AFRICAE MUNUS AND CONSECRATED PERSONS

Abstract

The period before the convocation of the 1994 African Synod, was a time when Africa was described in the image of the biblical icon: the man who was on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, who robbed him, brutalized him and abandoned him half-dead (Lk 10: 30-37). It is therefore not surprising that the challenges of Africa became the dominant points in the Lineamenta and Instrumentum laboris of the 1994 African Synod: instability and political violence, armed conflicts, poor democratic representation, poor management of public affairs, weight of external debt, corruption, ethnocentrism, arms trade, the collapse of health services and public education, exponential spread of HIV/AIDS, but also the aggressive growth of religious sects and certain Christian or non-Christian fundamentalist circles against the Catholic Church. The Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, saw Consecrated persons as agents of evangelization who could contribute to the liberation of Africa from the forces that cripple her progress. The Roman Pontiff wrote,
In the Church understood as the Family of God, consecrated life has the particular function not only of indicating to all the call to holiness but also of witnessing to fraternal life in community. Therefore, all who live the consecrated life are called to respond to their vocation in a spirit of communion and cooperation with the respective Bishops, clergy and laity".
Focusing on local ordinaries and Consecrated persons, he wrote further,
…the leaders of the local Churches and of the Institutes of Consecrated Life and the Societies of Apostolic Life to foster dialogue among themselves, in order to create, in the spirit of the Church as Family, mixed groups for consultation which would serve as a witness to fraternity and as a sign of unity in the service of a common mission.