Referring to the ongoing problem of Somali pirates on shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean and the military costs of patrolling those waters, the bishop told Catholic News Service, "The solution is not simply on the sea, but the solution comes on the land."
He said while he does not deny the need to protect ships or limit the use of force on land, "the military aspect should not be the first approach." The international community must use a multifaceted approach: military, human and political, he said during a Jan. 30 Washington interview.
Bishop Bertin visited the United States at the invitation of Caritas Internationalis and planned meetings with U.N. officials in New York. He said he hoped to keep drawing attention to the situation in Somalia and sustain the hope of the people there.
The international community must be encouraged to "search carefully, more carefully ... for a Somali leadership." Warlords have conducted a reign of terror, blocking aid, killing rivals and seizing women and girls as sex slaves.
Somalia's "so-called leaders" have "taken hostage their own people," Bishop Bertin said, noting that 98 percent of the people of Somalia "just want to live in peace."
World leaders must identify "people who may be able to better represent their own people" and who would be accountable to the international community, he said.
"It is a hard quest for a truly accountable Somali leadership," he said, adding, "let the politicians do their work."
The small Catholic community in Somalia has a different job, he said.
"We are accompanying the Somali people," Bishop Bertin said. This is not only through aid, such as that provided by Caritas, but also with lives, he said, reciting a list of names of church workers who have been killed in Somalia.
"The Catholic Church has been present through all those years," he said, referring to decades of "lack of effective authority in central and southern Somalia." Church officials have even given funds collected by Catholics to Islamic organizations working in the country, figuring that was the best way to get aid to the people.
Bishop Bertin said although the population is more than 98 percent Muslim, the church sees the governance issue as a moral responsibility. He cited the beginning of the Second Vatican Council's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, "Gaudium et Spes": "The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ."