Africa, “fastest growing continental Church in the world”: Ghanaian Catholic Archbishop at SECAM Plenary in Rwanda

“This continent also has over 65 percent of its population below the age of 35, making it a huge potential of vitality, creativity, and zeal with its attendant challenges,” Archbishop Palmer-Buckle said. 

He noted that the Church’s rapid expansion presents both an opportunity and a responsibility to become a guiding force in the African society.

Credit: ACI Africa

“Definitely, because of Africa’s enormous potential in human and natural resources, this is why it is unfortunately the theatre of geo-political and economic interests as well as the theatre for proxy wars and conflicts, which must also be reckoned with when taking into consideration the forward march of the Church’s evangelization mission in Africa,” the Catholic Church leader said.

Themed “Christ, Source of Hope, Reconciliation and Peace”, SECAM’s 20th Plenary Assembly will build on what the 19th Plenary Assembly that was held in July 2022 mandated Africa’s Catholic Bishops to accomplish.

According to the “last version” of the program that SECAM leadership shared with ACI Africa, the July 30 – August 4 Plenary Assembly that the Episcopal Conference of Rwanda (CEPR) is hosting will have sessions for reports from SECAM President and Presidents of Regionals Conferences,. There will also be presentation of documents, solidarity messages from SECAM partners, and a “closed session” for Bishops and SECAM Secretaries among other activities.

Credit: ACI Africa

In his July 31 presentation, Archbishop Palmer-Buckle said the various SECAM plenaries have afforded occasions to hundreds of Bishops attending to participate in pilgrimages, and tours.

The plenary, he said, is also an opportunity for participants to experience what it means to belong to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church “from one’s local context to the regional and continental and even inter-continental, global and universal.”

He said, “The choice of themes along the 55 or so years of SECAM has been dictated by ecclesiological and/or pastoral challenges in the evangelization mission and development of the universal Church, or sometimes by the particularly geo-political or socio-cultural context of human development on the continent.”

Archbishop Gabriel Charles Palmer-Buckle of Ghana’s Cape Coast Archdiocese during his presentation at the 20th Plenary Assembly of members of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. Credit: ACI Africa

The 74-year-old Archbishop, who started his Episcopal Ministry in January 1993 as Bishop of Ghana’s Koforidua Diocese, emphasized that “after fifty years of existence, SECAM has to become a household word for the Church-Family of God in Africa.”

“It is high time, we the Local Ordinaries in Africa, made a deliberate effort at growing the Church in Africa to be truly Family of God and exporting it beyond the shores of our continent,” he said, and added, “I believe the time is now for greater interest in academic research and scholastic work. This should be included in the ratio studiorum of our Seminaries and our ecclesiastical formation centers.”

Archbishop Palmer-Buckle called on the Church in Africa to embrace its missionary role in the universal Church by sharing its “wealth of vocations, youthful exuberance, vitality and creativity” with the world.

He said the time had come for the African Church to recognize its prophetic mission and to act decisively “in the spirit of UBUNTU and Synodality.”

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Credit: ACI Africa

“My dear brothers, in this day and age of secularization, of dechristianization, and the dwindling of the Christian Church in the west, while Africa is growing phenomenally in the Christian faith and in vocations to the priesthood and religious life, I believe it is time that SECAM and the Church in Africa put our acts together,” the Catholic Archbishop said.

He urged African Church leaders to generously offer their gifts to the global Church: “Like the wise men, let us readily give of our endowments, human, material and spiritual. We have a lot to offer.”

Credit: ACI Africa

Archbishop Palmer-Buckle further encouraged African Catholics to embrace a renewed understanding of their unique calling, saying, “Let us embrace the call of the Spirit to come once again to the rescue of the Church.”

He said that Africans can “rescue” the continental Church “by coming to understand that God has always had a purpose for the Church in Africa.”

“In spite of the formidable challenges, we are being called to ‘be missionaries’ to ourselves and beyond in the universal Church, to have ‘an African Christianity’, and to bring Africa’s experience of Christ to humanity,” the Archbishop said.

Credit: ACI Africa

He cited Benedict XVI’s prayer for Africa, saying, “May the Catholic Church in Africa always be one of the spiritual lungs of humanity, and become daily an ever greater blessing for the noble African continent and for the entire world.”

“Let this be our mission for the coming 25 years!” Archbishop Palmer-Buckle said.