Tongans pray for forgiveness

TONGA – Tongans have prayed for forgiveness following a month of shocking murders and road accident deaths in the Christian kingdom.

An evening of national prayer was organised by the Tonga National Forum of Church Leaders in Nuku’alofa on Sunday evening.

The event was heralded as a Sacred National Prayer evening, to plead to God for forgiveness.

There is a conviction among church leaders in Tonga that the unusually high number of murder cases and people dying from road accidents recently were a result of the “sinful way of life” that Tongans are living.

In the month between February 4 and March 4, there were six reported murders in Tonga.

One of the speakers claimed that “evil life-styles” killed more people in Tonga than dengue fever and non-communicable diseases.

One church leader also reminded the gathering that Tonga remained an independent country because Tupou I gave Tonga to God but not to a super-power country, and from that day in 1875 until today, Tonga remained an independent constitutional kingdom.

Another of the church leaders asked everyone, including the king and members of the royal family, to kneel on the ground while they were offering their prayers to God.

The event was a display of Christian unity from seven different churches – the Church of Later Days Saints, Siasi Tokaikolo, the Free Church of Tonga, the Free Constitutional Church of Tonga, the Church of Tonga, the Roman Catholic Church and the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga.