ABUJA, Nigeria — The Catholic Church in Nigeria is equipping future priests with the knowledge and skills to identify, prevent, and respond to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV).
The initiative, which has already reached more than 260 seminarians at St. Thomas Aquinas Major Seminary in Makurdi, Benue state, seeks to prepare future priests to recognize different forms of abuse, support survivors, and promote safer communities through their pastoral ministry.
Speaking in an interview with ACI Africa, the sister service of EWTN News in Africa, during the three-day "Training and Capacity Building on the Prevention of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence" for seminarians, the secretary-general of the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria (CSN) said the disturbing prevalence of sexual and other forms of violence in Nigeria calls for deliberate efforts to ensure respect for every human person, particularly for those who are most vulnerable.
According to Father Michael Banjo: "Seminarians must receive formation that prepares them for the responsibility of protecting people from abuse, educating the faithful, and promoting a culture in which violence is neither tolerated nor concealed."
"The disturbing prevalence of sexual and other forms of violence in Nigeria calls us to make the Christian message of love concrete through the protection of human dignity. Every person is created in the image and likeness of God, and every act of abuse violates that dignity," he said during the Oct. 21 interview.
The episcopal secretary of the Family and Human Life unit of CSN, Sister Cor Jesu Maria Ijeoma Eke, whose office has the mandate of training the seminarians, explained to ACI Africa at the training that the formation of seminarians was essential to extending awareness of sexual and gender-based violence beyond existing Church groups to families and communities across the country.
"These are the future priests, future bishops, the future shepherds that we will have in the Church. We decided to take this training down to them so that if we can get them to understand what sexual and gender-based violence is all about, its manifestations, its forms and everything surrounding it, it will be a better way of spreading this knowledge and seeing how we can work towards the prevention of this ill," she said.
Eke disclosed that the training of 1,000 seminarians formed part of a capacity-building project designed to raise awareness and strengthen the prevention of sexual and gender-based violence among Catholic Church stakeholders in Nigeria.
She explained that the program aimed to ensure seminarians acquired the necessary knowledge before assuming pastoral responsibilities, particularly when individuals and families turn to the Church for guidance and assistance.
The Nigerian sister noted that priests regularly interact with people from different backgrounds through homilies, pastoral visits, apostolic work, and meetings with Church organizations, placing them in a strategic position to promote awareness and help prevent abuse.
"They are going to use the pulpit, they go for apostolic work, and they meet with other leaders and Church organizations. They can use this opportunity as future priests and all those who are really in this field to make sure that this project, this awareness creation, as well as the prevention of sexual and gender-based violence, is brought under control," she said.
Eke expressed the hope that sustained awareness and preventive action would help the Church and society move toward a future in which sexual and gender-based violence would be significantly reduced.
Eke disclosed that the project initially aimed to reach at least 1,000 seminarians across the selected major seminaries, but the number could increase as the training progresses.
In a separate interview with ACI Africa, the executive director of the Lux Terra Leadership Foundation, Father George Omaku Ehusani, said the initiative was introduced to the Church in Nigeria by his foundation, identifying harmful cultural practices, domestic violence, and unequal treatment of women as some of the issues the initiative seeks to address.
"In this country, there are places where a man dies, and the wife is chased away from home, and the brothers can just come and pack all his things. Till today, the wife with children can be left empty, and the brothers will come and carry everything [away]," he said.
The initiative also addresses the treatment of domestic workers, particularly young girls brought from rural communities to work as house helps or nannies in wealthier households.
"You bring a girl from the village who is the same age as your own daughter, and put that girl through the most harrowing experiences as a house girl, as a nanny. If she breaks a plate, they beat the nonsense out of this girl. The kind of work you can't give your child at 12 years old, you give this girl," he said.
According to him, the initiative uses the Gospel, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and other Church teachings to encourage Christians to reject abuse and treat vulnerable people with compassion.
"You cannot be a Christian and be violating people. You can't be a Christian and be brutalizing people," he said and added: "The Ford Foundation is supporting, but it has nothing to say as to the agenda. Lux Terra developed it," he said.
This story was first published by ACI Africa, the sister service of EWTN News in Africa, and has been adapted by EWTN News.
