Bishops Urge World to Stop Arming Africa : Religion: Roman Catholics from that violence-racked continent seek international help in ending weapons sales from rich nations. They also plead for debt relief.

VATICAN CITY —  In a powerful appeal for international help, African bishops of the Roman Catholic Church on Friday urged the world’s rich nations to stop arming warring factions in Africa and to ease the debt burden on a continent scourged by violence and hunger.

The appeals came in the closing document of a monthlong congress of church leaders from Africa summoned by Pope John Paul II, a frequent observer at the bishops’ deliberations until felled last week by a broken leg.

The Pope is mending, and while he will miss Sunday’s closing ceremonies, he is bound to be cheered by both the tenor and content of conclusions reached by the 300 bishops from a region where Catholicism is growing quickly.

A 71-point “Message of the Synod” released here Friday ranges broadly among issues of principal concern to the African church.

It calls for greater efforts to blend Catholic teachings with African realities and for an expanded dialogue with traditional African religions and with Muslims. It urges a strengthening of the family, respect for the role of women, support for refugees, displaced people, the poor, sick and victims of AIDS.

Addressing African leaders, the bishops demand politicians “who wish to serve rather than be served . . . (who) hold in check the lust of political hegemony, both internal and external, which sow the seeds of division and hate which give rise to wars.”

The bishops applaud African military officers for their service but add bluntly, “We remind them, however, that they will have to answer before God for every act of violence against the lives of innocent people.”

The synod conclusion reasserts Catholic teaching on the celibacy of clergy and on the sanctity of life, attacking a U.N. conference in Cairo on population control that has also aroused papal ire.

The African bishops decry “a deliberate intention to impose, with strong financial backing, on the nations of the world as a whole the liberalization of abortion, the promotion of a lifestyle without moral reference and the destruction of the family as it was willed by God.”

“We all condemn this individualistic and permissive culture which liberalizes abortion and makes of the death of the child simply a matter for decision by the mother,” they say. “We condemn the enslavement of man to money, the new god, through which pressure is put on the poor nations to force them to choose options in Cairo which are contrary to life and morality.”

The bishops, who are asking the Vatican for greater authority to resolve local matters of Catholic practice, are equally assertive in their view of the responsibility of the world’s rich nations toward a continent where war abounds and poverty is endemic.

“It is imperative that there be a stop to arms sales to groups locked in conflict in Africa,” the bishops say, asking “people of goodwill in the Northern Hemisphere” to pressure their countries to get out of the arms business.

For the bishops, sub-Saharan Africa’s crushing debt--which exceeds one year’s output of goods and services from the region--is a millstone that undermines development and breeds instability.

“It is a matter of urgency to find a just solution to the problem of debt, which crushes the greater part of the peoples of the continent and which renders futile every effort at economic recovery,” the bishops say. “Together with the Holy Father and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, we ask for at least a substantial, if not a total, remission of the debt. We also simultaneously call for the formation of a more just international economic order.”

Closing a synod that is expected to strengthen the African church by promoting a more trans-African search for problem-solving, the bishops also demand international respect for their land and peoples, saying, “We ask our brothers and sisters of other continents to see to it that due respect is given to Africa and Africans, as well as to those of them who have immigrated to the Northern Hemisphere.”