Ghana’s leading prelate reminds president of promise to sign family-values legislation
April 11, 2026
The president of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference issued a statement emphasizing the importance of the national debate over Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill after the nation’s president, John Mahama, said that the legislation is “not the most important issue we face as a nation,” and after the nation’s Minister of Government Communications described the debate as a “waste of time.”
“Even if intended to prioritize urgent socio-economic concerns, such descriptions risk conveying that certain moral questions may be set aside as inconsequential,” Bishop Matthew Kwasi Gyamfi of Sunyani said in his April 10 statement. “Yet no question that touches the structure of human identity, family life, and social continuity can be trivial. Nations do not live by bread alone. They are sustained also by the invisible architecture of values.”
“We respectfully recall the President’s earlier public assurance that he would assent to the Bill should it be duly passed in accordance with constitutional procedures,” Bishop Gyamfi continued. “Democratic integrity rests, in part, on the fidelity of leaders to their publicly stated commitments.”
“At the same time, we recognize that aspects of the Bill have generated legitimate concern,” he added. “These concerns deserve careful legislative scrutiny and, where necessary, refinement. The law, in its final form, must reflect both the moral convictions of the Ghanaian people and the constitutional commitment to human dignity and fundamental rights.”
The prelate explained:
The Catholic Church reaffirms two principles which must always be held together, like the two lungs by which a just society breathes.
First, the inviolable dignity of every human person. No individual, regardless of sexual orientation or identity, may be subjected to violence, hatred, or unjust discrimination. Such acts are moral failures and social wounds. We condemn them without reservation.
Second, the legitimate responsibility of society to uphold and protect the institution of the family, founded upon the union of a man and a woman. This is not an act of exclusion but a recognition of a unique anthropological and social reality. To affirm dignity does not require the redefinition of marriage.
To defend marriage does not require hostility. Where either principle is isolated, distortion follows.
Ghana’s Catholics bishops and Anglican bishops support the legislation. Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury, the former Anglican primate, described the legislation as “anti-LGBTQ+” and criticized the local Anglican hierarchy for supporting it.
Last month, Lincoln University in Pennsylvania withdrew a planned honorary degree for President Mahama after concerns were raised about his perceived support for the legislation. Ghana’s bishops then issued a statement of support for the president.
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