The dispute between President Abdoulaye Wade and Senegal’s small but influential Catholic community is the latest twist in a growing controversy over Wade’s plan for a huge monument overlooking Dakar that depicts the “African renaissance”.
Imams this month attacked the statue of a giant family group as un-Islamic for presenting the human form as an object of worship — a criticism Wade sought to deflect this week by arguing that Christians prayed to a “man called Jesus Christ”.
“We were shaken and humiliated by the comparison which the head of state made between the monument to African renaissance and the representations found in our churches,” Theodore Adrien Sarr told a congregation in the cathedral.
“It is scandalous and unacceptable that the divinity of Jesus is jeered and questioned by the highest authority of state,” he added.
Witnesses said security forces moved in quickly to break up an attempt by several hundred Christians to protest in the street outside the cathedral, a short walk from Wade’s presidential palace in central Dakar.
