(Superior General,
Combonian Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus)
Here in Rome in 1870 Daniel Comboni, later to become Vicar Apostolic of Central Africa, addressed an impassioned appeal for the evangelisation of Africa to the Fathers of the First Vatican Council. He insisted that the "regeneration" of Africa was the urgent responsibility of the whole Church. Today we celebrate the fruits of the missionary effort in Africa and face the challenges of the African Church?s contemporary mission. This mission is the proper context within which to consider the numerous pastoral questions on the Synod?s agenda.
The Church in Africa is by its very nature missionary. It will be of great importance to call the Church in Africa to a new and energetic commitment to its ad gentes mission. This ad gentes thrust of the Church in Africa "has already begun, but its needs to be intensified" (Instrumentum laboris, 16). Africa is called to go out and proclaim the Lord Jesus in the other continents and in all the new fields of ad gentes mission indicated by the Holy Father in Redemptoris Missio.
To this end, a robust and organic programme of missionary awareness in Africa is vital. In this context, the transforming power of certain prophetic signs needs to be acknowledged and celebrated. One of these is the actual departure for mission of African priests, religious and lay people. This sign gives the Christian communities a sense of their own worth and maturity; it is the seed of renewed Apostolic commitment; it is an act of generosity which the Lord rewards; it creates communion between the Churches.
And it is important that this sign be lived out at all levels of the Church?s life: for example, in areas of especial Apostolic need within a single nation, between the small Christian communities or in the service to refugees.
These prophetic aspects of missionary awareness are to be situated in a context of missionary formation. In this regard, and in a spirit of exchange of gifts, the Synod may wish to note the positive experience of the Latin American Missionary Congresses. Might something similar to these Congresses not be possible - and even necessary - in Africa?
The African Church?s commitment to ad gentes mission and to the work of missionary awareness has global dimensions. As pointed out by the Instrumentum laboris, "the responses to the Lineamenta did not directly speak of the responsibility of the Church in Africa and of African Christians in the transformation of international relationships?. The Synod should reflect on ways and means in which African can act to revise the relations between North and South, restore mutual respect among nations, promote peace and overcome racist reflexes" (125).
The determined commitment to justice
and peace of the Church in Africa is an important way for Africa to proclaim
the Gospel to the whole Church and to the world. And a proper attention
to the means of social communication will make this proclamation possible.
Original
text: English
