By Jim Ochetenwu


The Catholic Bishop of Yola, Stephen Mamza, has taken a swipe at mushroom churches springing up with no apparent spiritual intent but for commercial quest.

The Bishop who is the immediate Adamawa State Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, said during a special Mass in Yola that, “Even the holy spirit will find it difficult to count the churches in Yola. Churches are set up today just for business.”

He said in Nigeria today, people just want to become general overseers and own private jets, asserting that Nigerian general overseers today have more jets than all the general overseers in the rest of the world put together.

He mentioned a particular personal experience when the general overseer of a particular church asked him to buy his church because the church was not yielding financial fruits.

“A general overseer approached me to buy his church. He said things were not moving well for him and he knew of a place where things would work and where he wanted to go,” he said.

Bishop Mamza spoke at St Augustine’s Catholic Church, Bekaji, Yola where he presided over a Mass to mark this year’s World Communications Sunday of the Catholic Church.

Speaking on the theme of the day, ‘Artificial Intelligence and the Wisdom of the Heart Towards a Fully Human Communication,’ the Yola Catholic Bishop said the touch of passion and empathy in human communication cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence.

He said, “Pope Francis invites us this World Communications Day to examine AI and how it affects communication. Although platforms for communications offer fantastic opportunities, they take out the humanity in us. Any gadgets that deduct from how humanity comes together for impactful close-touch relationships are not good enough.

Many circumstances crop up every so often when you need to be touched or touch someone when you need to stand right by somebody or have somebody stand by you. Only human communication can do this. In our pursuit of technology, may we always consider the need to strengthen human communication with all the necessary empathy that it possesses.”

but that is one of the purposes of setting up a church, is that not?