The Pope ask "how much longer" the suffering in Zimbabwe is to go on - ask of the regime or the complacent Bishops!

“The Church in your country has stood fast with her people both before and after independence, now also in the years of overwhelming suffering as millions have left the country in frustration and desperation, as many lives have been lost, so many tears shed,” the Pope told Zimbabwe’s Roman Catholic Bishops on a five-yearly pilgrim visit to Rome.

The Holy Father is ill informed. Zimbabwe’s Roman Catholic Church stood firm with the oppressed before independence, yes; after that, except for one or two individuals, the Church Leaders have been in the Mugabe regime’s pockets!

“A tiny minority of the people have become very rich overnight, while the majority are languishing in poverty, creating a huge gap between the rich and the poor. Our Country is in deep crisis.” Zimbabwe’s Bishops wrote in Pastoral Letter way back in 2007 when the national economy was in an unbelievable mess with inflation a run freight train to hit the world record of 500 billion per cent in 2008, unemployment was 90%, there was no food in the shops, etc. The ruling elite were making a killing printing and selling the worthless Z$ on the black market to the rest of the population who were forced to use the Z$. Corruption and looting, especially of white owned farms, was rampant.

In the late 1970s when the war of independence was at its hottest still there was some semblance of order nothing compared to the economic and political chaos Zimbabwe has become since independence. When was the Church all these years?

“I think particularly of your 2007 Pastoral Letter God Hears the Cry of the Oppressed: “'the suffering people of Zimbabwe are groaning in agony: ‘Watchman, how much longer the night?’” the Pope said.

Other than the 2007 Pastoral Letter the Holy Father could not find anything else of note that the Roman Catholic Church of Zimbabwe has done before or after that letter.

The Roman Catholic Church leaders joined with other church leaders last year to meet Mugabe just before the July 2013 elections “to ask all to refrain from using violence in the coming elections,” the group said. It was a photo opportunity the church leaders could not resist and Mugabe gladly granted them.

Mugabe was not going to use wanton violence again as happened in 2008; not with the whole world watching. In any case MDC’s failure to implement not even one reform meant he was free to all the state machinery and resources to rig the vote, which is exactly what he did. The church groups and other civic organisations witnessed the blatant vote rigging but failed to condemn that because they had been expecting political violence.

“Watchman, how much longer the night?” the Bishop of Rome asked? Was he asking that of the tyrants in Harare or of the blank faces of his representatives in Zimbabwe who have grown closer to the regime than the suffering masses they are supposed to be leading!