this is bbc news. we will have the headlines and all the main news stories for you at the top of the hour, straight after this programme. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. pope francis has been head of the catholic church for ten years. the hope was this first pontiff from the global south would shake the church up, provide a new sense of unity and purpose. instead, there are signs of deepening division, a widening gulf between so—called liberals and conservatives. significantly, catholic numbers in the west are in decline. the area of fastest growth is africa. my guest is cardinal peter turkson, ghanaian by birth, widely seen as a possible

first african pope. is the catholic church at a crossroads? cardinal peter turkson, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. in your long career in the church, you have seen the centre of gravity, the geographical centre of gravity of the church, shift quite dramatically. what difference do you think it has made? well, thanks for having me on the show. yeah, it is true. it is true that

what used to be... ..a church centred in europe, out of which a lot of missionaries went out, and so came to africa and several other places in the south, we see some decline. decline that manifests itself first in the form that missionaries are no more... ..out there to be sent. church numbers are dwindling. but in the home of those missionaries. yes, yes. in germany, in germany, in france, in ireland. absolutely. and those countries where the missionaries did their work so many years ago, they're not really needed now because the catholic church is in countries such as your own in ghana. right. so that is true, that is true. but i probably not said they're not needed now. naturally, you know, every missionary can be needed if even there are ten to do the same job that one person used to do in the past.

so when it comes to missionary, i never talk about redundancy, i'd rather probably talk about the fact that the numbers are just not there. the missionaries are not just there to be sent, on account of a lot of other factors. but i guess what i'm most interested in is the values, the core values of this church. and as the centre of gravity shifts to countries in africa, of course, still very important, huge catholic congregations in countries of south america, but essentially much more the global south, not the rich north america and european world. yes. can the values of the church cover that geographical spread or are splits, new fragmentation inevitable? the values should be the same. i mean, the gospel is one in the same, wherever, wherever it's proclaimed and preached. so in terms of gospel values, there should be no change. the application of those values are the ones which have seen a lot of philosophical positions which have led to discussion of certain

values and all of that. so one needs to or one finds himself, you know, having to deal with the fact that the philosophical, the philosophical tradition that is grown in europe, it's also caused a lot of challenges, you know, libertarian type of thinking, a sense of, you know, coming of age and stuff like that, which has affected a lot. but lately we've also seen the impact of the great scandals, also on church attendance and church levels and all. so these clear signs are there, coupled with the fact that sociologically there's been a lot of changes also in europe and in the north. for example, birth rates have dropped significantly. and as you know, you know, the vocation to the seminaries to become priests and whatever always come from families. and when the birth rates drop

so low, then invariably, you know, the impact is there to be seen, so... well, you've raised lots of different issues there. i hope we can cover many of them. but let's start with something which is very current, and that is a discussion in the church on key issues of sexuality and gender. mm—hm. now, i referred at the beginning of this interview to pope francis and the hopes that were invested in him to show leadership. i would put it to you that on some of these key issues, for example, the church's attitude to homosexuality to, for example, the possibility of giving blessing to gay marriages in church, the attitude to the lgbtq community generally, pope francis has sent a confusing, not a clear message. no, but lately, lately, about a week or so ago, he came out with a small document, just, you know, saying clearly what his position on all of this are. that lgbt people can be

blessed, they can be admitted to church, and all of that. they can even, you know, become godparents of children and people who are being baptised and all of that. so he himself has signalled a new path where stuff that used to be left, you know, left in nebulous and undecided and all, he's now come out clearly with this. so you see him as now following a policy, which i guess many people regard as, within the catholic perspective, liberal. doesn't that put you personally in a very difficult position? because your own position, for example, on homosexuality is, it seems, quite clear. i've looked at your record, and over many years you have been a consistent conservative on these. so those are the expressions, again — conservative, progressive. you know, it's my thing. my thing has been this, and i refer to an interesting

episode, a situation i got in to. responding to an invitation to go speak in slovenia at one point, and then the bishops were wondering whether to allow it because there was a lot of media agitation. it's simply, my position has simply been this, that lgbt gay people may not be criminalised because they've committed no crime. but neither should this position also become some, position, something to be imposed on cultures which are not yet ready to accept stuff like that. it should be... interesting. you're ghanaian. let's just get to the root of this straight away. you are ghanian, this summer the ghanaian parliament passed it's called the appropriate sexual rights and family values act, which set up a tougher regime for gay people. it clearly criminalises homosexuality in ghana, up to ten years in prison for lgbtq advocates, up to five years in prison for identifying as gay or engaging in gay sex, even criminalisation of public shows of affection

between same—sex people. now, the ghanaian catholic bishops�* conference said that western countries must stop incessant attempts to impose unacceptable foreign cultural values on us. are you backing that statement and therefore defending the criminalisation of homosexuality? what ijust said is just, you know, so... my position is in that sense, contrary to what has just been passed. my thing is that, you know, to criminalise anybody, you need to be able to identify the crime. 0k? so my position has always been lgbtqs are not to be criminalised, but neither, and this, i think, is basically what caused all of this in ghana, because traditionally the ghanaian culture has known of people with, you know, some such tendencies.

and i say this because there is an expression in the local akan language, that of mine, of men who act like women or women who are like men. there is an expression for it means that this phenomenon has been known, was known in the culture, in the community and all of that. but nobody went on to make any policy out of that. now, i think what caused all of this was, was, you know, attempts to link some, some foreign donations and grants to certain positions

which has been posed in the name of freedom, in the name of respect for rights and stuff like that. i think that's what led to this thing going to parliament and the position... right. but otherwise, for me... the point i guess is that there seems to be a real difficulty among senior catholics in africa to speak out against this criminalisation of homosexuality. and we can look at ghana, we can also look at uganda, where they've gone even further than the new laws in ghana, actually carry the death penalty for what they call, "aggravated homosexuality". and what we also see is that in uganda, the official leadership of the catholic church has stayed silent, has not condemned what the ugandan parliament has approved. because i think what the move should be is a lot of education about... certainly, you know, cultural attitude in some of these regards are very deeply rooted and all of that. and we need a lot of education to get people to separate, make a distinction between what is crime and what is not crime, what is a personal habit and not a personal habit. so something that i mean, that traditionally may be referred to as a taboo

and all of that. it takes time, it takes time. according to the ghanaian catholic bishops�* conference, it is "despicable lifestyles, practices and behaviours". is it time? and you are one of the senior voices of scepticism in africa. is it time to move away from that kind of language? it is time, what i'm saying, it is time to begin education to help people understand what this reality, this phenomenon is. if culturally we had expressions and terms for this type of, itjust means that it's not completely alien to the ghanaian society, not being completely alien to a ghanian society. now that is coming out, what has to be the response? i think this drastic form that is taken in ghana and probably worse still in uganda, it's been the perception that the west was imposing this, connecting, you know, linking it with some

donations and grants and all of that. it's kind of politicised that in such a way that the reaction to it has also been equally political in character. but i think we could, all of this from my point of view and this is what i think, you know, i speak about with a couple of other bishops, is to be able to understand more deeply this phenomenon. let's move on and let us now focus on the damaging fallout from decades of revelations of sexual abuse and associated scandals inside the global catholic church. as i said at the very beginning, the hope was that pope francis would show leadership on this issue and really root this out and avoid any semblance of cover up inside the catholic church. he hasn't succeeded, has he? it still seems the catholic church is trying to cover up the scale of what has happened. not to my knowledge. as far as know, pope francis has come out with several zero tolerance, you know, measures and, you know,

legislations within the catholic church, deposing, deposing cardinals, priests and all, defrocking them and all. so he says... the latest revelations, if i may, in spain in the last month, an independent commission report estimating around 200,000 children abused by catholic clergy since 1940. and the ombudsman, angel gabilondo, says, "for many years there has been a desire to deny abuse, "conceal or protect the abusers." and he goes on, "to this day, the church's response "is insufficient." this, this, 0k... so the wave, as it were, has now come to spain and has broken in spain and is breaking this out. when this came up in france, the legislators said the same thing, that there's been a cover—up up to now. if from here, from spain, let's say, it goes to italy or something, i suppose, whoever, the prosecutor would also preface whatever he says with, for several years

the church has not, you know, whatever. so it is true. and as far as i know, the pope is even, he has, you know, has invited the spanish bishops�* conference to the vatican for a meeting on this. so whatever cover—up there was before this, you know, the prosecutor�*s work or the investigation, those are the things that have characterised all of this wherever you�*ve gone. from when it broke up in the united states, in the boston area to wherever it�*s gone, it�*s been that there�*s been years, tens or whatever of years where the church appeared to have turned a blind eye or whatever to the issue. and now it�*s erupted and it�*s now... for the last ten years and more, you have been a very close adviser of the vatican and, of course, of pope francis over the last decade. do you and do you think does he feel a continuing sense of shame over what has happened? he said, he said, he said

he it several times. he�*s said it several times. i was with him in ireland when he said that, so... and what about you? i mean, that, like he himself says, even one single case of this in the church is too much. the church is not a place for anything like this. that also means that, you know... so for me, the task is not simply denouncing that and having the church express shame and remorse and ask for pardon and all of that. i think we need to go through this still deeper. as you know, candidates for the priesthood do not come from the church. they come from families, they come from homes, they come from the society. so we take what the society offers us and we prepare them to be priests and ministers. and then often we do not know out of which situation they�*re coming. so some, some observations

were made that, you know, they pick up this tendency, you know, in the seminary. but some also say they come with this tendency already from homes from wherever they have come from. so we have a problem, we have stuff, we have this task of having to really get to the bottom of it, to see at what point do seminarians pick up this tendency, becoming abusers or whatever. where they already abused when they came or did they, you know, get into this later on and all? that�*s why i wish personally that it would not be only the catholic church fighting this, but several other institutions in society would also be fighting the sex abuse. because, statistically, from the little bit of stuff we know this exists a lot in families, a lot in certain institutions, in schools, other social institutions and all. and to deeply eradicate this, we need to work together. it should not be the catholic church, you know. fine, for us, even as i say, one case is already too

shameful. but to be able to deal with this... you have many thousands of cases in many different countries around the world. pope francis, i want to move on, pope francis has actually focused a lot of his efforts, not so much on that, but on being quite a political pope. and you�*ve been by his side in some of this. you know, you�*ve headed up committees looking at global justice issues, global development issues, from climate change to geopolitics. do you think pope francis has used his voice wisely? climate change... so two things — climate change and geopolitics. first, the climate change. when, shortly after he was elected pope, because, you know, my office at that time, so 20, 2013, was the office, the pope, you know, one of the working visits, you know, he expressed his desire to do stuff

on the climate. so, holy father said it�*s a great idea, so he asked us to go work on it. so we put together a team and we provided the first draft to the encyclical that became laudato si, that became a big, you know, a big instrument in galvanising all the discussion that went on paris �*21 and all of that. so in that sense, you know, he�*s been a pope who listened to the voice of science, has known how to bring the church along to protect society from evils which are now, which we are now calling a very big climate disaster, climate change. i mean, to be brutally honest with you, he doesn�*t seem to have made much difference, does he? 0k. so that�*s why he came, i don�*t know if you know this, he�*s come up with another small document lately. the first one was laudato si. this one is laudato deum. and it expresses his disappointment at how meeting after meeting from cop2i in paris to now we�*re going for 28, and it�*s been one

commitment after the other, and there appears to be no concrete action being taken. in cop in paris... i guess what i�*m getting at, though, is the pope has a finite amount of, sort of, political capital that he can try and spend. some of it he�*s tried to spend on being a player in the climate change debate, and we can discuss whether that�*s been effective or not, but in other arenas, he�*s made some controversial decisions, for example, in geopolitics. why do you think he chose to avoid criticism of vladimir putin, to appear to understand why russia may have been worried by nato�*s expansion and therefore to deeply, deeply upset many people in ukraine because they saw him as an apologist for the russian invasion. i�*m not sure... ok, this, again, is an interpretation of an attitude or posture that the pope took.

he�*s never criticised vladimir putin to his face or in person or directly referencing putin. 0h, he has. he has. and at one point, the secretary of state has had to go back to, you know, explain what the pope said to the russians. so he has. but the thing is this, the vatican diplomacy over the years has gone through changes, especially from the days of one pope, pope pius ix, when the vatican lost a lot of its territory. so basically, we lost rome as a city of the popes. the vatican, i think, adopted a policy of nonpartiality, a policy of common fatherhood, as it were, paternity. and that was a policy... is that code for saying that the vatican is now seeking ways to be an important voice in the global south and therefore wants good relations with moscow and indeed beijing? no, no, no, not that. looking at your relationship with china. the vatican�*s relationship with china is extremely interesting where it seems the vatican has given

the chinese communist party a right to play a role in the appointment of catholic bishops. yes, that has happened. but the role that the vatican is giving china is a role that has already existed between the vatican and switzerland. in switzerland, the choice of bishops is a lot of local cantons and the local authorities over there. and so, you know, it�*s therefore not an extremely, you know, foreign initiative or enterprise that has been admitted into this. but the basic thing about vatican diplomacy is like a father who witnesses two sons, you know, fight. the tendency is not to take the side of one against the other. the tendency is try to conciliate, to bring the two together and that has been... and i�*m sure that in the case of ukraine, people would have wished that the pope will come out and, yes, you know, whatever. but this is, the tendency is more to try to conciliate, bring two sons or two whatever fighting together rather

than take sides and all. and the case in china you talk about, again, admission of the voice or whatever of the state in the appointment of bishops is something that already exist. it�*s a policy which hong kong�*s cardinaljoseph zen... has criticised a lot. he finds it absolutely unacceptable. in a sense he seems to be saying that the vatican has chosen to appease beijing. no, i mean, so a little bit of backtracking, a little bit of history, one would also have stated the same conditions or the type of conditions which led to the concession in the case of switzerland, to the appointment of bishops. with the greatest respect, i think the case of switzerland is somewhat different from the case of china. but we�*re almost out of time, cardinal turkson, and ijust want to end with a more personal thought. i began by saying that you had been widely tipped as a possible first african pope. now, you are still...

i greatly, i pray a lot also against it. well, you�*ve addressed the possibility in the past. in 2013, you said it would certainly mean a lot to me if i had to be pope. if i was elected, it would signal a very big personal change. but it wouldn�*tjust be a personal change, would it? it would also be recognition of the changing, extremely important role that africa is now playing in the catholic church. final question, is it time, is it time for an african pope, for a black pope? it will be time. it will be time if it�*s time in god�*s timetable because the church belongs to its lord. and the lord has never, has never abandoned the church or left the church. so i believe, and i�*ve been in st peter�*s square at the election of three popes in the past. and my tendency has always been that of prayer with the lord who founded the church, provide for the church, or the type of leadership that he considered suitable

for the church at this point in history. and if this time around... have we reached that point in history? ok, so that�*s up to him to decide, not me. i pray for it but he decides. cardinal peter turkson, it�*s been a pleasure having you on hardtalk. thank you. thanks. hello there. we had some pretty big temperature contrast across the uk on thursday. it was western areas that had the mildest weather, temperatures around swansea pushed up into double figures. whereas in contrast to that, across parts of east anglia, through most of thursday

afternoon, temperatures were struggling at around four degrees celsius with grey skies, and a bit of damp and drizzly weather around as well. into friday�*s forecast, across wales and southern counts of england there will be a lot of cloud around through the day. but there will be some breaks in the cloud, probably the best for that through northeast england to the east of the pennines and for a time in eastern scotland. the north and west of scotland might see outbreaks of rain for a time. mild in the west with temperatures up to 12 degrees but across parts of eastern england, temperatures still a little lower than that with highs of around eight. through friday evening and friday night we see cloudy move in across most parts of country. a few mist and fog patches around and outbreaks of rain starting up across the western side of scotland. these are your overnight temperatures friday night. you can see it will stay pretty mild for most. into the weekend, the weather front gets stuck across the north—west of scotland and that will be bringing large rainfall totals to the highlands, where over the course of the weekend we could see something like 175 millimetres of rain over high

ground which is enough to cause flooding concerns, and that volume of rain could trigger a few landslips. away from the highlands of scotland, southwesterly winds will drag increasingly mild air across the uk. so weatherwise on saturday, heavy rain across the north—west of scotland. a lot of thick cloud across the western side of the country with drizzle quite widely across coasts and hills, probably murky too. across eastern areas of england, for a time eastern scotland, there will probably be breaks in the cloud and the best of the day�*s sunshine. temperatures continue to rise looking at highs of around 11 to 13 degrees on saturday. for sunday�*s forecast a greater chance of seeing more in the way of sunshine coming across for england and wales, but at the same time rain looks to be more extensive for a time in scotland and properly some wet weather brushing into northern ireland for a few hours as well. southwesterly winds continue to drag mild air up, temperatures for most will range between 12 and 1a degrees celsius through sunday afternoon. mild weather stays with us

into monday as well with that southwesterly flow of air across the country. a few systems bringing the threat of some rain across wales and south—west england, and anotherfront approaches the north—west of the uk, bringing some rain back into scotland. that rain is associated with a cold front and will ultimately be dropping the temperatures as we look at the forecast into next week. a week before christmas, the run—up to christmas, we lose the mild southwesterlies and we replace them with colder, north—westerly and will be turning colder in the week before christmas for all of us. fortuesday, it looks like there will be heavy rain across parts of england and wales. relatively mild across the south of the uk. to the north—west it�*s a day of sunshine and showers, some of those showers could start to turn wintry over the highlands, where temperatures will be dropping away. looking at highs of around seven or eight degrees in scotland, eight or nine for northern ireland, but it will be turning cooler than that as we look at the forecast deeper into next week.

showers increasingly wintry, some snow in the forecast as well over some of the mountains to watch out for. we have some changes in weather fortunes, but it certainly looks like next week, the week before christmas, is going to turn colder.

and now it�*s erupted and it�*s now... live from london, this is bbc news. the us�* national security advisor is due to visit palestinian authority leaders in the west bank, having urged israel to wind down the war. hungary blocks $55 billion in eu aid for ukraine, hours after an agreement was reached on starting membership talks. the british teenager, alex batty, who went missing six years ago, is found in france. and prince harry will find out later whether he�*s won his hacking case against mirror group newspapers.

hello.