Let’s “do necessary groundwork” to Evangelize Effectively amid Increasing Challenges: Cardinal in South Africa

Nairobi, 10 August, 2024 / 9:19 PM

Wilfrid Fox Cardinal Napier of South Africa is calling on his colleagues in the Episcopacy, members of the Clergy, and women and men Religious to put in place strategies that will make them “effective agents of evangelization”.

In his presentation during the August 2 session of the ongoing synodal palavers, Cardinal Napier whose topic of focus was, “The relations between Bishops and religious in Africa today”, called for what he described as “necessary groundwork”.

“It is up to us, the Bishops and the Religious in Africa today, to do the necessary groundwork to make sure that we both become and remain the most effective agents of evangelization in increasingly difficult circumstances,” the South African Cardinal said.

The South African member of the Order of Friars Minor (OFM), who was at the helm of South Africa’s Durban Archdiocese before his retirement was accepted in June 2021 at the age of 80 shared his prayer intention.

 “My prayer is that God will bless our efforts as He did those of the founders of our congregations and the founder of our Church,” he said during  the ninth session of the palavers that have the Pan-African Catholic Theology and Pastoral Network (PACTPAN) has organized in collaboration with the Conference of Major Superiors of Africa and Madagascar (COMSAM).

The Cardinal went on to reflect on the October 1975 “directives for the mutual relations between Bishops and Religious in the Church”, Mutuae Relationes, describing it as “a key document, which seeks to ensure that the relations between Bishops and Religious are kept on an even field in order to advance the Church’s mission as positively as possible.”

“The central concern of this document is to regulate those relations through negotiations and assigning contracts or agreements which define the rights and obligations of each party,” he said, adding that mutual contracts and agreements define and regulate relations between Episcopal Sees and Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (ICLSAL).

Considering the changing circumstances, Cardinal Napier said, some sections of Mutuae Relationes need to be revised.

Relations between Local Ordinaries and members of ICLSAL require “great prudence” and enlightened discernment in line with the criteria and canonical norms enforced by Vatican II, he added. 

Once ICLSAL are established, the Cardinal said, they “are to be helped in acquiring juridical status and becoming autonomous in the management of their own work and their respective sources of income.”

He also reflected on the September 1995 Post-Synodal Exhortation, Ecclesia in Africa , saying in No. 94, St. John Paull II called for a spirit of communion and cooperation between the Local Ordinaries and members of ICLSAL.

The 83-year-old South African Cardinal, who started his Episcopal Ministry February 1981 as Bishop of the Diocese of Kokstad in South Africa also advocated for the fostering of “Religious vocations to the Contemplative and active lives”.

The selection of candidates for Religious Life should be done “with great discernment”, he said, adding that those responsible need to ensure that the selected candidates “receive an integral human formation, as well as one that is solid in its spiritual, doctrinal, apostolic, missionary, biblical, and theological dimensions.”

“This formation is to be faithfully and regularly updated through the years”, Cardinal Napier said.