You are here: HomeNews2007 01 24Article 117829

General News of Wednesday, 24 January 2007

Source: David Amponsah Boakye

Pastor Steals German Visa & Ticket

CHRISTIANITY, though has dominated the southern part of Africa for the reason that humanity will copy the life that Jesus Christ led in the Middle East. As a result of the hard economic conditions in Africa and for that matter in the cities pastoral care or priesthood has become one of the lucrative professions for money for people who can handle the bible verses in daily movements.

This perhaps has portrayed a wrong impression about Christianity and church services in Ghana.

A pastor in his late 20s Stephen Acquah of Love Harvest Church at Kokrobitey in the Greater Accra region was last week arrested for his alleged involvement in a stolen visa case and a return ticket belonging to a prophetess, Elizabeth Kerber.

Prophetess Elizabeth Kerber a Ghanaian resident in Germany and the owner of the Sabbath Reform Church also at Kokrobitey lost all her traveling documents after paying a short visit to her home country here in Ghana.

The mystery about the missing documents raised a lot of suspicion among her household. Prophetess Kerber, after realizing that she could not trace the passport and her ticket, reported the missing documents to the German Embassy where another visa was reprocessed for her.

A few days after the Odorkor Police officers had come into the case, a 14 year old boy (name withheld) confessed to the woman and the police officers that he took the documents from her bag but he did so under the persuasion of the pastor of Love harvest Church.

According to the boy he took the passport when the woman was going to th bathroom to wash. He said Stephen Acquah had told him earlier to take that passport for him for no apparent reason.

According to the boy he took the passport and the ticket with an additional ¢200,000. He kept the money whilst handing the documents to the pastor. The boy went back to the prophetess to confess and returned the money apart from ¢50,000 Even though the pastor will stand trial very soon he denied any knowledge about the stolen visa, adding that the prophetess had not even traveled to any place before so she might not have any traveling documents. He said his fellowship is growing bigger than the prophetess and the allegation is just an attempt to disgrace him.

He said that the 14 year old boy is his friend but he never sent him to go and take that prophetess passport.

The young religious leader said to the police that he had been prejudiced because of his large congregation.

Now getting large numbers of people in one church is the major concern of some religious leaders but salvation is thrown to dogs. The pastor said the boy was forced to confess, however he only victimized him to get his way but the boy still insisted he gave the documents to the pastor.