PASTORAL WORK

OF RURAL AND URBAN YOUTH

by

Rev. François de Paul Moundanga Ibeni

_________________________

 

 

We refer to Nos. 36, 37 and 133 of Instrumentum Laboris.

Like other Churches in Africa, the local Church in Congo has in her pastoral priorities submitted to the Synod Fathers Evangelization of youth from now until the year 2000.

Schools were nationalized in 1965 twenty‑five years ago at the time of the Constitutional Conference of Youth of the National Revolution Movement (JMNR). The Church had to‑withdraw and renounce teaching religion in schools. All movements for Catholic action for youth and children were forced to stop.

In rural areas, most young people are school age and come from General Teaching Schools (CEG) of the secondary and primary schools. Many among them, due to the fact of not having support or failing at school, experimented the misdeeds of a change in system during the four years of this first cycle. There are many students who contribute towards disturbing it and overthrowing it.

There are very few vocational schools where these young people can learn a trade ‑ one of the most serious shortcomings of the school system in Congo. The future of these young people is even more restricted. Some will obtain a baccalauréat but cannot have a scholarship because they are too old, others go to university and some are admitted by competition to training college for Administration and Health. Others add to the already great number of unemployed and remain idle which is fertile ground for drug addiction, crime and sexual freedom, whence havoc of AIDS.

No kind of official apprenticeship regulation guarantees the future. Some acquire real competence and enter the working world with good opportunities of success. Others encounter failure and perpetually seek employment.

There are no vocational schools for young farmers to help them stay in the country to live on income from the land. Being a peasant is considered humiliating.

For many young people, the solution is to come to town and increase the number of unemployed. Hence the massive rural exodus of the Congo out of a population of 2,200,000 inhabitants, 900,000 live in Brazzaville, 400,000 in Pointe‑Noire and 100,000 in Dolisie, Two (2) people from Congo out of three (3) live in town!

The huge demographic push forces the need to find rapid solutions for the unemployment problem. There are no miracle recipes. The future of this youth lies in apprenticeship of small trades. Being a local craftsman having intelligent employers who are competent and clever is his only chance for survival. Therefore, it is important to open a certain number of vocational training centres where employers learn the teaching elements which they need and young people learn a good manual job.

The Church must make great efforts. She must take her place in vocational training both for men and women. She must get involved in developing pastoral work.

In urban areas in spite of all the efforts b a one party regime to separate young people of our Country from their Churches, we have been experiencing ‑ especially since the end of the 1970s ‑ a gradual return of children and young people to our parish, communities.

In big towns, Catechesis is ensured by young people and without their mass commitment we would never have been able to welcome thousands of children to initiate them to the truths of the faith, the Gospel reading, practising the Christian virtues and life in the Church.

The service of Catechesis must become more and more a school of life for the Catechists, and a real nursery of excellent educators for our Church and our country.

In the parishes young people have re‑formed themselves in different ways in real communities of life and prayer, as real apostolic movements.

Since 1980, the political atmosphere which is relatively tense permits reorganizing, without risk of activities and recovery of social initiatives. Pastoral work of young people is launching school workshops in libraries, thus supporting work of the most motivated students, country‑town work yards in view of returning young people to work the land, specialized education in open environment, the Father David Centre for Minors, the centre of pre‑apprenticeship of the Abraham Centre.

Other initiatives of the Church (rural animation of Caritas, the creation of a resource centre by Salesian missionaries at the service of urban crafts), which join the one of the Forum, need to be gathered to compete with the special characteristics view of implementing real support National programmes for private initiatives.

The Marien Ngouabi University is a lay establishment, a meeting point of cultures, cogitations and a place for debate. But it is also a place where one finds many sects, many religions of mystic order and philosophical. Many young people join this thanks to the Charismatic Renewal. The chaplain gathers a large number of students and gives them catechesis.

At the end of the University studies, regardless of their academic diplomas, many young people find they are unemployed. They join the big number of graduates without employment. The job market is saturated. What can be done and what must the Church do for these young people? From this Synod they expect reactions and concrete action in their favour as we underline this strongly for the young people of the Archdiocese of GAROUA (Cameroon) in their message to the Synod Fathers.

Thus young people who are the hope of tomorrow and of Africa tomorrow must be able to find their cultural. identity and moral values. Their strength will be their hope, this hope which is in them because they belong to the future as the future belongs to them (cf. Letter of Pope John Paul II to Young People in 1985).

 

____________________________________________

Webpage created and maintained by
Chidi Denis Isizoh