The catholic church has undertaken a series of initiatives to ensure that it plays its part in the fight against crime, Archbishop of Castries Gabriel Malzaire said this week.
Noting that the situation needs serious attention, Archbishop Malzaire said the church intends to fight back with prayer, and also shared that the church has met with members of the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force.
“We had two meetings with the police force, and we have pledged our support for the police in the fight against crime. Going forward, we certainly will continue to pray. We have formulated a prayer against crime and violence which I sent to all the churches, so this is already being done,” the archbishop said in an interview with The VOICE on Wednesday.
He intends to tackle the subject at an archdiocesan rally tomorrow.
According to him, “we have been doing a lot of things and saying a lot of things in support of the work of the police against crime. Last Sunday I was with the police in Mon Repos and my homily was against crime. This coming Sunday we have an archdiocesan rally at the stadium (and) all the parishes will be represented at the rally. This is one of the things that I will be talking about, and I will be making some presentations as to some of the tangible things that we can do.”
The church leader continued to stress on the importance of prayer noting that it should be foremost in the fight against crime, and whilst many are hoping that the perennial issue will be solved once and for all, Archbishop Malzair made it clear that certain requirements must be met.
“Everyone is looking towards curbing crime but the question for us is how we approach it; we cannot fight with guns, we have to fight with prayer and this is one of the things that I’m going to talk about at the rally this coming Sunday. We have to fight with a different kind of weapon,” he said.
“People are becoming very apathetic, they feel God is not helping and so forth; people are expecting some big miracle to fall from the sky to change things but they don’t want to make the effort.
We have to put our lives on the line. We have to put our efforts on the line (and) if people are not spiritual prayer will have no place in their lives,” the archbishop added.