Cape Coast Archdiocese
Friday, June 11, 2021
By Agnus-Dei Media
The Catholic Archdiocese of Cape Coast has planted 15,000 trees at various points today as a step towards the one million tree planting exercise rolled out by the Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference.
A brief ceremony was held at the Mary Immaculate Conception Catholic Church at Anomabo to educate the faithful and residents in the Archdiocese on the need to take apt measures to refurbish the country’s depleted vegetation.
Speaking at the ceremony, Most Rev. Charles Gabriel Palmer-Buckle, Chief shepherd of the Archdiocese said the exercise was one of three major converging events that were rolled out to mark a new beginning of ecological restoration in the country.
He said the exercise was to reiterate the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference’s commitment to plant One Million trees during this year’s rainy season as announced at this year’s Plenary Assembly in early May and he was hopeful that the move was doable for the church in Ghana.
“GCBC’s One Million trees target is quite doable and we can thrive on the strength of the was the Catholic Church’s various Ecclesiastical Communities in the country with the huge numbers we have to achieve this target”, he said.
“Our project of one million falls in line with the planting of five million trees target rolled out by government”
He stressed that the one million trees that would be planted by the church in Ghana could go a long way of addressing the looming environmental and social calamities that “our ill activities have birthed”
Call To Action
Rev. Fr Stephen Amish-Gyasi, the Archdiocesan development director charged the faithful and residents to trim down on ill environmental practices that would leave “unborn generations in a sorry state” and adopt best practices to ensure that the environment is well protected.
“When you look at our national flag, there is the green colour which denotes the country’s rich green vegetation but the situation on the ground presently is contrary to what we are seeing”.
“We have gradually destroyed our environment with the indiscriminate cutting down of trees, open defecation whiles filth is gradually swallowing up our water bodies especially plastic waste”.
“Let us make the conscious effort to trim down these ill activities and leave a better environment for our children and generations to come”
Commendation
Mrs. Ophelia Aba Mensah, the Member of Parliament for Mfantseman lauded the Catholic Church for supporting the government‘s agenda “to restore environmental sanity“.
She however admonished well meaning Ghanaians to embrace the tree planting ideas “with all seriousness” while downplaying the change it can make in all regards.