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| Participants of the Training with Archbishop Ziyaye of Lilongwe |
As he officially opened a two weeks (3rd– 11th December) capacity building workshop on self reliance of the local Church at the Episcopal Conference of Malawi’s Catholic Secretariat in Lilongwe, Most Rev. Tarcizio G. Ziyaye the Archbishop of Lilongwe has emphasized how important it is for the Catholic Church in the country to move away from dependence.
This he said to the participants who included national and diocesan treasurers, administrators of goods and properties in the dioceses and national seminaries and projects coordinators at the capacity building workshop and staff responsible for managing finances and Church property at different levels.
“It is difficult for us to feel good about ourselves and to fully feel we are indeed created in the image and likeness of God when we inappropriately rely on others to sustain and support us for our temporal and spiritual needs,” said Archbishop Ziyaye who also serves in the Conference as Bishop Chairman for the Catholic Secretariat.
“We are living in an environment where partners who used to support us have become tired. Today, we are being required to account for all the resources we receive and more importantly, we being challenged to come up with practical strategies in order to become self reliant as a local Church,” he continued as he urged them to appreciate the training which is in line with the ECM strategic framework for 2018-2022 “to ensure the Catholic Church in Malawi is sustainable through efficient and effective use of resources at all levels.”
The Secretary General for AMECEA Rev. Fr Anthony Makunde thanked Most Rev. Ziyaye for blessing the training adding his wish that this begins with the Archdiocese of Lilongwe where the training took place.
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| AMECEA Secretary General Rev. Fr. Anthony Makunde Stresses a Point |
He took the opportunity to inform the participants that self reliance is actually a resolution of the AMECEA Bishops and that in a spirit of solidarity as pioneered by the founding fathers of the regional body in 1961, this is the message that AMECEA Secretariat is bringing to all Member Conferences.
“We are discussing how we can carry on the mission of the Church which Jesus Christ handed on to the apostles, the apostles to bishops: and the bishops do have us as people to assist them in carrying it out. To be able to do that, we need resources as our mission is fulfilled completely through the pastoral, spiritual and social services which we give to the people that God has entrusted to the Church,” said Fr Makunde.
On that note, he emphasized the need for each participant to reflect on the responsibility that has been given to them and to open their eyes to see the resources that are at their resources and find new ways to develop them as the facilitators are helping them through the training.
“Go back to your Diocese with a new way of doing things; don’t go back to the old ways of complaining that we do not have resources and so we cannot do the job. That chapter of lamentation should be closed and start a new one which allows us to make use of what we already have in order to develop them and carry on with the mission of the Church.”
On his part, the ECM Secretary General Rev. Fr Henry Saindi said that, in fact, the importance of the workshop cannot be overemphasized.
“As the AMECEA Secretary General has said, we should ask ourselves, ‘Do we know the resources that we have in our dioceses? Have we maximized their potential? What are we doing to make best use of these resources at our disposal? Have we found new ways of multiplying them?’ Let us open our minds so that we may go back as people empowered to build our capacity in resource mobilization and self reliance,” he said.
The capacity building workshop was organized by AMECEA Secretariat in collaboration with the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) and the Catholic University of Malawi (CUNIMA), first with financial support from USCCB and now with Missio Aachen. The AMECEA Secretariat is giving these workshops as a second phase of the project after already engaging with almost all bishops at Conference level in the region.