SECAM Workshop on Small Christian Communities (SCCs) starts in Ghana

Currently underway in Accra, Ghana is a workshop on Small Christian Communities. The workshop organised by the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) started this weekend and will end on 26 November. The theme of the workshop is, “Small Christian Communities: moving towards the African Year of Reconciliation and Sharing with other churches.”

Catholic News Agency for Africa (CANAA) Coordinator, Fr. Don Bosco Onyalla sent Vatican Radio the following report below:

The planning and realisation of the African Year of Reconciliation (AYR), recommended by Pope emeritus Benedict XVI in the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Africae Munus, is among the objectives of the workshop on Small Christian Communities (SCCs) in Africa under the auspices of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) in partnership with Missio Aachen.

The theme of the workshop is Small Christian Communities: moving towards the African Year of Reconciliation and Sharing with other churches.

Participants for the workshop have been drawn from Africa’s Regional Conferences of Catholic Bishops. The  five-day meeting is a follow-up of the September 2012 Nairobi workshop, which discussed the commitment of SCCs in the process of reconciliation in Africa in the light of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Africae Munus.

The Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Africae Munus encouraged each African country to annually mark “a day or week of reconciliation, particularly during Advent or Lent,” and mandated SECAM to facilitate the realisation of these celebrations, whose purpose would be “to encourage reconciliation in communities.”

“SECAM will be able to help bring this about and, in accord with the Holy See, promote a continent-wide Year of Reconciliation to beg of God special forgiveness for all the evils and injuries mutually inflicted in Africa, and for the reconciliation of persons and groups who have been hurt in the Church and in the whole of society,” the Apostolic Exhortation Africae Munus states in number 157.

“This would be an extraordinary Jubilee Year “during which the Church in Africa and in the neighbouring islands gives thanks with the universal Church and implores the gifts of the Holy Spirit”, especially the gift of reconciliation, justice and peace.” (Africae Munus, 157).

The entire programme of the workshop has been prepared by the late Father Pierre Bosangia who died suddenly in Ghana, last week. Fr. Bosangia, a Congolese, was the first deputy Secretary General of SECAM.

Among those expected for the workshop in Accra, Ghana are representatives from the Association of Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of Central Africa (ACEAC), the Association of Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of the Region of Central Africa (ACERAC), the Regional Episcopal Conference of West Africa (RECOWA), the Assembly of the Catholic Hierarchy of Egypt (AHCE), the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa (AMECEA), the Inter-Regional Meeting of Bishops of Southern Africa (IMBISA), the Episcopal Conference of Madagascar and the Indian Ocean (CEDO), and the Regional Episcopal Conference of Northern Africa (CERNA), as well as a representative from Missio Aachen.