(Bishop of Tambacounda, Senegal)
The face offered by our continent at the eve and at the moment that the Synod is being held is not brilliant: wars, famine, debt, unemployment, poverty, decline of the educational system, AIDS and other endemic diseases, striking social crisis, etc. Africa is paralysed.
In such a continent, how can one pronounce the words of Jesus to the paralytic: "Rise, take up your pallet and walk."?
The Church in Senegal has an evangelising mission "ad intra" and especially "ad extra""", "ad gentes", that is to say to 5% of adepts of the Traditional African Religion and to a 90% of Muslims. To accomplish this, we believe that the Church in Senegal, while living the reality of the Church, Family of God, should place the accent on Dialogue with Islam and African Traditional Religion, dialogue understood as the dialogue of life in the reality of existence, and the spiritual dialogue or dialogue of salvation in Christ. In the second place, it should aim for a deeper inculturation in all areas, and especially towards a "spiritual inculturation of the whole person, as well as the Christian communities.
Christian witness will be the basis for dialogue and culture, the cultures of the different people, the field of evangelisation to be sown.
Original
text: French
