INTEGRAL FORMATION, THE COMMITMENT AND WITNESS OF YOUNG PEOPLE AND CONSECRATED PERSONS IN AFRICA

Abstract

The Catholic Voyage:  What is your general impression of the Synod of Bishops now approaching its conclusion?   Archbishop Anthony Muheria: First and foremost, the Synod is a good experience. From all over the world we are able to share ideas and experiences. We see the Church in a wider context. Certainly, it has been a very good, positive experience. As well, the presence of other auditors has added a bit of spice to the Synod. You are able to see and hear the presence of young people, who also helped us in the moment of discernment. We have spoken a bit about that. It is a very good experience.   It is a wake-up call to us bishops, because I think it has been an abandoned sector of our pastoral. So to pay attention to them in a very specific way, and not merely pay attention to them as just a sector of the pastoral but thinking specifically that it is they who are going to carry the Church into the next level or frontier. Therefore, it is either we are going to strengthen their faith, so that it gets stronger, and so we are going to have better families; or, on the contrary, we don’t do it and the Church will suffer the consequences of malnutrition of the next generation. So, the Church must take to heart the issues of: how do we meet the needs of the pastoral care of the young people; how do we change the methods and means of the pastoral care of young people; and how we give them a central role in the efforts to organize it. So, the Synod has been a very good experience for reflection and, as I said, it is wake-up call to bishops, it gives us time to think, so that when we go back to our Bishops’ Conferences, we are ready to start some of the things we have heard here (at the Synod) while we await whatever will come from the Holy Father.