East Africa: Catholic Bishops Body Holds Strategy Workshop in Nairobi

May 22, 2012: The Association of Member Episcopal Conference in Eastern Africa (AMECEA) has begun a a-three-day workshop in Nairobi, Kenya, on Monday. The workshop discusses communication strategies for the implementation of the Papal exhortation document known as Africae Munus at regional and national level.

AMECEA is the body that brings together all the Catholic bishops in East and Eastern Africa. The workshop feature delegates from Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia.

According to Fr. Philip Odii, the National Executive Secretary of Social Communications, Uganda Catholic Secretariat, the purpose of the Nairobi workshop is to share ideas on how the people can promote reconciliation, justice and peace in the region using the Pope's document as a guide.

"The Church must speak out against the unjust order that prevents the peoples of Africa from consolidating their economies and from developing according to their cultural characteristics," Odii said. It is incumbent upon the Church to strive that every-people may be the principal agent of its own economic and social progress, he added.

He said that the Pope's letter of 2009 that is going to be the main item on the agenda calls upon the Church in Africa to encourage leaders to protect such fundamental goods as land and water for the human life of present and future generations.