Arch Bishop Paul - A Man of Faith & Intergrity, By Fr. Gregory Cheo Ngwa

About the Author
Rev. Fr. Cheo Gregory Ngwa is a Diocesan Priest for the Archdiocese of Bamenda. He is presently teaching in St. Thomas Aquinas' Major Seminary Bambui and also serve as the Financial Secretary to the Bishops' House in Bamenda. 

Forward to Edition:
A MAN OF FAITH & INTERGRITY I am happy to have been given the opportunity to write the preface of this small book on His Grace, Right Reverend Father Paul Verdzekov, a man I have known from early boyhood to this day. Fr Gregory Cheo Ngwa has tried to tell us in a nutshell who Paul Verdzekov is. He is a man of with many social, spiritual and intellectual qualities. Someone has rightly described Father Paul Verdzekov as a human encyclopedia. His weakness is that he remembers everything he has read and heard with such astonishing details and exactitude! I asked him once to tell me how one can remember what one has read. He smiled and gave me no answer to the sincere question.

Right Rev. Paul Verdzekov reads almost any newspaper, any pamphlet, any book, whatever the volume, on which he can lay his hand, in the languages he knows best: the Italian, the French and the English languages. He speak smoothly and readily the three language and writes them very well. He much regrets his ignorance of German.

Fr. Paul Verdzekov is a great preacher. He makes sure that what he has to say to any Assembly of God’s people is well prepared. He abhors improvisation in preaching and does much research in the preparation of his homilies whatever the intellectual level of those to whom he is preparing to speak. That is why listening to any of his homilies; one always has something new to learn.

Fr. Paul Verdzekov, in the judgment pf those who know him, is a man of moral integrity. Some ask themselves if he has any personal experience of sin! Maybe he has. God alone knows. A missionary said of Fr. Paul Verdzekov, after a penitential service in Mankon Cathedral; “I was edified to see my Bishop go to confession to one of his priests.” He is conscious of the fact that only God is perfect and those we all sinners. Like St. Paul, he would like to tell those the Lord has placed under his pastoral responsibility to be his imitators as he is the imitator of Christ. For the good he does, he would like others to do and the evil he avoids he would like others to do the same.

The good formation of future priest is first in the list of his pastoral priorities. He loves the seminarians and knows them individually and their names whatever their dioceses of origin. Above all, prayer has a preponderant place in his priestly life. And this he believes to be normal in the life of any priest in the Church. Prayer is the soul of the work of a priest. One cannot imagine the life of a priest without daily hours of prayers.

Many more things and good things could be said in voluminous books about Fr. Paul Verdzekov from infancy to maturity and old age. What is to be found in the small book of Fr. Gregory Cheo Ngwa is just a bird’s eye view of what his man of God and good pastor has been to the Church. I hope that one day his detailed biography will be written with his collaboration. Many need to know more about Right Rev. Fr. Paul Verdzekov, today the Emeritus Archbishop of Bamenda Archdiocese.

Christian Wiyghan Cardinal Tumi
Archbishop of Douala - Cameroon

Comments
“Fr. Paul Verdzekov, in the judgment of hose who know him, is a man of moral integrity.
(His Eminence Christian Cardinal Wiyghan Tumi)

“Ambition is foreign to his make; and throughout his life his way has been to follow faithfully and assiduously where the kindly light has led”
(Professor Bernard Folon)

“I found him to be a man of phenomenal and, I dare say, legendary humility; a rare mind, widely read, who knew everything surrounding his ministry as a Bishop… There is no denying the fact that the greatness of Archbishop His faith in God and in people is truly the faith of humble man”
(Fr. Ignatius Salah Waindim, Vicar General).

“Not many of the readers will associate Father Paul with the ‘benskin’ riders in town. But I first knew him in Rome in autumn 1968 as ‘the priest on the scooter’”
(Fr. Maurice McGill, M.H.M.)

“As chief shepherd of Bamenda Archdiocese, he has be audacious, forthright and intrepid, proclaiming the prophetic message of the scriptures in and out of season’
( Dr. Anthony Ndi)   

Other Publications By Author
i) CHOMUK the Insincere Man
ii) To Bellittle is to Be Little
iii) Here Comes the Bride
iv) The ABC of Christian Life (Under production) 

How to order
You can order this book from The Author;

Rev. Fr. Gregory Cheo Ngwa
Bishops' House - Bamenda
Republic of Cameroon
Tel. +237 77830981

E-mail: gregorycheo@yahoo.fr

Http://www.mawum.net/archbishoppaul