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Too much anger, drugs, guns—RC Archbishop

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There is a lot of anger in the country coupled with too many drugs and guns being easily available.

These were among the concerns of Roman Catholic Archbishop, Joseph Harris, amid calls by Anglican Bishop Rev Claude Berkley and Rev Daniel Teelucksingh, of the Presbyterian Church, that the family unit must be restored in light of all the social ills and spiralling murder rate sweeping the society.

“One murder is bad enough and 400 plus murders is awful. We can’t and should not be living that way,” Harris appealed yesterday.

He said it appeared that T&T was “walking in darkness” and was yet to see the light of Jesus Christ as violence seemed to be the order of the day.

“The reading is that people who walk in darkness have seen a great light. We appear to be walking in darkness but the light is the light of Jesus the Christ. We have tried all kinds of ‘isms’...communism and socialism and capitalism and none of it is helping us as a way of life.

“We have to move away from the ‘isms’ and try Christianity,” Harris urged.

He said the values of Christianity also included the same values of Hinduism, Islam and other religions, which were so urgently needed to restore peace to the land.

“We have to get back to those values which Jesus Christ came to teach us,” Harris said.

On the issue of encouraging people to return to their respective places of worship and to pray fervently he said religious leaders also needed to do a better job to ensure this, adding, “We are not doing it well enough.”

He said many still did not understand the reason for the Christmas holiday but if the values of Jesus were internalised and practised the country would be better off.

On whether the Catholic Church would be celebrating midnight mass, especially at the Port-of-Spain Cathedral he said this was never done as mass was usually around nine or ten at night.

“For a long time Catholic Churches have been doing that. I think there is only one Catholic Church in the north which had midnight mass,” Harris said.

On whether all Catholic Churches should celebrate midnight mass Harris said, “Times and circumstances had changed.” He added that he believed it was due to the crime that this was stopped.

While delivering the sermon at the Christmas Eve vigil, Holy Trinity Cathedral, Abercromby Street, Port-of-Spain, on Saturday night Berkley had lamented the many social ills including the runaway murder rate, contracting economy, domestic violence and child abuse.

Teelucksingh, a former Independent senator, had compared the war zone of Aleppo, Syria and the “vicious” truck attack on a Christmas village in Berlin, Germany to the “killing fields” of T&T where the murder rate has already surpassed that of 2015 and where families of missing loved ones were grieving by themselves.

“Our notorious killing fields in Trinidad and Tobago is as vicious and as deadly as last week’s (Christmas) market (truck) bombing in Berlin,” Teelucksingh had said, and noted that if international news agencies such as CNN and the BBC were to cover Trinidad and Tobago, “we would make more news than Aleppo and Berlin. If they were here, we would be making the world news just as any war torn country in the Middle East or any country in Europe that is terrorised.


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