A pastoral issue that has come up again here at Holy Family Parish in Caldwell, a suburb of Monrovia, is witchcraft. Yesterday a person told me that she was depressed and felt rejected because several members of her immediate family have told people she is a witch.

Previously an old man was partially abandoned by his family for this same reason. He needed a lot of help to feed himself and to move around, but he never received it because he was a witch.  Sadly he died of starvation.

At first blush a westerner like myself doesn’t put much stock in the idea of sorcery or witchcraft. But that is just me. Here most people believe there are some witches but the educated ones don’t think there are as many as other people seem to believe.

Sudden illness , what some insurers in Canada call “acts of God”, or other unexpected and unprovided for calamities may originate from an enemy who has retained the services of a witch to harm someone. Hence, people here think that one must be careful about witches.

The Second Synod on Africa took up this issue and others like it, without coming to any useful pastoral advice.

My own thought is that it is a sinful structure that some families use to avoid their responsibilities with respect to a needy or elderly family member.