Vicariate Apostolic of Ingwavuma

INTER SERVOS
(Dec. 2012)

27.11.12
ZULULAND, S. AFRICA
Last week Sifiso Mchunu and I were invited to a birthday party: Londeka's. Londeka, a bright young girl was celebrating all of eleven years. So what was significant about that? Perhaps a little background will help. Londeka lives in kwaMsane township with her grandmother (Gogo) and unmarried mother. KwaMsane is our biggest concentration of Catholics with about 190 families living at close quarters. The township is divided into six small Christian com-munities (SCCs) which I visit twice a year during Lent and October (Propagation of the Faith) in order to acquaint myself with the people and their social circumstances and to animate the SCCs. During October Londeka ‘s gogo, who is the coordinator of the SCCs, accompanied me to all six groups. The programme is quite simple: Mass with a dialogue sermon, a report by the SCC chair with comments, a donation to the priest "for his petrol" and, at times some refreshments and chat. The atmosphere is very familiar, spontaneous and quite informative. This year Londeka attended most of the SCCs and in the course of the process, informed her gogo that when celebrating her birthday she also wanted a Mass. Gogo did the necessary negotiations and Sifiso also got an SMS inviting him to attend. Being closer to the world of an eleven year old I asked him to grace the occasion with the necessary "few words." So Sifiso kicked off the process with great oomph, reminding Londeka about her future and the importance of education as to key to open all doors.

From our Archives

Fr. John, a former Provincial of the Eastern Province, U.S.A., is a Professor of Canon Lawyer. He is presently teaching Canon Law in South Africa.

St. Alexis Priory, Merrivale, is a formation community of the Inter Southern African Conference, which consists of Servite jurisdictions of Swaziland/Ugan­da, Zululand, and Mozambique. It is associated with St. Joseph's Theological Institute in nearby Cedara. There are twenty in the community this year. Six members are temporary professed studying theology - four from Uganda, one from Zululand (Raphael Ntsele) and one from Mozambique. Of the ten pre-novices, who study philosophy at St. Joseph's, two are from the Zululand Vicariate (a South African and a Zambian); five are from Uganda; and three are from Mozambique.

As it has done every year for the last three or four years, during the month of November the priests of the Vicariate met for the Annual General Meeting at St Lucia. Fr Mandla Msweli was in charge of welcoming everyone with a braai on Monday evening.
Our first session was led by Fr Gabriel Afagbegee SVD. Born in Ghana he has been the director of LUMKO Institute for many years. He helped us all work on a vision for the Vicariate. As Fr Andre Cotton OSM put it during the morning: "A vision without actions is a dream, actions without a vision ... a nightmare!". We are all working hard and we risk forgetting we need a vision that will gather us all making sure it does not become a nightmare!
Fr Gabriel put a few questions to us in order to clarify where we see ourselves in this moment: Where are we now as Vicariate? How would we describe the pastoral structure of the parishes? What are the positive aspects we see? and what is it we are not happy about and we would like to change? What resources do we have at our disposal? Which resources we would need to have?

Friday October 19th dawned rather murkily. It had rained for most of the preceding week, and appeared to be following the same pattern. But by 10 o'clock the sun had pushed it's way through, and for the next few hours it remained bright and warm, if somewhat soggy. It seemed the people were not coming, and on the Friday of a wet week, would that be surprising?

By 10 o'clock, however, they were trickling in, and at 10.30 there was a sizeable congregation.

The memorial Mass was beautiful, celebrated by the bishop with 11 priests, Servite, diocesan and visitors. Our new deacon, ordained just 6 days earlier, performed all the deaconly tasks with great aplomb. The choir of Malusi Omuhle primary school led the singing with sweet enthusiasm, conducted by Sr Anna Rose. Fr Declan Doherty gave a short homily in English for the benefit of the overseas visitors, Dity's sister Renate and friends Gerd and Brigitte Reichenbach. Fr Mandla Msweli pre

ached in Zulu.