“Everything is not okay” – Catholic Bishops’ President sounds alarm over declining numbers in Ghana

The President of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Most Rev. Matthew Kwasi Gyamfi, has issued a clarion call to Catholics in Ghana, urging a bold and urgent renewal of evangelization to reverse the Church’s declining population in the country.

Delivering a powerful homily at the 2025 Benefactors Day celebration at St. Paul’s Catholic Seminary in Accra last Sunday, the Bishop of Sunyani described the trend as “existential” and warned that “everything is not okay” in the Church.

Recent figures from the Ghana Statistical Service and Vatican data formed the core of his concern. “In the year 2000 census, Catholics were 16.4% of the Ghanaian population. In the year 2010, we had become 13.3%. In the recent census 2020 it was 10.1%,” he noted. “You see why I say it is a very important question? It is an existential one.”

The Bishop’s sobering remarks were prompted by a question from a seminarian who asked what the main challenge of the Church in Ghana was. Bishop Gyamfi seized the moment to underscore that the very survival of the Church hinged on reigniting the zeal for evangelization among both clergy and laity.

“We should not do business as usual. We should not be complacent and think everything is okay,” he stressed. “As far as converts are decreasing… we can no longer feel comfortable.”

Addressing the seminarians directly, he challenged them to embrace a mission-oriented priesthood: “We need to breed a new group of priests who will make things new… To make the church new… by your aggressiveness and passionate evangelization.”

He continued, “The priesthood is not just a title or a commodity. It is an activity. The more you practice as a priest, the more you deserve the name.”

Referencing the missionary example of the Apostles Paul and Barnabas, Bishop Gyamfi encouraged future priests to learn from their zeal and effectiveness: “Within a space of a few years, Paul and Barnabas… made a considerable number of disciples. Increase in conversions not decrease.”

He lamented the gap between potential and actual evangelization efforts in the Church today. “If the over 3000 priests and religious in Ghana now were all working with the missionary zeal of the Apostles, the face of the Church would be more beautiful.”