By Olivia Obijiaku
The Vice Rector of St Joseph Minor Seminary Zaria, Rev Fr. Benedict Nkom celebrated the Mass for the 2025 Lenten Campaign Flag Off at Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Sunday, March 9, 2025. Explaining the need for the exercise, the priest disclosed that through the JDPC, the diocese reaches out to needy individuals and communities, irrespective of their faith.
He acknowledged the needy ones within the parish, but defended that the proceeds of the day’s flag off are meant for the very less privileged in remote places within the diocese, as identified by JDPC.
“The third arm of Lent is almsgiving.” The clergyman refreshed. “Any time the Lenten Season comes around, there are certain projects that JDPC of our diocese carries out. Some of those projects include but not restricted to drilling of boreholes in communities where there is no good drinking water; fighting cases of oppression, especially for inmates who have been wrongly detained and assisting the poor.”
“We usually get money from each and every one of us. The little that we give enables somebody somewhere to smile. So during this Lenten Season, the JDPC wants to put smiles on people’s faces – whether Christians of Muslims. So, this money is not for Christians alone. When we go to communities to evangelize and do this work, we look for everybody, irrespective of religion because we recognize our common humanity. Food and hunger do not know religion.”
Fr. Nkom pointed to the eight beatitudes as the template for the judgment day, clarifying that “God is going to ask questions of humanity, ‘when I was hungry, you gave me to eat.”
