The Catholic Church in Kenya has conducted a vigil prayer day for world mission Sunday on 19thOctober 2013 at Consolata Shrine, in Nairobi, Kenya.Missionaries from different countries attended the prayer event in which they shared their personal experiences with the audience under the theme of "The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few.”
Fr. Aloysius Byaruhanga from Ethiopia said there are numerous challenges facing mission work in Ethiopia, as the Church is regarded as an NGO making it difficult to work in close collaboration with the Government. He added that the Church has not been successful in her endeavour to incorporate CRE into the school curricular and has not been allowed to teach moral values either. Another Challenge facing Missionaries in Ethiopia is lack of Catechist and other Church personnel to help in evangelization mission. The missionaries are also not well sustained by the locals as offerings are very minimal and the people expect the priests to provide for them.There are also issues like language barrier, economic challenges andcultural challenges.
‘Ethiopia is a great Country that needs lots of missionary work’ said Fr. Byaruhanga. He noted that The Orthodox Church which is the only recognized Church in the Country is losing the younger generation to Pentecostal Churches, while the Muslim community is gaining at a high rate posing fear that Ethiopia may become purely Muslim state. He however revealed that the Catholic Church would be the saviour of this situation given that the youth are very vibrant and that the Catholic Church is the second to the Government in terms of social service provision.
Sr. Mary Muthoni Githenji of Cottolengo Missionaries also shared her missionary experiencefrom Italy pointing out that Christian faith in that country isdeteriorating as churches are flooded with the old people since the young and energetic find churches services boring and so they would prefer social places to church. She urged the African/ Kenyan tofeel encouraged to go andalso become missionaries in Europe.
Fr. Justus Mainga of FideiDonum talked about language barrier as a challenge when preaching to faithful from different Kenyan communities giving an example of his work in Ngong Diocese having come from Machakos Diocese. He however draws strengthform earlier missionaries who came to evangelize to Africa amidst all the difficulties.
He encouraged Dioceses with many priests to donate to some to Dioceses with less priestsas this would give the priests opportunity to embrace different cultures, that will eventually break the barriers of tribalism and unit people to be one adding that today’s aspect of mission is not geographical as it used to be when pope Pius XII was writing the document FideiDonum but is about human promotion and values that determine growth of human person.
The Pontifical Missionary Society (PMC), National Director in Kenya Rev. Fr. Celestino Bundi, called on the missionaries to remember their solidarity and communion as one family in mission, take time to pray the rosary together and remember the missionaries working in all corners of the world, remember all the pastoral agents who have been killed in the course of the previous year in line of duty and united with the Holy Father, offer sacrifice of mass to increase the zeal to be better missionaries.
SOURCE: Waumini Communications KCCB