According to the prelate, who was speaking at the opening of the Social Week 2023, the meeting, which takes place in Luanda, proposes to listen to all social situations in search of ways to improve the state of life of citizens.
We are witnessing, he considered, a "desperate moment in the socio-economic situation, as a consequence not only of the international joint action, but also, and above all, of the political-economic measures promoted in the country over time".
For the also president of the Episcopal Conference of Angola and São Tomé (CEAST), there is a need to "relaunch the path of national hope, so overshadowed and uncertain in recent times".
Social Week 2023, a space for debate and analysis on the socioeconomic life of Angola, "should be the means for the voiceless and the sons and daughters of our rich and beautiful nation who cry out for better days of social, economic, psychological, promotional stability, familial and spiritual," he noted.
"May the Holy Spirit assist us so that, wherever we are, we always assume ourselves as light, salt and yeast, assuming new and noble attitudes, investing ourselves with the same feelings of Jesus Christ in order to make all things new", he said.
"We are children of hope, children of love and forgiveness, children of reconciliation and fraternal communion, so let us open our hearts, let us open our minds to the new, to the beautiful, to the worthy, to the true, to the divine", he stressed.
He also exhorted participants to joint action in building our society and in "restoring the culture, which feeds us negatively, atrophies, takes us to this space of hostility, enmity, hatred, intrigue, slander and lack of coexistence among the brothers".
José Manuel Imbamba, also Archbishop of Saurimo, Lunda Sul province, also spoke about the importance of preserving the environment and "ecological sensitivity" towards nature.
The seventh edition of the Social Week, which runs until Friday, in the capital under the motto "Local Participation, Global Change", is an initiative by CEAST and carried out by Mosaiko - Institute for Citizenship -, a non-governmental organization dedicated to the Church Catholic.
For his part, the director general of Mosaiko, Friar Júlio Candeeiro, considered, in his speech, that representative democracy "should not supersede" participatory democracy.
"In the context of Angola, it is urgent that we involve citizens in the discussion about the understanding of participation and the challenges they encounter in the decision-making process about our life as a country", noted the Catholic priest.
