Cardinal Robert Sarah has warned that priests who fail in their duty to oppose the breakdown of morality in modern society, particularly abortion and anti-family policies, will receive the condemnation of God.

The African cardinal is president of the Pontifical Council “Cor Unum” and is overseeing a radical restructuring of the Catholic Church’s international development aid programs. These have been criticized for a secular mentality that ignores the spiritual needs of recipients, often promoting values that are opposed to Catholicism, including the legalization of abortion and homosexual marriage.

“In a sermon delivered to seminarians of the Community of St. Martin, whom he was about to ordain to the priesthood and diaconate,” reports journalist Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, “the Cardinal admonished his listeners, ‘If we have fear of proclaiming the truth of the Gospel, if we are ashamed of denouncing the grave deviations in the area of morality, if we accommodate ourselves to this world of moral laxity and religious and ethical relativism, if we are afraid to energetically denounce the abominable laws regarding the new global ethos, regarding marriage, the family in all of its forms, abortion, laws in total opposition to the laws of nature and of God, and that the western nations and cultures are promoting and imposing thanks to the mass media and their economic power, then the prophetic words of Ezechiel will fall on us as a grave divine reproach.”

Sarah quoted the prophesy of Ezekiel found in chapter 34:2-4: “‘Son of man, prophesy against the pastors of Israel to pastor themselves.  Should not the pastors feed the flock? You have been fed with milk, you have dressed yourselves with wool.  You have not strengthened the weak lambs, cared for those who were sick, healed those who were injured.  You have not restored those who have strayed, searched for those who were lost.  But you have governed them with violence and hardness.’ (Ez. 34: 2-4)”

The Cardinal is known for his blunt statements. On September 1, 2010, he criticised Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s call for Islam to become the religion of all of Europe, labeling it disrespectful to the Pope and Catholic Italy.

Archbishop Sarah said that “To speak of the European continent converting to Islam makes no sense because it is the people alone who decide consciously to be Christian, Muslim or to follow other religions.”