While news agencies and Catholic social media denizens these days gorge themselves on the Vatican’s mounting “Battle of the Books,” seeing who can craft the most sensational headlines or tweets about several controversial new volumes making the rounds, other outfits are, thankfully, still concerned with things that actually matter.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has renewed a longstanding pledge of solidarity with Africa, highlighting a blossoming Catholic population and the need for the U.S. government to provide the continent with more support.
Eastern Africa Catholic bishops acknowledged that the climate crisis is real and that it is causing adverse effects on people throughout the region.
Religious sisters in the West African nation of more than 31 million people have been working hard to debunk COVID-19 vaccine myths that are rampant, ranging from denial that the virus exists to various false side effects.
Forty-year-old Chol Garang and his wife Anok Deng, 33, sit on a woven mat outside their new home in Malakal, South Sudan’s second largest city, waiting for rice donated by the church to cook for their children.
The Nigerian Igbo community celebrated its annual remembrance of the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt with a Mass and fellowship Feb. 23 at St. Fortunata Church, East New York.
Sister Leonida Katunge wears two hats – or habits, rather – spending her days alternating between teaching courses in liturgy and practicing law in her homeland of Kenya.
A major African summit concluded on Dec. 9 with a warning that despite the continent enjoying the Catholic Church’s highest growth rate, unless theology and pastoral practice is “translated into tools of liberation” then “the growth of the Church will only be in number.”
According to a range of scholars at a Pan-African Congress on Theology, Pastoral Life, and Society, the pope’s metaphor for the Church as a “field hospital” provides particular resonance for the African continent – and, they say, must guide pastoral practice in the realms of education, liturgy, and the laity.
As the number of African Catholics continues to soar, one Kenyan nun is warning that they must first “clean house” when it comes to the issue of clergy abuse before exhibiting greater leadership in the global Church.
