Ghanaian archbishop: Rome denied funding requests
"We sent four applications to Rome for funding, and we got nothing, absolutely nothing."
A Ghanaian archbishop has said that Rome rejected recent funding applications from his archdiocese, arguing that the local Catholic community is sufficiently large to provide for its own needs.
Archbishop John Bonaventure Kwofie told priests, religious, and lay collaborators Dec. 30 that the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization had classified the Archdiocese of Accra as a “big archdiocese” in a “big city,” limiting its eligibility for funds.
“This year, for instance, we sent four applications to Rome for funding, and we got nothing, absolutely nothing,” he said.
“They say we are big, so we must tighten our belts because the money is here.”
Speaking at an event known as Co-Workers Appreciation Day, at Accra’s Holy Spirit Cathedral, Kwofie urged local Catholics to respond by working harder and strengthening their spirit of self-reliance.
“Let us tighten our belts, work harder than before, and move on,” he said.
Ghana is a West African country with a population of around 35 million that borders Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, and Togo. While Catholicism is growing overall in Africa, it is shrinking rapidly in Ghana. The proportion of the population identifying as Catholics fell from 15.1% in the 2000 census to 10.1% in the 2021 census.
Bishops have attributed the decline to urbanization, saying that when Catholics move from rural areas to the city, they are drawn to other Christian communities, especially those that preach the Prosperity Gospel, which teaches that financial donations to ministries can secure material wellbeing.
The Accra archdiocese, based in Ghana’s capital city, serves a population of around 5 million, but only around 400,000 are Catholics, according to 2022 figures.
Ghana has a growing economy and is currently categorized by the World Bank as a lower-middle-income country.
About one-quarter of the population lives in poverty, with nearly another quarter close to poverty.
However, rural areas experience much greater poverty than cities. Accra in particular is among the wealthier areas of the country, although there is a significant income gap between the wealthy and poor portions of the city’s population.
Like other Ghanaian dioceses, the Accra archdiocese is dependent upon the Dicastery for Evangelization, the Vatican department that oversees the Church’s mission territories. The dicastery’s Section for the First Evangelization and New Particular Churches — previously known as the Congregation for the Evangelization of the Peoples — assists in the appointment of bishops, priestly training, missionary deployments, and with funds to help run dioceses in mission areas.
Kwofie is not the first African Church leader to report a reduction in financial support from the dicastery.
In a July 2023 letter, Bishop Sithembele Sipuka, the then-president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference, said he had discussed funding cuts with dicastery officials.
“One major point of discussion was the issue of the growing inability of this Dicastery to provide financial and material assistance to mission areas like ours, as well as the need for reporting for project funds received,” he wrote.
“We left the meeting with a heightened awareness of the need to beef up the self-sustenance drive in our Conference because the overseas coffers from which we traditionally got support are on the verge of drying up.”
According to its 2024 consolidated financial statement, the Holy See allocated 393.29 million euros (around $460 million) to the Apostolic Mission and the Pontifical Fund. Of that sum, 146.40 million euros ($171 million) went to “support local Churches in difficulty and specific contexts of evangelizations.”
The figures were higher than in 2023, when 370.5 million euros ($433 million) was spent on the Apostolic Mission and the Pontifical Fund, with 144.1 million euros ($168 million) earmarked for supporting local Churches in difficulty.
The Accra archdiocese announced Jan. 2 an increase in fees associated with baptisms, confirmations, weddings, and funerals, as well as a rise in annual parish membership dues.
In a circular letter, Archbishop Kwofie said the fees had not been reviewed since 2014, while the Church dues had remained at the same level for several years, despite an increase in operating costs and pastoral needs in the archdiocese.
The so-called “stole fee” for baptisms and confirmation will rise from 10 to 20 Ghanaian cedis (94 cents to $1.88). Adult church dues will increase from 24 to 50 Ghanaian cedis ($2.26 to $4.71).
The national daily minimum wage recently increased by 9% to 21.77 Ghanaian cedis ($2.06), while the country’s inflation rate has declined steadily.
The archbishop, who has led the Accra archdiocese since 2019, said the increased fees would help parishes to meet Catholics’ spiritual and social needs more effectively.
Amid the archdiocese’s financial challenges, Kwofie is seeking to build a Catholic children’s hospital in Accra.
At a groundbreaking ceremony in January 2022, the archbishop said the project’s first phase would cost $2 million. He launched the initiative after becoming aware of the number of children needing medical treatment while personally battling an illness. He noted that Accra had only one major pediatric hospital, the Princess Marie Louise Children’s Hospital.
In his Dec. 30 address, Kwofie lamented the slow progress toward building the new children’s hospital.
“I thank the parishes that are contributing to the project, but unfortunately, some priests and parishes have not even heard of it, and people are still asking whether the project has been finished,” the archbishop said.
He added: “Let us not give the impression that the project is for the bishop or for a few people. No, it is for all of us.”
Kwofie said that although the Vatican saw the Accra archdiocese as financially stable, the local situation was difficult.
“Rome thinks we are alright, but we are not fine,” he remarked.
Accra may be a big city but there is a strong wealth gap and most of its people are young and poor. For the Vatican to say, “You’re big enough to take care of yourself.” seems to follow the ongoing trend (that Luke so expertly pointed out) of reducing financial support for the Church in Africa. I think this speaks more for how poorly Vatican finances have been going than anything else…but since Accra and many West African dioceses are not anywhere close to being self-supporting this is bad news all around.
The "stole fees" seem like they would be equivalent to over a hundred dollars in the US, based on a full day at minimum wage? Yipes.