& NORTH RHINE-WESTPHALIA PARTNERSHIP CEREMONY

A GOODWILL MESSAGE By Cardinal .

SALUTATION:

Your Excellency: Dr.Horst Köhler, President of the Federal Republic of Germany. Your Excellency: Dr. Jürgen Rüttgers, Premier of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Honourable Akwasi Osei Adjei, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Ghana, Distinguished Conference Speakers and facilitators; Distinguished State Officials and Functionaries of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Ladies and Gentlemen

I greet you all heartily and bring you warm felicitation from the and the People of Ghana.

I wish to thank the organizers of this Conference and, especially, of the Ghana – North Rhine-Westphalia Partnership Ceremony for the invitation to be part of this historic and history-making ceremony. It is certainly a great honor done to our person and to the Church in Ghana; and we are deeply grateful and appreciative of it.

SURVEY OF GERMAN-GHANA RELATIONS:

Your invitation has not just brought a Cardinal /Prelate of the to participate in a state function. More significantly, we consider it a recognition of how the Ghana – North Rhine-Westphalia partnership, which this ceremony inaugurates, may have been prepared for by partnerships on Church levels, and how generally the Church has been an inestimable advocate of such institutions and expressions of solidarity.

The history, indeed, of ties between Germany and Ghana, at least on Church level, is long. Some high points of this long-standing relationship are the following: · Almost twenty years after the missionary society of the SMA Fathers had replanted the seed of Catholic faith in the Gold Coast (Ghana), the nascent Catholic Church was ripe for a Bishop; and the first Bishop was Msgr. Maxmillian Albert from Würzburg (1901-1903). · From its offices in Aachen, Missio (the Pontifical Mission Society) has since time immemorial coordinated and managed the benefaction and support of the Catholic Church in Germany for pastoral activities of local Churches in Ghana and other mission lands. · After the Vatican II, another institution of the German Bishops’ Conference, Misereor, would also from its offices in Aachen manage Church and state funds

1 for human development projects in Ghana. Brot für die Welt does the same for the “Deutsche Evangelische Kirche”. · The Konrad Adenauer Stiftung has adopted the Christian Mothers’ Association of Ghana, and supports through them projects and programmes for the empowerment of women in the Ghanaian society. · The Friederick-Ebert Stiftung partners with various civil society groups to promote Good Governance in Ghana. · The KAAD and the DAAD support the advanced and professional training of many Ghanaian students in Germany. · The Christofel-Blinden group and the Missionsärtzliches Institut, Würzburg partner with various medical institutions to train and provide back-up medical staff. · For the past twenty-five (1982-2007 = 25) years, the Diocese of Münster has lived in partnership with the Tamale Ecclesiastical Province of the Catholic Church (= Northern Ghana), based on the principle of mutuality and intended to lead to mutual understanding and brotherhood in Christ. The two Churches (German and Ghanaian) have lived as learning communities and in solidarity to face the common challenges and responsibilities for the development of a fair world. To this end, the two Churches engage in the mutual sharing of faith and culture, and assist in the literacy programmes and the development of this part of Ghana.

PARTNERSHIP: SERVICES BETWEEN GROUPS (PARTNERS) IN SOLIDARITY

The “Family of God”, conception of the Church and “koinonia” are apt paradigms for considering partnership between Churches and social groups of all types. In the family and in the spirit of “koinonia”, people spontaneously share goods and services in love and in solidarity.

In partnership, all remain open to all. It is not normally a one-sided tutelage or one-way traffic of services. It should involve an awareness of interdependence between the partners: the partners putting themselves at the service of one another in mutual aid, each maintaining its own identity and uniqueness, while enriching each other by exchange and mutual help. It should involve an awareness of interdependence between the partners. But, when the partners are of unequal stature, as it is the case here, between Ghana and Germany (= Europe and developing countries), then partnership can only be a show of solidarity and altruism, through which the weak is empowered, the poor enriched, the feeble strengthened and the voiceless given advocacy. This is exactly what has happened to Ghana; and it began, when on the eve of the holding of the G-8 summit in Heiligendamm (June 2007), Cardinals, Bishops and several other opinion leaders from some G-8 countries, Africa and Latin America, addressed a statement to the leaders of the G-8 countries entitled: ”Taking Responsibility for Human Development and Global Solidarity”, challenging them to make good their promised commitment to the Millennium Development Goals. This initiative of the Cardinals and Bishops lobbied the G-8 heads of state about the needs of developing countries, stressed the responsibilities of the G-8 governments towards the developing countries and

2 challenged them not to postpone any longer their adoption of concrete gestures to help the developing countries. North Rhine-Westphalia’s (Germany’s) offer of partnership to President John Agyekum Kufuor of the Republic of Ghana is the fruit of this advocacy and the result of other proceedings at the Heiligendamm G-8 meeting.

As we gather this morning to officially inaugurate this partnership, we cannot help but be filled with sentiments of immense gratitude to the advocacy groups, which lobbied the G- 8 about fidelity to their commitments to the Millennium Development Goals. We are also eternally grateful to the Premier and the people of North Rhine-Westphalia for extending this offer of partnership to Ghana. And we thank you all, who have come to participate in the inauguration ceremony of this partnership. May God bless you all!

GHANA – NRW, WHITHER BOUND WITH PARTNERSHIP?

Clearly, this partnership is not an end in itself. It is a means for fair global development, where all people can contribute their assets and talents and all people can enjoy a fair share of the benefits generated. It is a means for carrying out a joint responsibility for a global and an integral development of the North and the South of our globe. It is a tool for an authentic dialogue between cultures and mutual respect. The partnership is a tool, in the case of Ghana, for helping NEPAD attain its primary objectives of · Eradicating poverty · Placing the country on the path of sustainable growth and development · Halting the marginalization of Africa in the globalization process, and enhancing Africa’s full and beneficial integration into the global economy · Accelerating the empowerment of women · Integrating human and environmental concerns in development (cfr. issue of renewable energies, plastics and bio-degradables).

We wish the partnership, therefore, great success. We pray for the Region of North Rhine-Westphalia: its administration and its people. We pray for the Federal Republic of Germany; and we pray for Ghana. May God grant success to the work of our hands!

Thank you all!

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