Monthly Archives: June 2023

Olembé Stadium: Italian Construction Company files claim

24, June 2023

Olembé Stadium: Italian Construction Company files claim 0

The building of the ill-fated Olembé Stadium is the source of a new investment arbitration claim.

Italian construction company Piccini Group has made a claim against the government of Cameroon in a dispute that appears to relate to the troubled construction of the Olembé football stadium in Yaoundé.

The stadium was built between 2018 and 2021 for the hosting of the 2022 Africa Cup of Nations football tournament, when it was the site of a tragic crowd crush which killed eight people.

Perugia-headquartered Piccini was the construction contractor until 2020, when the government withdrew the project from the Italian company and handed it to Canadian company Magil. Earlier this year, Magil warned of non-payment by the Ministry of Sport and Physical Education and threatened withdrawal and legal action if the matter persisted, while reiterating its hope that it could complete the second stage of the project – involving the construction of facilities surrounding the stadium.

The case was filed on 8 June at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), the World Bank’s investor-state dispute settlement body, under the auspices of the 1999 Italy-Cameroon bilateral investment treaty, against the Cameroonian President Paul Biya, Prime Minister Joseph Ngute, the minister of state and ministers for external relations, justice, sports and public projects.

The Italian company has enlisted Withers to represent it. The London-headquartered law firm declined to comment, while Piccini has not responded to an enquiry, but media reports from Cameroon suggest the dispute relates to the stadium and the ICSID filing refers to a “construction project”.

The Cameroonian government has also been contacted for comment. In 2021, Piccini was reported to have taken Cameroon to the ICC International Court of Arbitration, although the status of that case is currently unclear.

Source: African Law and Business

Titanic sub crew: Who were the five people on board the vessel

23, June 2023

Titanic sub crew: Who were the five people on board the vessel 0

The submersible that went missing during a tourist expedition to the Titanic imploded near the wreckage, killing all five people on board, the US Coast Guard said Thursday, bringing a grim end to a massive international search for the vessel.

Among those on board the vessel was the tour operator’s boss, a French submarine operator known as “Mr Titanic”, a British aviation tycoon and a wealthy Pakistani businessman and his son.

Stockton Rush

Stockton Rush was the chief executive of OceanGate Expeditions, a company based in Washington state which operates the tourist dives and was founded in 2009.

According to his company website, Rush began his career in 1981 as the youngest jet transport rated pilot in the world, aged 19.

In 1984, Rush became a flight test engineer on the F-15 fighter jet program for the McDonnell Douglas company.

But over the last two decades, he threw himself into several ocean-related tech ventures including Seattle’s BlueView Technologies, which makes small, high-frequency sonar systems.

After a long period when trips were postponed after Rush failed to get the proper permits for the project’s support vessel, OceanGate Expeditions started taking paying customers to the Titanic’s wreck in 2021.

Paul-Henri Nargeolet

Nicknamed “Mr Titanic”, French submarine operator Paul-Henri Nargeolet was one of the vessel’s crew.

The 77-year-old, who served in the French navy for 25 years, has dived all over the world and spoken openly about the risks of his exploits in the most inaccessible waters of the world’s oceans.

Connecticut-based Nargeolet had already undertaken more than 30 dives to explore the Titanic and had supervised the recovery of around 5,500 objects, including a fragment weighing 20 tonnes that is displayed in Los Angeles.

His research produced a 2022 book where he questioned the findings of British and American enquiries into the 1912 disaster, arguing that five smaller holes were to blame rather than a 100-metre gash that followed Titanic’s collision with an iceberg.

Hamish Harding

Harding, 58, was a British aviation tycoon with three Guinness World Records and had a history of thrill-seeking adventures.

A year ago, he became a space tourist through Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin company.

He founded Action Aviation, a company that buys and sells aircraft with offices in Dubai and London’s Stansted airport, with UK media reporting that the UAE-based businessman is a billionaire.

He was based in the Indian city of Bengaluru for five years, as managing director of a logistics company, before establishing Action Aviation in 2004.

His Guinness records are for longest duration and distance traversed at full ocean depth by a crewed vessel, and the fastest circumnavigation via both poles by plane.                 

Shahzada and Suleman Dawood                

Prominent Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, was the vice chairman of Karachi-headquartered conglomerate Engro.

His son Suleman, 19, was a university student, and both had British citizenship.

A statement by the family-run holding group Dawood Hercules described Shahzada as a “loving father” to two children with a keen interest in “photography, especially wildlife photography, and exploring different natural habitats”.

Engro had an array of investments in energy, agriculture, petrochemicals and telecommunications. At the end of 2022, the firm announced revenue of 350 billion rupees ($1.2 billion).

Shahzada’s father Hussain Dawood is regularly listed among Pakistan’s richest men by the domestic press.

Shahzada’s profile on Engro’s website said he also serves as a trustee on the board of The Dawood Foundation – a high-profile family education charity founded in 1960.

He was educated in the United States and Britain, the profile said.

Source: AFP

Titan craft suffered a catastrophic implosion, killing all five aboard

23, June 2023

Titan craft suffered a catastrophic implosion, killing all five aboard 0

A U.S. Navy acoustic system detected an ‘anomaly’ Sunday that was likely the Titan’s fatal implosion, according to a senior military official.

The Navy went back and analyzed its acoustic data after the Titan submersible was reported missing Sunday. Coast Guard officials on Thursday announced that the craft suffered a catastrophic implosion, killing all five aboard.

That anomaly was “consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the TITAN submersible was operating when communications were lost,” according to the senior Navy official.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive acoustic detection system.

The Navy passed on the information to the Coast Guard, which continued its search.

The Wall Street Journal on Thursday first reported the Navy’s involvement.

A submersible carrying five people to the Titanic imploded near the site of the shipwreck and killed everyone on board, authorities said Thursday, bringing a tragic end to a saga that included an urgent around-the-clock search and a worldwide vigil for the missing vessel.

Coast Guard officials said during a news conference that they’ve notified the families of the crew of the Titan, which had been missing since Sunday.

The sliver of hope that remained for finding the five men alive was wiped away early Thursday, when the submersible’s 96-hour supply of oxygen was expected to run out and the Coast Guard announced that debris had been found roughly 1,600 feet (488 meters) from the Titanic in North Atlantic waters.

“This was a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” said Rear Adm. John Mauger, of the First Coast Guard District.

OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owned and operated the submersible, said in a statement that all five people in the vessel, including CEO and pilot Stockton Rush, “have sadly been lost.”

The others on board were: two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood; British adventurer Hamish Harding; and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” OceanGate said in a statement. “We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”

OceanGate has been chronicling the Titanic’s decay and the underwater ecosystem around it via yearly voyages since 2021.

Rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to the site of the disappearance.

Authorities were hoping underwater sounds detected Tuesday and Wednesday might help narrow their search, whose coverage area had been expanded to thousands of miles — twice the size of Connecticut and in waters 2 1/2 miles (4 kilometers) deep.

But the Coast Guard indicated Thursday that the sounds were likely generated by something other than the Titan.

“There doesn’t appear to be any connection between the noises and the location (of the debris) on the seafloor,” Mauger said.

Mauger said it was too soon to say whether the implosion happened at the time of the submersible’s last communication on Sunday. But it was not detected by sonar buoys used by search crews, he said, which suggests it happened before they arrived several days ago.

“We had listening devices in the water throughout and did not hear any signs of catastrophic failure from those,” he said.

The Coast Guard will continue searching near the Titanic for more clues about what happened to the Titan. Efforts to recover the submersible and the remains of the five men who died will also continue, Mauger said.

The White House thanked the U.S. Coast Guard, along with Canadian, British and French partners who helped in the search and rescue efforts.

“Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives on the Titan. They have been through a harrowing ordeal over the past few days, and we are keeping them in our thoughts and prayers,” the statement said.

The Titan launched at 6 a.m. Sunday and was reported overdue Sunday afternoon about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland, as it was on its way to where the Titanic sank more than a century ago. By Thursday, when the oxygen supply was expected to run out, there was little hope of finding the crew alive.

Broadcasters around the world started newscasts at the critical hour Thursday with news of the submersible. The Saudi-owned satellite channel Al Arabiya showed a clock on air counting down to their estimate of when the air could potentially run out.

‘Technology can fail’

At least 46 people successfully traveled on OceanGate’s submersible to the Titanic wreck site in 2021 and 2022, according to letters the company filed with a U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, that oversees matters involving the Titanic shipwreck. But questions about the submersible’s safety were raised by former passengers.

One of the company’s first customers likened a dive he made to the site two years ago to a suicide mission.

“Imagine a metal tube a few meters long with a sheet of metal for a floor. You can’t stand. You can’t kneel. Everyone is sitting close to or on top of each other,” said Arthur Loibl, a retired businessman and adventurer from Germany. “You can’t be claustrophobic.”

During the 2 1/2-hour descent and ascent, the lights were turned off to conserve energy, he said, with the only illumination coming from a fluorescent glow stick.

The dive was repeatedly delayed to fix a problem with the battery and the balancing weights. In total, the voyage took 10 1/2 hours.

The submersible had seven backup systems to return to the surface, including sandbags and lead pipes that drop off and an inflatable balloon.

Nicolai Roterman, a deep-sea ecologist and lecturer in marine biology at the University of Portsmouth, England, said the disappearance of the Titan highlights the dangers and unknowns of deep-sea tourism.

“Even the most reliable technology can fail, and therefore accidents will happen. With the growth in deep-sea tourism, we must expect more incidents like this.”

Source: AP

Biya is in Paris

22, June 2023

Biya is in Paris 0

Paul Biya is in the French capital, Paris this Thursday 22 June 2023 to attend the opening ceremony of the summit for new global financial pact at the Palais Brongniart in Paris. The 90-year-old Cameroonian dictator was received at the summit venue by Madam Catherine Colonna, the French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed all participants and praised their determination to fight against poverty and to safe planet earth. Macron highlighted the efforts of youths and civil society organisations in the preparation and orientation of the summit.

For his part, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, said the global financial architecture is outdated, dysfunctional and unjust. He urged participants at the summit for a new global financial pact to take action to meet the urgent needs of developing countries.

Work at the summit is divided into six workshops such as rethinking the multilateral banking model to meet new challenges, adopting a new method/partnerships for green growth or showing solidarity to break free from the debt trap, etc. The conclusions will be presented at the closing session of the summit tomorrow.

Mr. BIYA and his wife Chantal will later this evening attend a working dinner offered by French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace.

Culled from the PRC

Orphan Kids Help Foundation to fund annual scholarships to 100 secondary school students

22, June 2023

Orphan Kids Help Foundation to fund annual scholarships to 100 secondary school students 0

As part of its 10000 Kids Education Project, the board of directors of the Orphan Kids Help Foundation has announced plans to provide annual scholarships to poor and needy secondary school students in the Republic of Cameroon.

Cameroon Concord News understands the scholarships will pay for 100 school students to study science, technology and global health.

A statement released by the Orphan Kids Help Foundation revealed that the students will be given enough money to cover the costs of tuition and accommodation throughout the period of their studies.

The money will come from the Orphan Kids Help Foundation that has for the past thirteen years provided resources to orphanages in Africa enabling children to sustain their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.

The scholarships are expected to be formally announced in Cameroon next week by Dr. Ngasu Betek Etengeneng– a senior Lecturer at the University of Douala. Dr. Ngasu has also been tasked to actively recruit qualified students and to make sure that all candidates must be orphans or poor and needy individuals. In addition, the students must be of good moral and academic standing and above all, must be of Cameroonian nationality.

Orphan Kids Help Foundation is known in Cameroon and beyond as one of the philanthropic foundations based in the United States of America supporting orphans all over Africa. Some of the orphanages that have benefitted from the Orphan Kids Help Foundation in Africa include Love kids orphanage (Ghana), Little Saints Orphanage (Nigeria), Footprints Orphanage (Kenya), Mission of Hope Orphanage (Uganda), Hoptec Orphanage (Cameroon), Wellington Orphanage (Sierra Leone), Rainbow Orphanage (Cameroon), Amity Social Assistance Family (Cameroon)  and St. Arnile Orphanage in Cameroon.

The donation to fund the scholarships in Cameroon will be the largest given by Orphan Kids Help Foundation for any single cause.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with files from our US Bureau         

French Cameroun: World Bank Approves $330M for Rehabilitation of the Maroua-Kousseri Road

22, June 2023

French Cameroun: World Bank Approves $330M for Rehabilitation of the Maroua-Kousseri Road 0

The World Bank approved financing of $330 million (CFA198.2 billion) for the rehabilitation of the Maroua-Kousseri road in Cameroon’s Far North region. “More than 920,000 people, including refugees and internally displaced persons, will benefit from the restoration of the Mora-Kousseri section (205 kilometers) on national road 1 (RN1), which will improve access to schools, health facilities, and markets,” said the Bretton Woods institution in an official statement.

The financing includes a credit of $280 million (CFA168.2 billion) from the International Development Association (IDA), World Bank’s concessional window, and a grant of $50 million (CFA30 billion) from the IDA window for host communities and refugees (WHR).

This is the second time the World Bank is funding the road’s rehabilitation. The first time, the works were hindered by structural delays and Boko Haram’s incursions in the Far North.

Military Engineering

Shortly after launching, the first attempt to repair the road was halted on May 16, 2014, after the Nigerian group of terrorists attacked the base life of Sinohydro, the then-contractor of the project. At the time, 10 of the Chinese firm’s staff members were kidnapped. Yaoundé, however, was able to have them released after tough negotiations.

Subsequently, Sinohydro promised on multiple occasions to return to the project but gave up. The government then trusted the project to the army, with the World Bank’s approval. Resumed in March 2018, the project was scheduled to be completed within 24 months but was delayed until early 2020. To speed up things, the Military Engineering team hired three subcontractors who especially worked on the 175 km long Mora-Dabanga-Kousseri section of the road.

Still, the project was not completed on the due date set by the World Bank–June 30, 2020. It was the date by which the Bank had set to close the line of credit it opened for the previous decade.

Source: Business in Cameroon

Ocean gate: More ships join search for missing Titanic sub amid fears of dwindling oxygen supply

22, June 2023

Ocean gate: More ships join search for missing Titanic sub amid fears of dwindling oxygen supply 0

The race against time to find a submersible that disappeared on its way to the Titanic wreckage site entered a new phase of desperation on Thursday morning as the final hours of oxygen possibly left on board the tiny vessel ticked off the clock.

Rescuers have rushed more ships and vessels to the site of the disappearance, hoping underwater sounds they detected for a second straight day might help narrow their search in the urgent, international mission. But the crew had only a four-day oxygen supply when the vessel, called the Titan, set off around 6 a.m. Sunday.

Even those who expressed optimism warned that many obstacles remain: from pinpointing the vessel’s location, to reaching it with rescue equipment, to bringing it to the surface — assuming it’s still intact. And all that has to happen before the passengers’ oxygen supply runs out.

The full area being searched was twice the size of Connecticut in waters as deep as 13,200 feet (4,020 meters). Captain Jamie Frederick of the First Coast Guard District said authorities were still holding out hope of saving the five passengers onboard.

“This is a search and rescue mission, 100%,” he said Wednesday.

The area of the North Atlantic where the Titan vanished Sunday is also prone to fog and stormy conditions, making it an extremely challenging environment to conduct a search-and-rescue mission, said Donald Murphy, an oceanographer who served as chief scientist of the Coast Guard’s International Ice Patrol.

Meanwhile, newly uncovered allegations suggest there had been significant warnings made about vessel safety during the submersible’s development.

Frederick said while the sounds that have been detected offered a chance to narrow the search, their exact location and source hadn’t yet been determined.

“We don’t know what they are, to be frank,” he said.

Retired Navy Capt. Carl Hartsfield, now the director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Systems Laboratory, said the sounds have been described as “banging noises,” but he warned that search crews “have to put the whole picture together in context and they have to eliminate potential manmade sources other than the Titan.”

The report was encouraging to some experts because submarine crews unable to communicate with the surface are taught to bang on their submersible’s hull to be detected by sonar.

Ninety-six hour oxygen supply

The U.S. Navy said in a statement Wednesday that it was sending a specialized salvage system that’s capable of hoisting “large, bulky and heavy undersea objects such as aircraft or small vessels.”

The Titan weighs 20,000 pounds (9,071 kilograms). The U.S. Navy’s Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System is designed to lift up to 60,000 pounds (27,216 kilograms), the Navy said on its website.

Lost aboard the vessel are pilot Stockton Rush, the CEO of the company leading the expedition. His passengers are a British adventurer, two members of a Pakistani business family and a Titanic expert. OceanGate Expeditions oversaw the mission.

Authorities reported the 22-foot (6.7-meter) carbon-fiber vessel overdue Sunday night, setting off the search in waters about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s.

Officials have said the vessel had a 96-hour oxygen supply, giving them a deadline of early Thursday morning to find and raise the Titan.

Frank Owen, a submarine search and rescue expert, said the estimated oxygen supply is a useful “target” for searchers, but is only based on a “nominal amount of consumption.” Owen said the diver on board the Titan would likely be advising passengers to “do anything to reduce your metabolic levels so that you can actually extend this.”

At least 46 people successfully traveled on OceanGate’s submersible to the Titanic wreck site in 2021 and 2022, according to letters the company filed with a U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, that oversees matters involving the Titanic shipwreck.  

One of the company’s first customers characterized a dive he made to the site two years ago as a “kamikaze operation.”

“Imagine a metal tube a few meters long with a sheet of metal for a floor. You can’t stand. You can’t kneel. Everyone is sitting close to or on top of each other,” said Arthur Loibl, a retired businessman and adventurer from Germany. “You can’t be claustrophobic.”

During the 2.5-hour descent and ascent, the lights were turned off to conserve energy, he said, with the only illumination coming from a fluorescent glow stick.

The dive was repeatedly delayed to fix a problem with the battery and the balancing weights. In total, the voyage took 10.5 hours.

‘Like being in a snow cave’

OceanGate has been criticized for the use of a simple commercially available video game controller to steer the Titan. But the company has said that many of the vessel’s parts are off-the-shelf because they have proved to be dependable.

“It’s meant for a 16-year-old to throw it around,” and is “super durable,” Rush told the CBC in an interview last year while he demonstrated by throwing the controller around the Titan’s tiny cabin. He said a couple of spares are kept on board “just in case.”

The submersible had seven backup systems to return to the surface, including sandbags and lead pipes that drop off and an inflatable balloon.

Jeff Karson, a professor emeritus of earth and environmental sciences at Syracuse University, said the temperature is just above freezing, and the vessel is too deep for human divers to get to it. The best chance to reach the submersible could be to use a remotely operated robot on a fiber optic cable, he said.

“I am sure it is horrible down there,” Karson said. “It is like being in a snow cave and hypothermia is a real danger.”

Documents show that OceanGate had been warned there might be catastrophic safety problems posed by the way the experimental vessel was developed.

David Lochridge, OceanGate’s director of marine operations, said in a 2018 lawsuit that the company’s testing and certification was insufficient and would “subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible.”

The company insisted that Lochridge was “not an engineer and was not hired or asked to perform engineering services on the Titan.” The firm also says the vessel under development was a prototype, not the now-missing Titan.

The Marine Technology Society, which describes itself as “a professional group of ocean engineers, technologists, policy-makers, and educators,” also expressed concern that year in a letter to Rush, OceanGate’s chief executive. The society said it was critical that the company submit its prototype to tests overseen by an expert third party before launching in order to safeguard passengers. The New York Times first reported on those documents.

The passengers lost on the Titan are British adventurer Hamish Harding; Pakistani nationals Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, whose eponymous firm invests across the country; and French explorer and Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet.

Retired Navy Vice Admiral Robert Murrett, who is now deputy director of the Institute for Security Policy and Law at Syracuse University, said the disappearance underscores the dangers associated with operating in deep water and the recreational exploration of the sea and space.

“I think some people believe that because modern technology is so good, that you can do things like this and not have accidents, but that’s just not the case,” he said.

Source: AP

Kondengui Ambazonia Revolt: Biya regime to be brought to its knees

22, June 2023

Kondengui Ambazonia Revolt: Biya regime to be brought to its knees 0

The exiled leader of the Ambazonia Interim Government has praised the sacrifices made by Southern Cameroons detainees in the Kondengui Maximum Security Prison in Yaoundé, saying French Cameroun detention centers is one area where La Republique du Cameroun will be brought to its knees.

Dabney Yerima made the remarks in a meeting with the Southern Cameroons war cabinet late last night in Holland. Yerima told Southern Cameroons leaders that the Ambazonia revolt took place deep within the Kondengui Central Prison and that the leader of the Ambazonian people, President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe was safe and sound at KPPY.

Vice President Dabney Yerima commended the strong sense of solidarity among all Southern Cameroons detainees and prisoners of conscience for their individual and collective struggle against French Cameroun occupation.

He emphasized that French Cameroun political and military institutions are crumbling at catastrophic rapidity and a new era including a bright future with complete victory is near.

Dabney Yerima also pointed to the noticeable changes in Ground Zero over the past couple of months, particularly increased in attacks against French Cameroun army soldiers and gendarmerie posts.

Vice President Dabney Yerima highlighted the importance of enhanced unity and coordination among all Southern Cameroons resistance groups and called on the Southern Cameroons diaspora to concentrate more on the issue of unity and coordination and tread this right path with strength.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Football: N’Golo Kante joins Benzema at Saudi football club Al-Ittihad

21, June 2023

Football: N’Golo Kante joins Benzema at Saudi football club Al-Ittihad 0

Saudi Arabian soccer champion Al-Ittihad has another high-profile French player to accompany Karim Benzema at the team next season.

N’Golo Kante completed his move on a three-year deal on Wednesday after leaving Chelsea, with Al-Ittihad welcoming the 32-year-old midfielder with a series of tweets containing the hashtag “WelcomeBox2Box” — referring to his hard-running style of play.

He will reportedly earn more than $100 million across the length of the deal at a club based in Jeddah and coached by former Tottenham and Wolverhampton manager Nuno Espirito Santo. It recently won the Saudi league ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo’s Al-Nassr.

Kante, who won the World Cup with France in 2018, the Champions League with Chelsea in 2021 and has been one of the best players in the Premier League in recent years as a back-to-back champion with Leicester and Chelsea, has struggled with injuries over the past two seasons.

That hasn’t put off Al-Ittihad from apparently spending big on Kante, a few weeks after bringing in Benzema after the expiry of the reigning world player of the year’s contract at Real Madrid.

“It is part of the club’s efforts to establish itself as a top choice for world-class players in the Saudi Professional League,” Al-Ittihad said.

The big names — albeit players nearing the end of their careers — are being enticed to the Saudi league, where spending is being fueled by a move by the kingdom’s sovereign wealth Public Investment Fund to take a majority ownership stake in four of the country’s top clubs, including Al-Ittihad and Al-Nassr. The move is part of a nationalization project that encourages public sector organizations to invest in sports, with soccer teams a priority under the initiative backed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Another of those four teams, Al-Hilal, tried to buy Lionel Messi but Argentina’s World Cup winner decided to join Inter Miami in the United States.

A slew of leading players are being linked with moves to Saudi Arabia in this European offseason, including Manchester City winger Riyad Mahrez, Chelsea goalkeeper Edouard Mendy and Wolverhampton midfielder Ruben Neves.

Source: AP

What difference does Jesus Christ make? (Part 2)

21, June 2023

What difference does Jesus Christ make? (Part 2) 0

In the first part of our reflection on the topic of what difference Jesus makes that we published this past Easter, we ended on the position that the Temptations constitute, at their innermost core, a theological debate between Satan and Jesus. The hectic nature of my schedule did not allow for the completion of this reflection until now. I apologize to my readers for this belatedness. Now, let us return to where we break off this past Easter on this topic, namely, the challenge for Jesus to prove his identity as the Son of God. It is likewise important to keep the overarching question in view, that is, Jesus’ identity in the light  of the difference that Jesus makes in today’s world. In effect, if Jesus is who he claims to be, if Jesus is authentic – if you are the Son of God – as Satan threw at him, then there must be a difference in the world with the coming of Jesus. Within the context of the Temptations, Jesus does not take the bait put forth by Satan. He refuses to turn stones into bread, or to fall from the lofty heights of the Temple pinnacle. The Cardinal Inquisitor has it right in The Grand Inquisitor when he laments before Jesus: You refused the offer of the Mighty Spirit because you wanted men and women to follow you out of freedom! In other words, succumbing to the Temptations would have been an easier and faster part for Jesus to accomplish his mission. But the fastest and easiest do not always translate into the truly enduring, beautiful and good.

To Ratzinger, the Temptations are not only Christological, that is, pertaining only to the person of Christ. They likewise have an inherent Ecclesiological character, in that the Church down the ages has often faced the challenge to prove itself, to prove its credibility. If you are the Church of Christ, then demonstrate it in a more convincing manner. If you are the Church of Christ, then why is there so much sin and evil in your members? Why couldn’t Christ make you as perfect as he Jesus is? And this temptation to prove one’s identity and authenticity can be very overwhelming even for the priest of today, with all the media hype. In my own life as a Christian and as a priest, I am learning, with every passing day, the wisdom in Jesus’ refusal to take the bait. I am learning that the most meaningful response to the challenge to prove one’s identity and authenticity is to create time for more prayer before God, the all-knowing One. In prayer, the priest and the Christian feels the Lord’s closeness and support, and if my own limited experience in the spiritual life is anything to go by, there is really no substitute for prayer in the life of a priest and a Christian.

Fr Maurice with Gerhard Cardinal Müller, Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Custodian of Ratzinger’s Theological Legacy (Meeting at Vatican City)

When one enters into an Ignatian contemplation of the Temptations of Jesus, one can discern, overtime, that the issue of the Temptations boils down to the question about the fulfillment of the human heart. What really satisfies the human heart? Wealth (bread), Power (Temple Pinnacle/the cities of the world)? I believe that to understand Jesus’ resistance to the seductive offers of Satan provides the definitive response to the central question of the difference that Jesus makes in our lives today. And a proper understanding of this question possesses a historical pedigree to it, namely, engaging Jesus’ identity and uniqueness from the living faith of Israel, specifically with the figure and mission of Moses.

With Moses at the helm, Israel left Egypt for the promised land. What shaped this journey in large measure was the sense of hope, for a promised land that would meet the aspirations and yearnings of Israel. The particular issues and demands met by manna and other nutritional and safety needs embodied the need for hope in an otherwise hopeless context. The question of difference Jesus makes appears in an antecedent format at this point: What difference does the God of Israel make, to the people of Israel? In a sense, the yearnings of Israel’s heart is captured in the request Moses makes to Yahweh: Show me your face. Some translations render  it as show me your glory (Exodus 33:18). God strikes a compromise with Moses that from the angle of a retrospective reading, lays the foundation for the difference that the coming of Christ makes in history. Moses will still have the privilege and joy of encountering, somewhat, the beatific vision while still on this side of human existence, that is, the Back of God, but no more, for the human being cannot see the face of God and live (Exodus 33:20). In the event of Moses, the light of faith (lumen fidei) and the light of glory (lumen gloriae) converge, a rarity, because the light of faith is meant to accompany us in this earthly life, while the light of glory is what enables us to see God in the next life. As I think further about this mysterious text of Exodus 33, this interpretation already much present especially in Eastern Theology occurs to me: the light of faith could correspond to the Back of God, and the light of glory, the Face of God, to the extent that only in followership/discipleship captured in the image of the back, would one eventually arrive at the longing that moves or drives the human heart, captured in the image of the face. From this incident of Moses, there emerged, in the consciousness of Israel’s faith and later on taken up in Christian mysticism, the theology of the Face of God as the fulfilment of the greatest longing of the human heart, as we see in the lives of the saints and Doctors of the Church.

Let’s remain a little bit more with the figure of Moses and the images of the Back and Face of God. In his The Life of Moses, St. Gregory of Nyssa offers a truly moving Christological  reading of this mystical event as narrated in the Book of Deuteronomy. Gregory asks:

What is his back which God promised to Moses when he asked to see him face-to-face? (…) But when the Lord who spoke to Moses came to fulfill his own law, he likewise gave a clear explanation to his disciples, laying bare the meaning of what had previously been said in a figure when he said, ‘if anyone wants to be a follower of mine.’ And to the one asking about eternal life he proposed the same thing, for he said, ‘Come, follow me’ (18:22). Now, he who follows sees the back. So, Moses, who eagerly seeks to behold God, is now taught how he can behold him: to follow God where ever he might lead is to behold God. His passing by signifies his guiding the one who follows, for someone who does not know the way cannot complete his journey safely in any other way than by following behind his guide. HE who leads, then, by his guidance shows the way to the one following. He who follows will not turn aside from the right way if he always keeps the back of his leader in view. (Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 106 & 110.

Some spiritual insights from this engagement between Moses and God:

Firstly, as Aquinas beautifully expresses it – and as many Christians likewise get a glimpse of it particularly during moments of prayer, – only God can satisfy the human heart – Nil Nisi Te Domine. Augustine had said it best centuries before Aquinas: You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until it rest in Thee.

Secondly, notwithstanding all the material blessings that come our way in this life, there remains that longing that nothing corporeal is capable of filling. There is a void, what the French philosopher Maurice Blondel trenchantly characterizes as the wedge between the willed will and the willing will, in his philosophy of action.

Thirdly, because this quest for God is in the DNA of the human being, we are somewhat impatient for the beatific vision, for what Aquinas calls the light of glory. Even in this life, which is guided by the light of faith, we want to have the fullness that the light of glory brings with it. And this is quite understandable, for who wants to live with half measures?

But even more, we cannot deny that our brokenness and sinfulness, what Blaise Pascal calls our wretchedness, is likewise a motivation for our desire for the fullness that comes with the light of glory, the Face of God. I love Dante’s DivineComedy precisely because sin is not presented in a despairing form, but as a starting point for the journey to the Face of God, as the soul moves from the Inferno through the Purgatorio and finally, Paradiso. Too often, Christians get chained in the melancholy of their sinful past and present, forgetting to realize that our sins, my own sins as Maurice, is really the raw material that God uses to place me on the journey towards Him.

And this is the context in which Jesus Christ enters the scene, making all the difference, as particularly captured in the dual dynamisms of Deuteronomy 18 and Matthew 17. (To be continued…)

By Maurice Agbaw-Ebai

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