deserve: truth from their shepherds, justice from their leaders, honesty from their Church.
Your legacy is not yet written in stone. But today, it leans in the wrong direction. If you wish to reclaim moral authority, begin with this simple act: Stand with the suffering, not with their oppressors. Speak the truth, not the script handed to you. Choose justice, not diplomatic comfort.
The Church must be the conscience of the nation — not the choir accompanist of power. This is the Gospel. This is the mandate. And this is the line that history will judge.
For the sake of the wounded people of Bamenda,
for the integrity of the Church, and for the truth the pulpit was built to defend, I refuse to remain silent.
— Nchumbonga George Lekelefac
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