Parliament’s director of communications and public affairs, Chris Obore, has sparked a stir on social media with a post on X claiming Pope Francis was “so fond of” Speaker Anita Among.
The post was accompanied by photos of him standing in St Peter’s Square, the open plaza in front of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, the spiritual and administrative capital of the Catholic church.
“We mourn Pope Francis. He was so fond of Speaker Anita Among whom he counselled, prayed for, guided and blessed. He loved Uganda. Unto glory he will fly,” he wrote.
His followers pounced on the post. Commenting, someone by the name of Kasirye Ssekajja wrote: “He was so fond of Anita??!! Maybe he thought he could touch her heart, which only hardened!!”
He then hammered the point home, using a Biblical verse, Luke 18:25: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
Ms Among has made several trips to the Vatican and met with Pope Francis, who died on Easter Monday aged 88. Photographs of their meetings have circulated widely on social media. But that is hardly surprising—politics and religion have a symbiotic relationship. They feed off each other.
If you do not know what the media has written about Ms Among and you read a random social media post saying the Pope was “so fond of her”, you are going to be impressed.
Yet the disconnect is hard to miss. Here is a politician sanctioned by the US and UK for “significant corruption,” but she is basking in the Pope’s blessing.
When two major allies slap sanctions on a senior politician citing corruption, they are not engaging in guesswork. These are governments with access to solid intelligence. They do not run Uganda, but they know quite a lot happening in our country. Sometimes they have warned Uganda about impending terror threats when Uganda’s intelligence organisations do not even have the vaguest idea about what is going to happen.
Keen watchers of the Catholic church may not be surprised that Ms Among has managed to meet with the Pope and even get blessings. The church has a long, shameful history of protecting criminals, mainly sexual predators, and it seems its moral evasiveness is becoming an integral part of how it engages with politicians like Among.
While commenters criticised Mr Obore and his boss, much of the blame should also go to the church. The church and religion are about morals—at least in theory. True, religious people cannot live like angels, but they are expected to steer clear of wrongdoing.
If Pope Francis was meeting and giving blessings to only politicians with clean reputations, it would encourage others to behave in ways that are generally acceptable. But if politicians know that they can still meet one of the most important religious figures even when allegations of their wrongdoing are all over the internet, they feel protected.
Keen watchers of the Catholic church may not be surprised that Ms Among has managed to meet with the Pope and even get blessings. The church has a long, shameful history of protecting criminals, mainly sexual predators, and it seems its moral evasiveness is becoming an integral part of how it engages with some politicians.
When evidence emerged of Catholic priests sexually molesting boys in Australia, Massachusetts and Europe, the church simply transferred offending priests to new places without so much as a slap on their wrists. Victims took solace in the fact that many lived in countries with strong criminal justice systems, which enabled them to get compensation.
Ms Among has compelling reasons for always remembering Pope Francis and is probably going to miss him a lot. But the opinion Ugandans have of her matters much more than the opinion of the leader of the Catholic church.
As she attends the Pope’s funeral, she will no doubt grieve. But what should concern Ugandans more, especially religious Ugandans, is whether their leaders do what religion says they should do.
Using religion for public relations does nothing to correct our moral fibre. Uganda’s religiosity, it must be said, has done little or nothing to stem the wave of corruption sweeping across the country.
🔴 Musaazi Namiti is the Founder and Editorial Director of OJ-UGANDA. He previously led the Africa Desk at Al Jazeera in Doha, Qatar, worked for Globe Media Asia in Cambodia and writes a widely read column for Uganda’s Sunday Monitor. His work has been quoted by The New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Jeune Afrique, The Africa Report—not for playing it safe, but for saying what others will not.
Email: musaazinamiti@ojuganda.com
X: @kazbuk