Last year, from January 12^th to 16^th 2009, there was a Continental meeting of Superiors in Africa held in Merrivale, South Africa. Among other Superiors there were two members from the Pallottine Generalate, namely Fr. Friedrich Kretz, the Rector General and Fr. Gilberto Orsolin, General Secretary for the Missions.

My Provincial Rector Fr. Eamonn Monson and I were there too. We discussed a lot of issues concerning our presence in Africa. Collaboration was one of the issues on the agenda. Our concern was our reality: Pallottines’ presence in Africa in the service of the Church of Africa. We discussed how to strengthen our ties, to foster our collaboration without forgetting that there are challenges ahead of us in fostering our charism.

One of the areas of collaboration is Formation. We thought that it would be a good start to form our members in a common Pallottine Spirituality. The formators are to get a Pallottine spirituality and if possible, the formees also to get this spirituality in the environments of collaborating among the different entities in Africa. There was a suggestion that let us use the present houses of formation to form our candidates and future Pallottines. The Rector General supported the idea and said that it would be good not to construct other structures/buildings for formation in the near future.

The Rector General said, after a long discussion and many consultations, there are two ways of doing collaborating in Africa. One way is to create a French speaking district and English speaking district. Another way is by the geographical location, that is, the Southern Africa: This district will include South Africa, Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique. The Western Africa district will include Cameroon, Nigeria and Ivory Coast. The Eastern Africa district will include Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Congo and Rwanda. He said the General Council was learning more on the geographical districts. He thought that this would be possible and that we would be ready to take risks in implementing it.

The East African Delegature of the Mother of the Divine Word Province has taken the risks of trying to implement the above proposal made in Merrivale, South Africa. We thought that the geographical districts would work towards the reality of collaboration among the Pallottines in Africa. Towards the end of May 2010 we sent our five candidates to Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo to learn French language and in mid September to go to Butare, Rwanda for Novitiate. It is a trial but we hope that it will work. It has been working with Theological students in Nairobi whereby the students from Rwanda/Congo Region go for Theological studies. We can, likewise, use our facilities in Arusha for Philosophical studies. With the above proposal the problem of the houses of formation will be solved. Thus in the Southern district we will have all that is needed in South Africa; in the Western district we will have the Philosophy in Cameroon and the possibility of Theology in the Ivory Coast and then in the Eastern district we will have the novitiate in Butare (Rwanda), Nairobi (Kenya) and Arusha (Tanzania).

Collaboration will then move from the formation level to other levels of pastoral, social and economic. In order to be more successful we have to involve the lay persons. We have to empower them to be more committed to our charism and our spirituality. Let us pray for this dream to be a reality in Africa.

By Fr. James Amasi, SAC