HARARE (Reuters) — President Robert Mugabe has dismissed criticism from the country’s Catholic bishops as “nonsense” and warned that his government could start treating the clergy as political foes.In a pastoral letter last month, the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference said economic hardship and political repression by Mugabe’s government had led to widespread anger, leaving the nation in “extreme danger”.

In his first public response to the criticism, published by the official Herald newspaper yesterday from an interview he had with London-based New African magazine, Mugabe said the bishops had turned political and warned this was a dangerous path.

“If I had gone to church and the priest had read that so-called pastoral letter, I would have stood up and said nonsense ... the bishops have decided to turn political,” said Mugabe, a Catholic who attends church regularly.

“And once they turn political, we regard them as no longer being spiritual and our relations with them would be conducted as if we are dealing with political entities, and this is quite a dangerous path they have chosen for themselves,” said Mugabe.

Yesterday, Mugabe told members of his ruling ZANU-PF party’s central committee that the bishops were treading on dangerous ground and rejected their calls for a new constitution.

“They have gone wrong, sadly, very sadly. This is an area we warn them not to tread. It was a sorry letter, a disgraceful piece of work, an error, a disastrous error and we shall tell them when we meet them,” Mugabe said in remarks broadcast on state television.

Critics say Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, has ruined the once prosperous country and point to a deep economic crisis marked by the world’s highest inflation rate of above 2,000 percent, which has left families struggling to feed themselves.

The crisis coincided with Mugabe’s controversial seizure of white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to blacks, which some say has accelerated the collapse of commercial agriculture and led to food shortages since 2001.

Mugabe also criticised one of Zimbabwe’s most senior Catholic clergymen, Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo, who has long been one of the veteran leader’s staunch critics.