The National Catholic Secretariat has created a new Department of Human Development (DHD) to help integrate the development efforts of the Catholic Church.

The establishment of the DHD formed part of the restructuring of the National Catholic Secretariat by the Catholic Bishops Conference.

It will serve as a development wing of the National Catholic Secretariat and would operate under Health, Education and Religious Education, Governance, Justice and Peace and Social Development Directorate.

The new Department will coordinate, facilitate and involve actively in capacity building of the Church’s constituent bodies for development.

At a media launch of the blue print of the DHD “Medium Term Programme Critical Pathways: 2012-2016”, Mr. Samuel Zan Akologo, Executive Secretary of the DHD, said the Programme would support the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference to be more efficient in its traditional services delivery and livelihood approaches to development.

That way, the Catholic Church would become an effective community to renew the temporal order through policy influence and change agenda.

The DHD would support good governance, protect and improve livelihoods of the poor and provide effective delivery of complementary social services.

Mr. Akologo mentioned youth self-employment and empowerment, emergency and crises response, promoting justice and peace, protecting the vulnerable and socially excluded and organizational effectiveness as other key areas defined for the programme.

The DHD would also play an advocacy role against bribery and corruption in Ghana and serve as a campaign poster for smooth political transition for Ghana’s 2012 elections, he said.

The Very Rev Fr Cornelius Naah Bayirinoba, Vicar General of the Catholic Diocese of Wa, said the Church respecting the true nature of man, aimed at satisfying him spiritually and materially in an integral way.

He said if the Church were to concentrate only on the spiritual needs of man she would have been failing woefully in her mission and that development was the promotion of the good of every man.

“In fact until peoples stomachs have been filled, their bodies clothed, their troubles listened to sympathetically, their tears shared, it is often useless and even disrespectful to try to fill and clothe their souls,” he said.**