AMECEA member conference - Tanzania is hosting a five-day Workshop on Culture which is jointly organised by SECAM, the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples and the Pontifical Council for Culture (PCC) and Development in Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania from 20th of November 2012.
A press statement from communication office of SECAM (CEPACS) said there will about seventy participants from the eight SECAM Regions in Africa comprising Bishops, Priests, Religious, Lay people, and resource persons from other parts of the world. There will also be representatives from the Vatican, and partner organisations.
The participants will discuss among others the following issues:
· The need to have a structured dialogue with the African Church regarding culture and development, which includes pastors, theologians, ordinary people and the Africans in the diaspora.
· Design programmes to facilitate Dialogue between Cultures and Faith Evangelisation of Cultures in Africa – opportunities, challenges and perspectives.
· What Culture for what kind of Development? African Cultures and Development, where do the problems of development in Africa come from? Globalisation, Post-modernity, Good Governance, and African Policies for Development – challenges for Africa. Elements of the ideology behind these concepts
The Workshop will also take into consideration the inspiration behind the need to start this process of forming a Faith, Culture and Development Forum as contained in the Post Apostolic Exhortations of the two Synods for Africa: Ecclesia in Africa (1995) and Africae Munus (2012).
The planned workshop is therefore seen as an opportunity for the Church as Family of God in Africa to own the process of putting together the elements that will guide the role and operations of the Faith, Culture and Development Forum.
His Eminence, Theodore Adrien Cardinal Sarr, First Vice-President of SECAM and Archbishop of Dakar, Senegal and Bishop Barthelemy Adoukonou, Secretary of the PCC will co-chair the workshop.
The Workshop will be preceded by a meeting of the Standing Committee of SECAM at the same venue. During that meeting policy decisions on SECAM will be discussed. There will also be a discussion on the process for an evaluation to be carried out on the Good Governance Project of SECAM by officials MISEREOR, a German Partner Agency that has been financing the project since 2006.
SOURCE: AMECEA Social Communications office