{UAH} Jesus rode a donkey, Francis favours a Renault 4, guess who flies by jet... - Comment - www.theeastafrican.co.ke

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/Francis-favours-a-Renault-4-guess-who-flies-by-jet/-/434750/1992212/-/nqblfg/-/index.html

Jesus rode a donkey, Francis favours a Renault 4, guess who flies by jet... - Comment

Pope Francis is once again showing the way through his own personal choices: He has chosen his mode of transport, a small 1984 Renault 4 sedan (305,000km), gifted to him by a junior priest who used it to visit his parishioners.

Of course, the pontiff is renowned for his simple lifestyle since he was a priest in his native Argentina, travelling on public buses, living in modest quarters and washing the feet of beggars.

So his choice of locomotion will not surprise many, though it will make many priests' and bishops' stomachs rumble a little. They will fear that these symbolic gestures will soon ramify into structural and cultural reforms affecting their privileges.

For many centuries, the papacy has been the centre of a temporal power that allowed space for pomp, ostentation and licence to an astonishing extent.

The 1980s revelations surrounding the Banco Ambrosiano, the Masonic Lodge P2 in Rome and a man dubbed God's Banker (Bishop Paul Marcinkus), were only the tip of the iceberg in an organization that was for long mired in rot.

Recently, again, details have emerged of sexual impropriety and paedophilic delinquency by priests against their young wards, all the time protected by some kind of omerta, the mafia code of silence. Today, there are many grown men whose lives remain irreparably shattered because of what they went through as children.

Though the Catholic Church has had pious, "fit and proper" heads over the years, it has also had more than its fair share of villains and crooks.

The Borgia family, the Spaniards who dominated the papacy during the Renaissance, have come down to us as particularly seedy but they were not the only ones to have soiled that high office.

Matters have improved with time and increasing transparency in all the departments of our lives, with the faithful and people generally no longer willing to endure the unendurable. They tend to speak out and to demand amends.

This pope, who chats on his mobile and tweets regularly, sits well with this transparency.

He is apparently working to demystify his office, to render it more accessible and human. Rather than regard himself as a prince, he has chosen to be his flock's servant, a minister.

Which is a far cry from our ministers, who do not even know the etymology of their title; for them, "minister" is the boss who must be ministered to by the people who put him in office.

One such "minister" in this country was having a hard time justifying the purchase of a presidential jet at an obviously inflated price. He had the audacity to state that "come what may," the jet would be bought because "our president cannot ride a donkey."

I suggested to him that he should not mock the donkey, which was Jesus Christ's mount when he entered Jerusalem the other day.

This country, which is demonstrably car-mad, could learn a useful lesson from Pope Francis. We have clogged our narrow roads with unnecessary cars, which we can ill afford. We pollute the environment with all the smoke and fumes they emit.

We deplete our already depleted exchequer to import fuel and spare parts. We turn good people into thieves because they must keep their vehicles on the road even though they cannot afford to. We sit in traffic snarl-ups for so long we excrete litres of bile into our systems to raise our anger, blood pressure and stress.

Pretending to look happy in our jalopies, we are a miserable lot.

If we followed the pontifical example, we would clamour for our government to expedite the public bus transport project that is moving at a snail's pace; we would encourage as many people as possible to ride bicycles or walk; we would establish and secure (make safe) bicycle lanes and footpaths around town; we would make driving into the city expensive by imposing a congestion tax; we would live simple, clean and healthy lives; we would make sense.

Who will lead us in this? We could start with those most likely to follow the pope's example.

Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: ulimwengu@jenerali.com

Jesus rode a donkey, Francis favours a Renault 4, guess who flies by jet... - Comment - www.theeastafrican.co.ke
http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/Francis-favours-a-Renault-4-guess-who-flies-by-jet/-/434750/1992212/-/nqblfg/-/index.html