Your Excellency, your attempt on 14 November 2025 to use the sacred pulpit to promote Paul Biya – a man whose 2025 “re-election” was achieved through massive electoral fraud – constitutes the gravest apostasy.
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An Open Letter to Archbishop José Avelino Bettencourt titled – Archbishop José Avelino Bettencourt: An Anti-Christ and a Devil in Cassock. Monday, 17 November 2025.
By Nchumbonga George Lekelefac, B.Phil. (Mexico); S.T.B. (Rome); J.C.L./M.C.L. (Ottawa); Doctorandus, University of Münster, Germany; International Advocate for the Oppressed, Voice of the Voiceless, Defender of Fundamental Human Rights, Canon Lawyer/Jurist, Friend to the Vulnerable, and Lover of No Oppressor/Tyrant
Motto: “Not merely to recount what has been, but to share in moulding what should be.” — Prof. Dr. Bernard Nsokika Fonlon, Editor of Cameroon Cultural Review, Abbia (1960–1980)
On 15 September 2024, His Eminence Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, clearly defined the role of an Apostolic Nuncio: “preaching peace and justice, especially among the leaders of Nations, many of whom are unfortunately unable to guarantee their citizens this serenity and security.”
His Excellency Archbishop José Avelino Bettencourt, Apostolic Nuncio to the Republic of Cameroon, Apostolic Nunciature B.P. 1963 Yaoundé, Cameroon
Your Excellency,
Subject: Archbishop José Avelino Bettencourt – An Anti-Christ and a Devil in Cassock
I write this open letter in the name of the suffering faithful of the Ecclesiastical Province of Bamenda, whose blood cries out from the ground and whose tears have not been wiped away by those who should be their shepherds.
1. Apostolic Nuncio: An Anti-Christ
A renowned Cameroonian voice has publicly declared that Nchumbonga George Lekelefac, through his writings, has opened the eyes of thousands to the internal workings of the Church, its canon law, and its theology. Long before Your Excellency’s disgraceful performance on 14 November 2025 at the rededication of St Joseph’s Metropolitan Cathedral, Mankon, I had repeatedly warned you – privately and publicly – through Facebook to keep your distance from Archbishop Andrew Fuanya Nkea. You chose not to listen.
Instead, you allowed yourself to be contaminated by the same worthless gospel that Archbishop Nkea preaches: a false peace without justice. You have now become the disgrace of the day throughout the entire Archdiocese of Bamenda and, indeed, the Catholic Church in Cameroon and the universal church. The Church teaching classifies justice as a cardinal virtue for a reason. You have reversed it. You have allowed yourself to be corrupted by money from the Biya regime and from Archbishop Nkea himself. Birds of the same feather truly do flock together.
2. My Relationship with Archbishop José Avelino Bettencourt
Before you set foot in Cameroon, I explicitly advised you: “If you wish to succeed as Nuncio in Cameroon, stay far from Archbishop Andrew Nkea.” You ignored the warning.
When you visited the Diocese of Buea and deliberately disregarded and humiliated His Lordship Bishop Emeritus Immanuel Bushu – a man of integrity who has suffered for the Gospel, yet was persecuted by Archbishop Andrew Nkea through Bishop Michael Bibi– I publicly rebuked you for that act of contempt toward an emeritus bishop. The moment you discovered that I do not play politics with the truth and that I will always defend justice and the dignity of the Church’s shepherds, you immediately unfriended me on Facebook, despite our long-standing friendship. Yet, astonishingly, you continued to follow my page. Why? So, you could monitor the one voice that refuses to be silenced?
The result of ignoring every warning is now plain for all to see: your diplomatic credibility lies in ruins, your moral authority is destroyed, and your name is now synonymous with betrayal of the Gospel in the Northwest and Southwest Regions.
3. The True Mission of an Apostolic Nuncio
On 15 September 2024, His Eminence Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, clearly defined the role of an Apostolic Nuncio: “preaching peace and justice, especially among the leaders of Nations, many of whom are unfortunately unable to guarantee their citizens this serenity and security.”
Your Excellency, for more than two years we have heard you preach only “peace” – the false, graveyard peace of Paul Biya. We have never once heard you preach justice. You have deliberately omitted the second and indispensable part of your mandate.
4. Archbishop Andrew Nkea and His Many Lies
On 14 November 2025, Archbishop Nkea and Your Excellency desecrated the newly renovated cathedral pulpit with blatant lies uttered before the Holy Cross.
Archbishop Nkea shamelessly claimed that the renovation was funded solely by “the people of Bamenda and their friends.” This is a monstrous lie. The Biya regime contributed enormous sums. If that were not true, why did Paul Biya send a special representative? Why did Minister Paul Motaze visit Bamenda before the project began? Why were parishes taxed to exhaustion while people cannot even afford one decent meal a day after nine years of war?
Archbishop Nkea also lied when he claimed the papal blessing parchments were personally sent by “Pope Leo XIV.” Those parchments are standard documents that any Catholic can request from the Vatican Elemosineria. I myself have requested many for my family. To present them as a personal gift from the Holy Father is deliberate deception from the pulpit – a sacrilege.
5. The Apostasy of Archbishop José Avelino Bettencourt
Your Excellency, your attempt on 14 November 2025 to use the sacred pulpit to promote Paul Biya – a man whose 2025 “re-election” was achieved through massive electoral fraud – constitutes the gravest apostasy. You were the very first person Biya saw upon returning from his long disappearance. You went to Unity Palace, emerged smiling, and said nothing about whatever satanic arrangements you made. Later, Archbishop Nkea and other bishops went to venerate Biya’s photograph like an idol when they could not see the man himself.
6. Validating Biya in Church
How dare you speak of reconciliation when Paul Biya has never asked for it? How dare you speak of peace when he has never apologised for nine years of war, burnt villages, raped women, murdered children, and stolen elections?
By declaring that “perfect justice does not exist,” you have endorsed every killing, every amputation, every burnt house, every stolen vote in the Anglophone regions. You have told the people: “Accept the peace of the gun. Accept being treated like animals.”
7. President Issa Tchiroma – A Muslim Who Behaved More Christianly than the Ex-Seminarian Biya
President-elect Issa Tchiroma, a Muslim, came to Bamenda, faced the people, and apologised for having once denied the Anglophone problem. That is Gospel behaviour. Paul Biya, the ex-seminarian, has never come, never apologised, never shown his face in nine years of war. Yet you, the Pope’s representative, used God’s pulpit to whitewash Biya’s crimes by saying that Perfect Justice does not exist.
8. The Government Shuts the Mouths of Cameroon’s Bishops
It is alleged – and widely believed – that the recent bishops’ pilgrimage to Rome was subsidised with 500 million CFA francs of public money meant for roads, hospitals, and schools. Archbishop Kleda refused to join that shameful journey. No wonder Archbishop Nkea received a medal from the same regime. No wonder every complaint of sexual abuse of minors that I have forwarded to you has been buried. No wonder the apostolic visitation report remains hidden. It is because you, Archbishop Jose Avelino Bettencourt and Archbishop Andrew Nkea do not believe in justice.
9. “I Am the Apostolic Nuncio to the Republic of Cameroon”
When the people began to murmur against your words at the mention of the demonic name “Paul Biya”, you reminded them: “I am the Apostolic Nuncio to the Republic of Cameroon.” In that moment, Your Excellency, you explicitly placed the prestige of your diplomatic office at the service of a regime that launders money, steals elections, burns villages, and kills its own citizens.
You and Archbishop Andrew Nkea including Fr. Michael Kintang and Fr. William Neba danced while the blood of martyrs was still wet on our soil. You took smiling photographs with soldiers while families wept for their dead. You offered not one word of sympathy, not one second of silence for the thousands killed in the North West Region of Cameroon. That same week, in Bambili and Boyo, separatists overran military positions and killed at least twenty soldiers – a clear sign that the “peace” you came to celebrate does not exist outside the Bamenda cathedral walls. Yet even then you remained silent about the injustice that fuels the war by saying that perfect justice does not exist.
10. There Is No Perfect Justice? Then Christ Died in Vain
Your Excellency actually preached that perfect justice does not exist.
Then why did Christ die on the Cross? Why was Archbishop McCarrick laicised? Why does the Holy See have tribunals? Why does the Church have a Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors? Why did Archbishop Nkea accept to serve on the Ngarbuh massacre commission if justice is impossible?
Since the pontificate of Saint John Paul II, three popes have publicly apologized for grave abuses committed by members of the Church, precisely because the Catholic Church believes that justice is a cardinal virtue – one of the four hinges upon which the entire moral life turns – and that perfect justice, though fully realised only in the Kingdom of God, remains the constant and obligatory standard by which every shepherd must measure his actions and those of the Church’s children. Saint John Paul II was the first to break centuries of silence: he repeatedly asked forgiveness for clerical sexual abuse (2002 Holy Thursday Letter to Priests and private meetings with victims) and explicitly apologized to indigenous peoples for the injustices and forced conversions during the evangelization of the Americas (1992 Santo Domingo, 1998 Mexico, 2000 Jubilee Day of Pardon), because he held that the Church cannot proclaim the Gospel while refusing to render to each person what is due in justice.
Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis continued and intensified these acts of reparation for the very same reason: the Church’s unshakeable faith in the cardinal virtue of justice demands that evil be named, victims be heard, and restitution be pursued, even when perfect justice on earth is still to be attained. Benedict XVI met victims in multiple countries and published his 2010 Pastoral Letter to Ireland expressing “shame and remorse,” while Pope Francis has met over forty groups of survivors, issued sweeping apologies for clerical abuse worldwide, and made historic penitential pilgrimages – most notably in Bolivia (2015) for crimes against native peoples during the conquest, in Canada (2022) for the residential-school system and cultural genocide, and in Belgium (2024) for colonial abuses – always insisting that the Church must model the justice it preaches. These three popes acted publicly and repeatedly because, in the words of St Thomas Aquinas that they all upheld, “iustitia est perpetua et constans voluntas suum cuique tribuendi” (– justice is the perpetual and constant will to render to each his due) – and no diplomatic convenience or institutional prestige can ever be placed above this cardinal and perfect obligation of the Gospel.
By your logic, paedophiles should continue abusing children, elections should continue to be stolen, villages should continue to be burnt – because “perfect justice does not exist.”
Your Excellency, that homily was anti-Christ. Pure and simple.
11. The Catholic University Scandal and the Persecution of Bishops Emeritus
While preaching that “perfect justice does not exist,” Archbishop Nkea, with your tacit support, continues to persecute those who defend canonical order:
Why were Bishop Emeritus Immanuel Bushu, and Fr. Dr. George Nkeze marginalised and humiliated for defending the canonical right of a Catholic University in Buea?
Why has Archbishop Nkea created his own “Catholic University” in Ndop when he persecuted Bishop Emeritus Immanuel Bushu, and Fr. Dr. George Nkeze for establishing one in Buea?
Why has Nkea used reconstruction-plan money to do business and other private projects to enrich himself while Bamenda parishes collapse, new parishes have no fathers house, and priests live in misery in the Bamenda Archdiocese?
You, the Apostolic Nuncio, remain silent. Silence in the face of such injustice is complicity.
12. Reconstruction Money Disappears While the Nuncio Looks Away
Billions of CFA francs destined for the reconstruction of the war-torn Northwest and Southwest regions have vanished. Schools, hospitals, and roads remain in ruins. Yet Archbishop Nkea brings the Prime Minister only to visit one Catholic school in Bamenda and claims it is the fruit of reconstruction funds. Where is the rest of the money? Why has the Nuncio never demanded transparency and accountability? We demand accountability of the money.
13. The Burying of Sexual Abuse Cases
Since your arrival, every credible report of clerical sexual abuse of minors that I and others have forwarded to the Nunciature has been buried. Victims continue to suffer in silence while perpetrators are protected. Is this the “peace” you preach? A peace that sacrifices children on the altar of institutional image?
14. The Veil Has Been Torn
On 14 November 2025, the Holy Spirit spoke through the murmuring of the Bamenda people. The veil of fear and manipulation has been torn. The Christians of Bamenda demonstrated, once and for all, that they are theologically and canonically mature. They can no longer be bought with renovated cathedrals or sold with false papal blessings. They rejected both the tyrant Biya, Nkea, you and his ecclesiastical sycophants like Fr. William Neba and Fr. Michael Kintang.
15. Conclusion and Demand
Your Excellency, you have abused the sacred office of the apostolic nuncio entrusted to you by Pope Leo XIV. You have betrayed the suffering faithful of the Bamenda Ecclesiastical Province. You have used the pulpit of God to promote a tyrant (Biya) and to mock the demands of justice, a cardinal virtue.
We, therefore demand:
Your immediate public written apology to the people of the Ecclesiastical Province of Bamenda for your scandalous homily of 14 November 2025.
Your public retraction of the blasphemous statement that “perfect justice does not exist.”
An independent Vatican investigation into the use of reconstruction funds and cathedral renovation money.
The reopening and proper investigation of all sexual abuse cases that have been buried by the Nunciature.
Your resignation or removal from the office of Apostolic Nuncio if you are incapable of fulfilling your mandate as defined by Cardinal Parolin: preaching both peace and justice.
Until these demands are met, history and the suffering people of the Anglophone regions will remember you as nothing less than an Anti-Christ and a Devil in Cassock.
May God have mercy on your soul.
And believe me to be, most unpretentiously, most reverentially, most prayerfully, most historically, most prophetically, and most dutifully yours in Christ and in the unbreakable, wrathful spirit of Lebang,bNchumbonga George Lekelefac, B.Phil. (Mexico); S.T.B. (Rome); J.C.L./M.C.L. (Ottawa); Doctorandus, University of Münster, Germany; Diploma in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, and Dutch; International Advocate for the Oppressed; Voice of the Voiceless; Defender of the Defenseless and of Fundamental Human Rights; Revivalist, Elucidator, and Revolutionist Canon Lawyer/Jurist; Friend to the Vulnerable and Lover of No Oppressor/Tyrant; International Language Tutor of Latin, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and German; Europe/US Chief Correspondent of The Sun Newspaper, The Herald Tribune, and The Horizon Newspaper in Cameroon; Catholic Media Influencer and Whistleblower; Canon Law Lawyer/Jurist and Researcher; Veteran Contributor on Social Media on Theological and Canonical Enlightenment; Founder/CEO of the Nchumbonga Lekelefac Institute of Research, Documentation, Language and Culture, USA; Canon Law Jurist/Lawyer of the International League for the Defense of Priests’ Rights, Religious Men and Women of the Roman Catholic Church (LIDDPRRECR), Paris-France, and Representative in North and South America; Member of the Canadian Canon Law Society, Ottawa, Canada; Biographer of Bishop Jerome Feudjio, 6th Diocesan Bishop of St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands and First African Native Bishop in the United States of America from Cameroon, Africa.
My Signature: Nchumbonga George Lekelefac
Email: nchumbong@yahoo.com
“Omnia possumus in Deo qui nos confortat.” (We can do all in God who strengthens us). Philippians 4:13
Audiendum, fiendum, nuntiandum (To be heard, to be done, to be reported.)
Cc:
1. His Holiness Pope Leo XIV
2. His Eminence Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State
3. His Eminence Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith
4. His Eminence Cardinal Robert Sarah
5. His Eminence Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo
6. His Eminence Cardinal Peter Turkson
7. All Bishops of the Ecclesiastical Province of Bamenda
8. All Bishops of Cameroon National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon
9. Bishops’ Conference of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM)
10. International Catholic Media
11. All Catholic News Agencies worldwide