The Missionary Identity of the Priest in the Church,

an Intrinsic Dimension of Exercising (Realizing) the “Tria Munera”.

The Situation in Africa

I. The General Present-day categories of Priests in Africa

Priests in Africa at present can be classified, for the purpose of quick analysis of the situation, in the following categories. Of course the concrete situation differs considerably form region to region on the continent and even from country to country in the same region and from diocese to diocese within single conferences.

a) The Indigenous Diocesan Priests

In many parts of Africa, where the local church is well established, indigenous diocesan priests form the vast majority of priests. In some such regions or local churchs there have been at times an expressed intention of excluding priests of other categories as outlined bellow from participating in any meaningful priestly ministry. The motives for such exclusive tendency may be racial, tribal or ethnic.

There is no doubt that, proper priestly missionary identity in such cases is greatly jeopardized. Things or attitudes which may be unfavourable to proper missionary work of priests may not be perceived as such for lack of critical perspectives of an outsider’s eye.

There are other areas on the continent where indigenous diocesan priests are an insignificant minority either due to the fact of recent evangelization of the region or because the indigenous population pertains to another strongly missionary religion such as Islam.

In such areas the church is greatly perceived as a foreign reality of little or no concern for the local people. To be relevant in such situations, priests often feel obliged to get involved in social activities which are only very indirectly pertinent to priestly ministry.

In the context of material poverty facing priests in many parts of Africa, such involvement is social activities leads quite a number of them to leaving their ministry

altogether to obtain better living conditions.

b) Fidei Donum Priests

The fidei donum priest is a reality also in Africa mainly after the second Vatican Council. During the first years, fidei donum priests came to Africa from the European Churches which sent the first evangelizers to the continent. In Tanzania for example, the main supply of Fidei donum priests were the Italian dioceses. Soon the Italians were joined by Yugoslavians, Poles and other East Europeans.

Today, there are quite a number of dioceses in Africa which are supplying fidei donum priests to other African dioceses within one Episcopal conference and even to other countries within and outside Africa.

The needs for priestly ministry on the continent being so great, one would tend to give

priority to the supply of fidei donum priests within the continent. This may reduce the temptation of wanting to join the “fidei donum” institution mainly as a means to escape from the materially and socially poor conditions obtaining in many African countries.

c) Priests Belonging to Religious or Missionary Congregations

The first priest evangelizers of almost all parts of Africa were foreign missionaries. For the most part these priest missionaries came from West Europe, United States of America and Canada. For years they laboured to bring the good news of the Gospel relying entirely on material and spiritual resources from their various countries of birth.

When one visits a church cemetery like that of Bagamoyo on the Indian Ocean coast of Tanzania, one cannot but admire the indomitable zeal, total dedication and the love for the gospel which animated the initial evangelization. The missionaries died very young and were constantly replaced by even larger numbers of missionaries from their countries.

Today the Western World is no longer in position to continue with that initial zeal for the Gospel in Africa. One cannot expect any more as many priests as before to come to Africa from the West. Concomitant to the reduction of Western Missionaries is the reduction in material assistance for evangelization. The two matters, namely the reduction of priest missionary flow from Europe and America to Africa and the reduction of funds flow are wrongly connected together in the minds of simple not well informed minds in the false logic of cause and effect.

Fortunately, traditional missionary societies of priests from the West have been numerically replaced in an adequate way by indigenous members of the same congregations or societies as well as by members of new congregations both indigenous and from outside such as India, the Philippines and Poland. The one remarkable difference between then and now is that now there is not the same amount of material assistance as then.

II. The State of Priestly Vocations in Africa Today

One should not generalize too much about the vocation situation in Africa. There are remarkable differences between regions on the continent. However, we can say that vocations to the priesthood in most of sub-Saharan regions are many both to religious as well as diocesan priesthood.

While we rightly speak of many vocations to priesthood in Africa, we have to realize that the number of vocations is far from being sufficient for the actual needs of the fast growing churches on the continent. Just to give one concrete example; in the Archdiocese of Dar es Salaam, we do not have more than 150 priests (diocesan and religious) for a total population of more than 5 million and the catholic population of 1.2 million.

Also in the context of priestly vocation we must note the fact that due to the shortage of formatters adequately prepared for the task of forming future priests, the end product of our seminaries is far from being adequate also.

A final consideration with regard to vocations to priesthood in Africa is the socio-economic situation in the pastoral ministry of the African priest. Due to poor economic and social situation in many African countries today, young people may want to join the priestly ministry with wrong motivations: to obtain a better social or economic condition in life. With such motivations, the consequences for the priestly ministry are always deplorable.

III. Suggestion for Improvement of the Identity of Priestly

Ministry in Africa

From the above described situation of the Identity of the priest in Africa and the state of vocations to priesthood I like to humbly suggest the following steps to be taken:-

1. In the first place, it is necessary to provide adequate conditions and personnel

for the formation of priests in the African seminaries. Well prepared priests

should be available for formation work in the seminaries rather than look for

greener pastures in other parts of the world.

2. The Institution of “Fidei Donum” priest on the continent should be better

developed with first priority given to intra-conference and intra-continent

exchange of diocesan priests.

3. To foster more determinately vocations to religious and missionary

congregation within Africa.

4. To create in Christ’s Lay Faithful the awareness that the obligation to maintain the church is primarily theirs; whatever help which may still be obtainable from other churches should be regarded as subsidiary

5. To discern more keenly the motivations in the seminarians for wanting

to become priests.

6 To discourage any inclinations among seminarians and priests to foster

attitudes of tribalism, ethnocentrism and any other form of discriminatory

spirit.

Polycarp Cardinal Pengo

Archbishop of Dar es Salaam