Catholic cardinal highlights technology’s role in transforming Africa’s resources

ABUJA, Nigeria — Technology can help humanity transform the resources provided by God into practical benefits for people and communities across the African continent, the chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Rome said.

In an interview with ACI Africa, the sister service of EWTN News in Africa, on Sept. 3 during the launch of a 1.5-megawatt solar project that Earth Our Common Home (ECHo) is providing for Veritas University, Abuja , Cardinal Peter Turkson said ECHo’s mission is to provide clean energy for Catholic Churches and their institutions across Africa because of the importance of energy to man.

“There’s hardly anything that happens in this world without energy. Hardly anything. The solar energy initiative at the Catholic university demonstrates how human ingenuity can harness God’s creation to meet concrete needs while promoting integral human development,” Turkson said.

The Ghanaian-born cardinal said the Church should recognize the natural resources available in creation as gifts from God and use appropriate technology to transform them for the benefit of humanity.

“We need energy for everything that we do. So far, we’ve tried to produce that energy…