PHOTOS: Chimamanda Adichie Surprises Audience at Cardinal Onaiyekan´s Book Launch.

While news of Chimamanda Adichie´s calling out a catholic priest in her home town of Abba still makes the rounds on social media, she has recently appeared at the book launch of the retired Cardinal Archbshop of Abuja, John Cardinal Onaiyekan.

“I just want to say how much of an honour and a pleasure it is for me. I, in fact, was not invited (as the cardinal just pointed out to me) but I heard about this and I thought I should come here to pay my respect and to pay homage, not just to a person who is an important leader in the Catholic Church but a person who is an important thinker, and a person whose writings I have quoted a few times, without his permission. And so, just to give my greetings to everyone here, and to say that I am very happy to be here“.

In a recent article titled Dreamings as a Singe Family in response to Pope Francis´ enclyclical Fratelli Tutti published by Lósservatore Romano, the vatican´s daily newspaper, she quotes Cardinal Onaiyekan in this paragraph:

“But what of social friendship within the church hierarchy? When Pope Francis writes of “a new vision of fraternity and social friendship that will not remain at the level of words,” I was reminded of the words of the former archbishop of Abuja, Nigeria’s capital: “I arrive in Cologne as the Archbishop of Abuja, and I want to meet the Archbishop of Cologne. The question I ask myself, ‘Am I going to meet a brother archbishop?’ Theoretically, theologically, of course I am. We are both successors of the apostles, we are both in charge of a whole group of Christ’s faithful. But when I arrive in Cologne, I have to pass through the whole bureaucracy of the archdiocese before I can get an appointment to see the archbishop, if you are lucky enough to get one.”

The new book by the retired Archbishop is titled Let the Truth Prevail. The following photos were taken by Tunde,a professional photographer who is based in Abuja, Nigeria.