Vatican urges candidates to keep their promises
THE Vatican Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Archbishop Marek Zalewski, has appealed to all aspiring presidential candidates in the July 30 harmonised elections to be honest, responsible and stick to their electoral promises.
Archbishop Zalewski is a prelate of the Roman Catholic Church who serves as the titular Archbishop of Africa and is also the Apostolic Nuncio to Singapore and Non-Residential Pontifical Representative for Vietnam since May 21.
The Archbishop yesterday paid a courtesy call on Vice President General Constantino Chiwenga (Retired) at his Defence House offices in Harare.
In an interview after the meeting, Archbishop Zalewski said the Vatican was not directly involved in the politics of any country.
“The Vatican is a small state. We follow all the countries in the world, although we are not involved directly in politics of any country. Because you (journalists) say Vatican, we are supposed to say the Holy See, because the Holy See is the centre of government of the Church and the Holy Father, the Pope is the Supreme leader of the Church.
“The Vatican State, the temporal state is very small, the smallest in the world but our government, when we speak about the government of the Church, we speak of the Holy See. The view is that in Zimbabwe, we have great historical chance to improve our country because the upcoming elections, will be an expression of freedom and development for the country.
“This is the reason why we the Church, appeal to the political parties’ presidential candidates to be honest, responsible and to keep to their electoral promises,” he said.
“I am very grateful to Honourable Chiwenga, Vice President, for receiving me. We had a very long and friendly conversation. It was a very fruitful meeting. We touched on different issues, among them, the most important being the upcoming elections in Zimbabwe. He has reiterated that the elections will be very free, harmonised, with many observers coming from different countries.