YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon – Cameroon is “desperately in need of the best of Catholic education today” due to a collapse of morals in schools and society, according the Secretary General of the country’s bishops conference.

Monsignor Paul Nyaga was speaking Thursday at the start of a two-day event that brought together Catholic school Principals and Catholic Education Secretaries to share experiences on how best to dispense knowledge in Catholic schools in ways that would resolve the country’s many challenges.

Reports of students organizing sex parties, of sometimes deadly violence in schools, corruption and the mismanagement of public resources were highlighted as some of the challenges Cameroon must overcome, and the moral standards extolled by Catholic education could be critical in reversing those tendencies.

“Well, there is a reason to worry,” Nyaga said.

“Our students adopt attitudes that have nothing to do with the education that we promote,” he told Crux.

The priest expressed concern that students are part of the reason for the rise in cybercrime in Cameroon which in 2021 cost the country nearly $20 million.

He complained that instead of using technology to better their lives and their communities, the youths employ it to commit fraud, identity theft, phishing, banking card skimming, data breaches, scamming, and a broad range of other illegal acts.

The priest further condemned violence in schools and the complete collapse of morals.

“What about the decline in moral values? In our institutions, many young people are engaging in orgies, with enthusiasm,” he said.

The most recent of such orgies took place at College Adventiste d’Odza – an Adventist school in the capital Yaoundé where 11 students were expelled for engaging in sex with a 16-year female student.

In 2019, several incidents of students attacking teachers were reported, including one in which a teenage student fatally stabbed his teacher in the capital.

Nyaga also spoke about the crucial need for transparency in governance and the management of state resources, and condemned the filth that has become the stock in trade for the country’s cities. In addition, he expressed worry about the worsening security problems besetting certain regions of the country.

“How can we not think of the North-West and the South-West, where a separatist crisis has been raging for eight years now, the North where Boko Haram continues to wreak havoc, without forgetting the East, where from time to time we experience incursions of rebels from the neighboring Central African Republic?” Nyaga asked.

“These issues, among many others, are only a small part of the many challenges that our nation and our society face. Our concern lies in the prospects for a present and future resolution of these same challenges,” he said.

The priest said that in the face of all these challenges, Catholic education should become a valued asset in the effort to resolve them.

“In Africa and in our country Cameroon in particular, society is even more desperately in need of the best of Catholic education today,” Nyaga told Crux.

“Education is a fundamental pillar of our Church and our society. It is not limited to the transmission of knowledge, but also aims to form responsible, enlightened citizens committed to their faith,” he explained.

During his speech, he gave the bishops gratitude to the school principals who work daily and nightly “to guide our young people towards a better future.”

“You have the power to inspire and guide our young people towards a future full of promise,” Nyaga told the school principals.

“The Christian values that make up this educational mission are more than ever essential in our society, in constant mutation and evolution,” he said.

“We are all aware that this youth that you are educating today, these children whom God has entrusted to you, constitute the future of tomorrow. What they debate in class today will be what they will apply tomorrow on the public scene. This is why meetings like this, in which you come together to discuss common strategies that can be put in place by stakeholders of Catholic education in view of helping all of us realize the objective of our mission, are of invaluable importance,” the priest said.

He called on the school principals to “wake up and find the strength of discipline to show them (the students) the path to follow.”

The National Catholic Education Secretary, Father Aurelien Mbea further highlighted the need to protect minors and vulnerable people in Catholic institutions to ensure “a safe environment for all learners and all staff in our different institutions.”

“We hope that during this Annual General Assembly of Principals, there will be more of these actors who take on their mission to be able to form responsible citizens capable of transforming the world and above all to be imbued by the values of the Gospel,” he said.

Both priests called for the implementation of synodal values in Catholic institutions.