Our parishes will be empty in 30 years if we don’t pay attention to the youth – Fr. Michael Mensah

Rev. Fr. Michael Mensah has said the basilicas and huge parish halls among other infrastructure the Church in Ghana is investing in will sit empty with no Catholics in the next 30 years if no attention is paid to the youth.

Fr. Mensah’s caution emanates from the 2022 Advent letter of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference raising serious concerns about the growth trajectory of the Church.

With the population of Catholics reducing from 15.1% in the year 2000 and 13.1% in 2010 to 10% in 2021, the mathematical prospects indicate that by 2060 there will be no Catholics in Ghana.

According to Fr. Mensah, the Church in Ghana, is likely to to face the fate of its counterpart in Europe if deliberate efforts are not put in place to retain young people in the Church.

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Fr. Mensah said this in a keynote address delivered at the opening ceremony of the 4^th & 5^th Biennial Convention of the Accra East Grand Knights of St. John International and Ladies Auxilary held recently at the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Chaplaincy, University of Ghana, Legon.

“The question of Mission, Mr. Chairman is a rather thorny one. The 2022 Advent letter of the Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference has raised serious concerns about the growth trajectory of the Church. With the population of Catholics reducing from 15.1% in the year 2000 and 13.1% in 2010 to 10% in 2021, the mathematical prospects indicate that by 2060 there will be no Catholics in Ghana.”

“The only way to turn this around, in my estimation is to begin to pay deliberate attention to our young Catholics. Knights and Ladies, there is no other way. If the church exists for mission, and if that mission field now find itself among the youth, then our order needs to change its priorities and ensure that the major part of our time and resources are invested in youth mission,” he said.

“Beyond our own junior cadets and auxiliaries, we need to adopt the Sunday Schools in our parishes; we need to take a decision to deliberately sponsor the vacation programmes of the youth. I am warning, that unless we do that, the basilicas and parish halls which we will spend all our money building, will sit empty, thirty years down the line, as has happened in Europe, and all our efforts would have gone to waste,” he warned.