Bishop’s 12-day journey, particular assortment to learn rising Church in Africa

PHOENIX — Bishop John P. Dolan will go on a 12-day journey to Africa this month to view initiatives and packages supported by American Catholics to strengthen their brethren on the continent, the fastest-growing space of the worldwide Catholic Church, in response to america Convention of Catholic Bishops.

Bishop Dolan will journey to Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia, Aug. 6-22, assembly with Church leaders and visiting initiatives supported by grants by the USCCB’s Solidarity Fund for the Church in Africa.

Established in 2007, the fund is pushed by native parish collections in addition to donations.
Dolan is one in every of eight U.S. bishops sitting on the USCCB’s Subcommittee on the Church in Africa, which decides the place to ship the African funds. The panel opinions grant purposes and makes selections twice a 12 months – in June and November. A workers led by three laypersons oversees fund administration. https://www.usccb.org/committees/church-africa
Put in because the fifth Diocese of Phoenix bishop Aug. 2, 2022, Dolan joined the USCCB subcommittee in April.

“The African bishops…spend a lot time in prayer and discernment about the place support from Catholics in america is most wanted,” acknowledged Auxiliary Bishop Peter L. Smith of the Archdiocese of Portland, Ore., the panel’s chairman, on its web site.
“Parishioners who give to this assortment may be sure that their assist will assist African Catholics who’re within the biggest want, and who even have an awesome need to serve Jesus,” Bishop Smith acknowledged.

SPECIAL COLLECTION

About 80 dioceses throughout the nation take up an annual assortment, in response to Fritz Zuger, one in every of eight subcommittee consultants. A parishioner at St. Bernadette in Scottsdale, Zuger will journey with Bishop Dolan.

The Diocese of Phoenix conducts its Particular Wants Assortment for the Church in Africa in addition to these in Latin America and Jap Europe on the second Sunday in August.
This 12 months’s assortment might be Aug. 13.

Bishop Dolan mentioned the diocese in 2023 is putting “particular focus” on the Solidarity Fund for the Church in Africa.

In a letter to the Diocese’s 94 parishes in Might, Dolan requested pastors to make use of the particular assortment “as a means to assist educate the devoted about the great thing about the common Church and its wants.”

“Whereas we work lovingly to construct our parish communities, we’re at all times conscious, and at instances have to remind ourselves, that we’re a part of a common Church that isn’t sure to 1 individuals or place. Our native church in truth is at all times in communion with the entire Church and the lifetime of grace that flows by it,” Bishop Dolan wrote.

‘WEALTH OF CULTURAL VALUES’

The USCCB mentioned the funding is essential.
“Africa faces financial and social hurdles of monumental debt, epidemic, extreme poverty, and political unrest,” the subcommittee acknowledged.

“Despite these challenges, the Church in Africa has nearly tripled in dimension previously 30 years. Nevertheless, it’s tough for (it) to maintain its development and keep important pastoral outreach,” the assertion continued.

The Solidarity Fund aids pastoral initiatives together with outreach, colleges, evangelization and schooling of clergy and lay ministers.

Through the journey — his first-ever to Africa — Bishop Dolan will see initiatives benefiting from previous funds, how present funds are getting used and maybe enhance upon that use.
Earlier this 12 months, Pope Francis bought a firsthand have a look at a few of Africa’s issues.

Throughout a go to to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in January and February, Francis lamented many years of overseas exploitation of Africa’s wealthy pure assets, together with diamonds.

“This can be a tragedy to which the economically extra superior world typically closes its eyes, ears and mouth,” he mentioned throughout Jan. 31 remarks within the Congo.
Francis is the most recent pontiff to deal with the difficulty.

St. John Paul II, in his 1995 Apostolic Exhortation, “Ecclesia in Africa,” mentioned, “Though Africa may be very wealthy in pure assets, it stays economically poor. On the similar time, it’s endowed with a wealth of cultural values and priceless human qualities, which it will probably supply to the Church buildings and to humanity as an entire.”
https://www.vatican.va/content material/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/paperwork/hf_jp-ii_exh_14091995_ecclesia-in-africa.html

FOCUS ON PASTORAL NEEDS

In lots of African international locations, poverty, ecological disasters, authorities unrest, battle and main inhabitants displacements can have an effect on the Church.

The Solidarity Fund focuses solely on pastoral wants, together with:
* pastoral and catechetical packages
* equipping seminaries and seminarians
* persevering with schooling of clergy
* communications and mass media
* Catholic schooling and colleges

The subcommittee authorised grants totaling greater than $2.6 million for 91 initiatives final 12 months.

Two examples have been:
* $25,200 to type 44 diocesan seminarians in Sudan and South Sudan; and
* $30,000 to coach and type lay leaders within the Kasana-Luweero Diocese in Uganda.
St. John Paul II erected the diocese in November 1996.
Different growth initiatives fall underneath the purview of the USCCB’s official reduction and growth company, Catholic Aid Providers (www.crs.org). CRS funded work addresses areas reminiscent of agriculture, emergency response and restoration, and well being.

‘WE’RE DOING…GOOD’

Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia — the international locations Bishop Dolan will go to – every has a large Christian inhabitants, in response to varied knowledge sources.

The Particular Broadcasting System (SBS) of Australia pegs the quantity at roughly two-thirds of the 126.5 million individuals dwelling in Ethiopia. The U.S. State Division’s 2019 Report on Worldwide Non secular Freedom lists Uganda’s Catholic inhabitants at almost 40-percent of its almost 49 million individuals, whereas Kenya’s Catholic inhabitants is about 21-percent of the almost 55 million individuals dwelling there.

“Africa is rising by hundreds of latest Catholics a 12 months,” Zugar mentioned.
That development is punctuated by “immense power and enthusiasm amongst (the African Church’s) youth,” he famous.

In the meantime within the U.S., many dioceses profit from monks born in Africa.
At present, it’s estimated there are over 3,000 African-born monks and non secular serving within the U.S. in ministerial capacities. Between 40-50 of these are within the Diocese of Phoenix, Zugar mentioned.

“The African individuals are grateful, however we’re nonetheless at the start. What we’re doing (for the African Church) is actually good.”