Article for September -- October, 2003 issue of New People Magazine  



Called and Sent: The African Church in Mission


Thousands of people from North, Central and South America will celebrate mission in Guatemala City, Guatemala from 19-30 November, 2003.  They will participate in the 2nd American Missionary Congress (known as CAM2) and the 7th Latin American Missionary Congress (known as COMLA7).   COMLA1, which took place in Torreon, Mexico in 1977, began a dramatic change in the commitment of Latin American Catholics to world mission especially a growing awareness of the challenge of the evangelization of peoples outside the continent, especially in Africa and Asia.  See the excellent article "How the Catholic Church in Latin America Became Missionary" by Father John Gorski, M.M. in the April, 2003 issue of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research. 
There will be a number of African delegates at this congress in Guatemala including National Directors of the Pontifical Mission Societies (PMS) and the Chairperson of the Mission Awareness Committee (MAC) of the Religious Superiors' Association of Tanzania (RSAT).
But what about Africa?   When will the local churches on the continent of Africa (covering 53 countries) have their First African Missionary Congress?  The time has definitely come.  The seeds have been sown for many years.  A significant development in world mission has shifted the Christian Church's centre of gravity from the West, from Europe and North America, toward the East and South, towards the continents of Africa, Asia, Oceania and Latin America.  In this shift we can speak of the missionary responsibility of the local churches in Africa and their involvement in ad gentes mission.  This is highlighted in the sections "Deep Roots and Growth of the Church" (No. 38), "Open to Mission" (No. 128-130) and "Organic Pastoral Solidarity" (No. 131-135) in Pope John Paul II's The Church in Africa (1995).  Now the local churches in Africa (and other parts of the Third World) are both Mission Sending Churches and Mission Receiving Churches.  Now African missionaries are called forth by their local churches and sent to other parts of the world.  African missionaries can have different vocational charisms:  priest, Brother, Sister, layman, and laywoman.  In terms of geography an African person can truly be a missionary who is sent and works in another diocese, in another African country, and in another continent.
This leads to an important new expression in our mission vocabulary: inter gentes mission. This describes the new reality of the mutuality of mission between, and among, the six continents of the world especially the shift to the southern hemisphere (Latin America/Africa/Asia--Oceania).  Missionaries tend to move less from the North to the South and more from the South to the South generating a diverse cultural exchange.  So African missionaries serve in Latin America: Consolata missionaries from Kenya work in Colombia, South America.  Mombasa Fidei Donum priests serve in Jamaica, Caribbean, West Indies.  Yarumal and Guadalupe missionaries from Latin America work in Kenya and Ethiopia. The first missionary priest from Hong Kong Diocese arrived in Tanzania at the end of July, 2003. The number of inter gentes missionaries is increasing very quickly.  
The African Church was a missionary church.  Now the African Church is a church in mission.  The African continent was a missionary continent.  Now the African continent is a continent in mission.   Recall the significance of Pope Paul VI (during his historic visit to Kampala, Uganda in 1969) hailing the coming of age and the maturity of the Church in Africa with the now famous words:  "By now, you Africans are missionaries to yourselves."   Recall Pope John Paul II's stirring words to the people of Tanzania during his visit to Moshi on 5 September, 1990. "Now it is your turn to be witnesses of Christ in Moshi Diocese, in Tanzania, on the continent of Africa, and to the ends of the earth."  
There was active African participation in the World Mission Congress that took place in Rome in October, 2000.  This Jubilee Year meeting invited local churches "to undertake a serious study of their present state of 'mission' and to celebrate mission congresses on all levels."  An African continental meeting called the "Missio Ad Gentes International Congress" took place in Accra, Ghana from 14-20 October, 2002 that was organised by Institute for World Evangelisation (ICPE) in collaboration with the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), under the patronage of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples (CEP).  
A genuine African Missionary Congress has to be built on concrete examples of African missionaries working throughout world.  Here are some dramatic examples of what is happening right now:  
* As of January, 2003 there were "438 Kenyans from different congregations and dioceses working in various parts of the world as missionaries" (see Kenyan Missionaries Directory 2003.  Nairobi, Kenya: Mission Promotion Centre.  Edited by Paulino Twesigye Mondo).   These are Kenyan missionaries in many African countries and in other continents who registered with the Mission Promotion Centre in Nairobi.  This is a dramatic increase from 250 registered Kenyan missionaries in 1999. 
	* In March, 2003 the Religious Missionary Congregation of the Apostles of Jesus - the first African religious missionary institute -- had 336 perpetually professed members including 311 priests, 15 deacons and 10 Brothers.   Presently they are working in 40 dioceses in 11 countries (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, England, Germany, Italy, and the United States of America).
* A recent development is African Fidei Donum priests who are been sent by their local diocese (local church) to be missionaries in other dioceses in their own country, in another African country, and in another continent.  In 2003 there are Catholic priests from Same and Mbeya Dioceses in Tanzania working in Zanzibar Diocese that has very few locally born priests.  In 1996 Cardinal Josef Tomko, the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, asked the bishops of the dioceses in Uganda with many local priests to send missionaries to other dioceses in Africa that have few, or even no, local priests.  So Kiyinda-Mityana Diocese with over 80 local diocesan priests sent two priests as missionaries to Aliwal Diocese in South Africa in 1999.  Kampala Archdiocese and Masaka Diocese also sent Ugandan Fidei Donum priests to South Africa.  In addition Masaka Diocese sent priests to Rwanda.  Nakuru Diocese in Kenya sent a diocesan Fidei Donum priest to Malawi.
Mombasa Archdiocese in Kenya sent two priests, Crispin Oneko and John Malasi, as Fidei Donum missionaries to Kingston Diocese in Jamaica in the Caribbean, West Indies.  
Three Tanzanian theological students of the Society of the Precious Blood studying at the Salvatorian Institute in Morogoro, Tanzania went to Chile in December, 2001 as the first African missionaries of the Tanzanian Vicariate of their society.  They returned to Tanzania in August, 2002 and completed their studies.  They were ordained priests in June and July, 2003; two returned to Chile with another newly ordained priest.  Two other newly ordained Tanzanian Precious Blood priests went as missionaries to Guinea-Bissau in West Africa. 
*Nigeria has more priests (religious and diocesan), Brothers and Sisters working in 
other continents than any other African country.  At the beginning of 2003 the Missionary Society of St. Paul (MSP) of Nigeria had 146 priests and 110 seminarians working and living in Nigeria, Botswana, Cameroon, Chad, The Gambia, Liberia, Malawi, South Africa, England, Sweden, Canada, Grenada in the West Indies and the United States of America (in six archdioceses and seven dioceses).
* The Holy Ghost Missionaries (Spiritans)  in East Africa marked their 300 years celebrations on Pentecost Sunday, 8 June, 2003 in Nairobi, Kenya by commissioning 10 newly ordained priests from the region to go to work in various parts of the world as follows: Nicholas Kereba (Uganda), Dennis Bukenya (Nigeria), Patrick Kagua (Cameroon), Andrew Mwania (Tanzania), John Kamangara (Malawi), Peter Mallya (Tanzania), Peter Kway (Kenya), Renatus Karumuna (Ethiopia), Filbert Chundu (Philippines), and Gerald Kiwale (the Seychelles).
Two continental meetings are being planned by the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples on the theme "Formation for Mission" to take place in English-speaking and French-speaking Africa in 2004.  This can bring us a step closer to having our First African Missionary Congress.
Four challenging questions:
1. A document from Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples entitled Instruction On The Sending Abroad And Sojourn Of Diocesan Priests From Mission Territories (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana. April, 2001) cautioned: "This exchange [of diocesan clergy] among the churches, the fruit of universal communion, must preserve a strong missionary thrust to counteract the prevalent trend of a certain number of diocesan priests who, incardinated in their particular churches in mission territories, want to leave their own country and reside in Europe or North America, often with the intention of further studies or for other reasons that are not actually missionary.  Often their motives are based on the higher living conditions which these countries offer and the need for young priests in some of the established Churches" (No. 2).   In fact, how many African priests, Brothers and Sisters sent to do "missionary work" in Europe and North America are actually doing traditional pastoral/sacramental work (making up for the shortage of local priests due to less vocations and an aging clergy) and fund-raising? 
	2. Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, in presenting the Pope's 2003 Message for World Mission Sunday in Rome on 21 February, 2003 gave the following statistics on the 1,075 ecclesiastical circumscriptions (dioceses, apostolic vicariates, etc.) entrusted to his missionary congregation: "Apostolic Personnel: [Worldwide] about 85,000 priests work at the service of mission ad gentes of whom 52,000 belong to the diocesan clergy and 33,000 are religious.  27,000 work in Africa."   In Africa today how many of these priests are actually doing missionary work and how many are doing traditional pastoral/sacramental work and/or other activities such as managing projects, fund-raising, etc.?
3. Has the role of Fidei Donum priests from Europe and North America changed over the years from short term missionary service in an African diocese to long, even lifetime commitment in that diocese?  What about African Fidei Donum priests going to other continents?
4. How many Catholic parishes in Africa are genuinely and authentically "missionary parishes" (characterized by a missionary spirit and new and creative apostolic outreaches)? 
		
Rev. Joseph G. Healey, M.M.
Maryknoll Society
P.O. Box 867
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

JGHealey@aol.com
						
Revised 10 August, 2003



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