AFRICA/EGYPT - SECAM Standing Committee meets in Cairo: principal focus for the Bishops, human trafficking, 200 years since the End of Slavery in Africa

Cairo (Agenzia Fides) - The Standing Committee of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) will be meeting in Cairo, Egypt from October 25-29, 2007. The issue of new slaveries or human trafficking will feature as one of the main items of the agenda of the meeting. The Committee will, in line with this issue, look at preparations being made towards the holding of a seminar of SECAM in collaboration with the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences to mark the 200th Anniversary of the End of Slavery in Africa. The Seminar will be held in Cape Coast, Ghana from November 13-20, 2007.
The meeting to be chaired by the President of SECAM, His Eminence, Polycarp Cardinal Pengo, Archbishop of Dar- Es- Salaam, Tanzania will also discuss the following: Matters relating to the last Plenary Assembly of the Symposium that took place last January in Dar- Es- Salaam, Tanzania; An update on preparations towards the holding of the Second African Synod that will take place in October 2009; The choice of venue and dates for the next Plenary Assembly of SECAM in 2009 that coincides with the 40th Anniversary of the founding of SECAM; The holding of the next Standing Committee meeting in February 2008 in South Africa. During that meeting SECAM will join MISEREOR in marking one of MISEREOR’s Golden Jubilee celebrations in Soweto
The Standing Committee comprises the President and the two Vice-Presidents of SECAM and a representative each of the 10 regions of SECAM. Two members of the Standing Committee were recently appointed cardinals by Pope Benedict XVI; they are: the First Vice-President of SECAM, Theodore Andrien Cardinal Sarr Archbishop of Dakar, Senegal and John Cardinal Njue, Archbishop of Nairobi, Kenya. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 23/10/2007; righe 21, parole 277)