Roman Catholic Church African people globally

September 21, 2009

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
Apostolic Palace
00120 Vatican City

Your Holiness:

It is with great humility that I request an audience with you while in Rome on October 18-22, 2009. The purpose for our visit is to seek the help of the Roman Catholic Church in addressing the plight of African people globally. I am honored to say that Princess Giada Ruspoli is my hostess and mediator for this august meeting, if granted.

I have been on the forefront of the struggle for Civil/Human Rights since 1978, beginning with my work with the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. founder of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition where I currently serve as the Regional Director, Southern Region, and with the Reverend Cameron Alexander, Pastor of Antioch Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, where I am a deacon, the Director of Human Resources, and former Executive Director of Antioch Urban Ministries, Inc., an outreach ministry to the poor and disenfranchised of metro-Atlanta.. I am also a former President of the Christian Council of Metropolitan Atlanta. Six years ago I founded African Ascension, an organization which helps to unite Africans in Africa and throughout the world.

I have worked to support peace efforts and civil rights internationally in the Middle East, South Korea, and Haiti. I was a member of the Peace Makers tours of the Middle East in 1992, Southern Korea in 1993 and 1998. I worked tirelessly to help end apartheid in South Africa and for the release of Nelson Mandela from prison. I went to South Africa and joined the African National Congress and worked in a campaign to register voters prior to the presidential elections in South Africa in 1994 in which Mr. Mandela emerged as the President of that nation. I was an official non-governmental representative to the United Nations Habitat II Conference, held in Istanbul, Turkey in 1997. This conference was designed to bring leaders together from around the world to discuss options for developing sustainable communities. I was also a delegate to the United Nations Conference on Racism held in Durban in 2001.

Over the years, I have worked with governments and international humanitarian organizations to improve the quality of life for its citizens. In addition, I have a long-term involvement in Zambia, where, among other things, I serve on the Board of Directors of the Zambian human rights organization, Afronet. I help found Zumbi Palamares University in Sao Paulo, Brazil six years ago for which their library was named in my honor. Our aim was to increase the number of our people in that nation who are receiving a college education. Presently only 2 percent of African descendants living in Brazil are receiving an education at that level.

I was in Florence, Italy at the invitation of the Tuscony Association to address the issue of Abolition of the Death Penalty. I was invited to Pisa, Italy by the same group in July of 2008 to address the issue of Racism in the 20th Century. I am actively engaged in

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September 21, 2009
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working with the African Union which is currently divided into five regions. A sixth region is being established which will enable Africans living in the Diaspora to become voting members of the African Union.

I have sent medical supplies worth several millions of dollars to Haiti, San Andres, Liberia, and Zambia and was named “Man of the Millennium” Tapeo, Haiti. We have joined forces with the people of Cameroon to insure that they are treated in an equitable manner in developing the mineral resources of that nation, especially cobalt and nickel.

Currently, I am serving on a Presidential Commission in Colombia with the mandate of bringing African descendants into the mainstream of that nation. Africans make-up 26% of Colombia and many are being displaced from their ancestral land due to the ongoing war in that nation fueled by drug trafficking.

Your Holiness, I am an African American, 72 years of age, born the son of a sharecropper in the state of Georgia, USA. I served 21 years in the United States Air Force before retiring in 1978, and during that time, I had lived abroad almost as much as I had visited: 3 years in England, 3 years in Spain, 2 years in Vietnam, 1 1/2 years on Guam, and six months in Casablanca, Morocco.

My military residences and my humanitarian outreach throughout the world have shown me that the masses of African people are on the margins of society globally. There are over 200 million Africans living in the Americas, 30 million in Europe and another 800-900 million on the continent of Africa. Catholicism is very prominent in Colombia and Brazil and throughout the Americas. I am deeply concerned about the conditions in Africa where the Catholic Church is at the vanguard for people of the Christian faith. While Colonialism ended in most countries almost 50 years ago the exploitation of the people and the resources of this Continent continue unabated.

I will be in Haiti in early October. However, over the past decade we have traveled to Haiti several dozens times providing material support for the people on that island nation that have been suffering since 1804 when, in a slave revolt, they won their independence from France. This is an impoverished nation where the Catholic Church has great influence.

These are the issues I would like to address with your Holiness should you grant me an audience. I am convinced that it would make a tremendous positive difference, not only to Africa and African descendents, but to the world, if your Holiness would address the plight of African people globally

It is with deep humility that I seek this important audience with you.


Respectfully,


Joe Beasley, President
African Ascension: www.africanascension.org