The wife of the governor of Anambra State, Nonye Soludo has described the creation of Peter Cardinal Okpaleke at the 2022 Vatican Consistory as God’s miraculous way of responding to time.
Mrs. Soludo, in her congratulatory message to Cardinal Okpaleke, noted that events leading up to his current pastoral height were a demonstration of how God’s plan can never be undone by ephemeral circumstances.
Cardinal Okpaleke is the only Nigerian among the twenty bishops sworn in at the eighth Consistory of Pope Francis at the Saint Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, Rome.
The fifty-nine year-old is the fifth cardinal of the Nigerian descent, and is, alongside John Cardinal Onaiyekan, the only Nigerian cardinal under the age of eighty, therefore qualified to vote or be voted for as Popes at the next elective conclave.
In a congratulatory letter released in Awka, Mrs. Soludo, who attended the creation alongside her husband, Governor Chukwuma Soludo, said that Cardinal Okpaleke’s new call to faith and evangelism comes with greater expectations from both the Holy Church and humanity.
She asked the new Nigerian Cardinal not to see the current milestone as a personal victory over time, but as a divine obligation to serve God and humanity .
Mrs. Soludo, while reminding Cardinal Okpaleke that Nigeria and Anambra State in particular, are proud of him, urged him to use his latest religious rank to answer a greater call to stand up for peace, love, religious tolerance and human co-existence.
Peter Cardinal Okpaleke is from Amesi, Aguata Local Government Area, and is the pioneer Bishop of Ekwulobia Catholic Diocese.
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