Mugabe’s blood money raises Catholic eyebrows

h’s parliamentary and presidential elections.
A report put out by the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) said last weekend that the money would help block demands made by some leading Catholics for Mugabe’s excommunication because of his appalling human rights track record.
But one of the church’s best-respected leaders, Father Oskar Wermter SJ, told IWPR – “We no longer live in the Middle Ages. The local bishops do not have that power. It would have to come from the Pope himself.”
Reports that Mugabe made the donation were first published in August and told how the Catholic-born Mugabe had channelled personal funds through Oppah Muchinguri, Minister of Women’s Affairs, Gender and Community Development.
The ambitious politician donated Z$20 million of her own money to the Marian Association, said ZimOnline.
Mugabe’s donations at a time of “verbal war” against the massively respected Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, has raised eyebrows throughout the Christian community.
Mugabe likes to call himself just “an ordinary Catholic who goes to mass every Sunday”, not quite how he’s best remembered by the survivors of Gukurahundi between 1980 and 1987 in Matabeleland and the Midlands.