VATICAN - The challenges to the faith experienced by peoples both Africans and Christians: Message from the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples to a Colloquium, on the theme “Evangelisation, theology and salvation in Africa”

Friday, 16 February 2007

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - In the spirit of the post-synodal Exhortation Ecclesia in Africa which underlines the important role of Catholic universities and institutes in the mission to evangelise, the UCAO/UUA (Université Catholique de l’Afrique de l’Ouest/Unité Universitaire d’Abidjan) promoted an international Colloquium sponsored by the Regional Bishops’ Conference of West Africa, CERAO, to mark the 50th anniversary of a Conference in Paris in 1956 “Des prêtres noirs s’interrogent”, which marked the beginning of modern day African theology.
The Colloquium, on the theme “Evangelisation, theology and salvation in Africa”, is taking place 15 to 17 February in Abidjan (Cote d’Ivoire). The participants, representatives from the Church in Africa, the Church in America, the Church in Asia and the Church in Europe, will take stock of these fifty years and identify prospects with regard to consolidating the opening to inculturation and evangelisation in Africa and the rest of the world.
The Secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, Guinean born Archbishop Robert Sarah, on behalf of Cardinal Prefect Ivan Dias, presently making a pastoral visit to Nigeria, sent a message to the president UCAO/UUA, Fr. Raphaël Tossou, expressing the Congregation’s satisfaction for the initiative “which testifies to the dynamism of your University and its determination to increase the quality of the life of the Church in Africa and Madagascar”. The message underlines that the Colloquium rightly recalls the Special Synod of Bishops for Africa held in Rome in 1994 and its concerns, challenges and guidelines defined and clearly expressed in the Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Africa.
“The questions posed by African priests already half a century ago, reveal awareness of the challenge of faith experienced by Africans, conscious of being both Africans and Christians - Archbishop Sarah writes, the emerging Church in Africa and especially in the black world, is a challenge for all the baptised to announce and share the Good News, and a call to undertake a specific and inculturated discourse to explain the reasons for the faith and the sanctification of all Africans. Our vocations as baptised Christians makes us missionaries for the world in which we live. The call to be universal obliges us to shoulder our responsibility and, by means of our African culture and values, make our contribution to the treasure of the Gospel in the patrimony of the Church and the world”.
At the end of his message the Archbishop CEP Secretary expresses encouragement for the renewed commitment which the Colloquium intends to unleash and suggests a few questions for the participants to answer “in prayer and witness”: “Church of Africa what have you done with your baptism? Church of Africa, what are you doing about your faith in Jesus Christ? Church of Africa, what will be your new missionary impulse in the difficult context of our continent, suffering from numerous wounds and abandoned on the roadside by the structures of our modern world?” (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 16/2/2007; righe 38, parole 462)


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