15/02/2008 08:33 - (SA)
Libreville - Gabon's President Omar Bongo Ondimba plans to build a huge Roman Catholic basilica worth at least 50 million euros ($73m) overlooking the capital, church and other sources said on Thursday.
"The project isn't completely definitive," Libreville Archbishop Basile Mve Engome said, but the aim was to construct the new church, capable of holding 4 500 people, on the site of the Democracy City complex made for a 1977 summit of the Organisation of African Unity.
Czech firm Helika had won a building tender with its plan for a basilica crowned by a dove of peace and hands joined in prayer that would be 70 metres high.
The project would be financed by the Gabonese state with the help of the Swiss Export Bank, which specialised in funding foreign enterprises, the sources said.
"This is the project that most seduced the president," Engome explained. Between 40 and 45% of the central African country's 1.3 million people were Catholics.
Bongo, who came to power in 1967 and was the continent's longest serving ruler, converted to Islam in 1973.
The Helika plan was in competition with one by architect Pierre Fakhoury, who designed the basilica Ivory Coast's founding president, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, wanted in his home village, Yamoussoukro, today the west African country's capital.
That monument was consecrated by the late pope John Paul II.
One wonders if perhaps fighting malaria, HIV and other diseases, or even paving the frickin road, were not 'seductive' enough propositions.
1 comment:
OMG - a striking display of governance and leadership!
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