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Pastoral Activities Coordination
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Pastoral Activities The Ethiopian Catholic Secretariat Pastoral Coordination in response to Jesus’ mandate and command to mission and enlightened by the Gospel of Christ, has been working to promote the Catholic Church teaching and evangelization together with the Diocesan Pastoral Coordination offices. For the last 10 years, the national Pastoral Coordination has been working thoroughly to capacitate the pastoral agents at the national and diocesan levels for the betterment of pastoral services in the country. Several national and diocesan seminars and workshops have been conducted on different themes.. Pastoral Seminars At National Level Each year there has been at least one pastoral seminar for priests, sisters, and Catechists, laity and youth leaders on different themes. These seminars enabled all pastoral agents to deepen their knowledge in Biblical, Spiritual, Social, Catechesis, Sacrament, Christian Doctrine, family, Dignity and role of women, youth ministry, etc. and also the methods of spreading the Good News of the Lord to different categories of people as a whole. More than 1000 people have been capacitated by short term seminars/ workshops on different areas of pastoral fields. At Diocesan level The ECS Pastoral Coordination takes the coordination and facilitation roles for diocesan pastoral offices. Capacitating and equipping the pastoral agents with adequate knowledge of pastoral and social activities, so that they can easily render the expected service in their respective areas and localities. The pastoral plan designed in cooperation with all diocesan pastoral coordinators is implemented by each diocesan secretariat. The national Pastoral office organizes the resource people for the different areas of study in pastoral ministry. According to the pastoral plan of the year, the national pastoral coordination organizes seminars/workshops at zonal level (two/three dioceses together in central place where all concerned people could participate without traveling far. One of the major areas in which the diocesan seminars focused was on the Pastoral letter of the Ethiopian Catholic Bishops “The Church we want to be” The message is discussed in depth at parochial and also in the small Christian Communities for its implementation. The faithful together with their pastors have shown their readiness to implement and act according to the given guidance. The other pastoral area that has been studied was the role of the Laity in the Church and society, Youth ministry, self sustained church. The pastoral way of approach to HIV/AIDS infected and affected people was also one of the many topics dealt with. CATHOLIC CHURCH SYMPOSIUM The Ethiopian Catholic Church symposium took place on May 25-29 /2007. 10 bishops, Priests representatives, and Religious, Laity and youth representatives altogether 120 people have participated in the The topics that were presented and discussed were 1. The History of the Catholic Church in Ethiopia 2. Pastoral work The symposium was concluded with very remarkable resolutions which need due attention and further follow-up.
3. The Ethiopian Catholic Church Liturgy a) Work towards a common Ethiopian rite with full awareness of local conditions, sensitivities and realities. 4. Doctrinal Identity a) Involve the laity in exploring and understanding their unique Ethiopian Catholic identity. b) Promote doctrinal formation at all levels. 5. Ecumenism: a) Acknowledge the good ecumenical relations that exist at daily basis among Ethiopians and work towards moving from an informal to formal leadership level. b) Start awareness from the grass root level on the meaning and aim of Ecumenism. c) There is a threat so there is a need (wish) to see the threat to be solved through mutual understanding in all churches. 6. Self reliance: a) Encourage greater awareness and responsibility by the laity for their contribution to the Church and its activities. b) Develop and utilize a database for existing Catholic human resources in the country. The symposium gave the opportunity to discuss on the common issues and challenges that the Church at present faces. It has also been good time for all people of God to come together and discuss on the need, the gaps and shadows which need immediate and close attention by all concerned persons of the Church. All who participated in the symposium reflected upon freely on the issues. The symposium helped each and every one to look back the past journey of Ethiopian Catholic Church and to look forward to the future with better and well organized methods of evangelization. The Catholic Book Center The Catholic book centre was opened 15 years before and providing service to the whole public in distributing religious books locally printed and imported. The books translated into local languages are selected by pastoral coordinators of the ten dioceses. Their importance and demand is well studied and presented to the bishops and translated and printed only when approved by the bishops. More than 100,000 (one hundred thousand) copies of religious books have been printed and distributed over the last ten years. One of the many books translated into Amharic and printed was the Universal Catholic Church Catechism (Compendium) The book centre also imports books from Pauline publications in Kenya and India. In the past ten years the book centre purchased more than 80,000 books in English and distributed. Debre Zeit Socio-Pastoral centre. Debre Zeit town is 45 km far from the Capital Addis Ababa to the East. The national pastoral coordination has got 3,000 m2 of land from the municipality of Debre Zeit in order to build a centre for ongoing formation programs at national level for youth and laity, and also use the center for spiritual retreats of different people; clergy and religious. The centre will be a permanent national Socio - Pastoral centre (ongoing formation centre) Implementation strategies The national pastoral coordination office together with diocesan pastoral coordinators has similar approach on how to go forward in the implementation process. Different materials like religious books and other Church documents from the national office would be printed and distributed to the dioceses. Diocesan coordinators are responsible for the implementation of the pastoral programs of their respective dioceses. The national pastoral coordination office organizes seminars at zonal and diocesan levels to capacitate the evangelists in their work and the programs. The national coordination office makes resources available for people to run the seminars and workshops. The running of the seminars is covered by the national pastoral coordination. Networking and communication is the vital method to plan and work in common. Therefore the strategy is to work hand in hand with mutual understanding with the dioceses so that the intended objectives could be achieved. Constraints Most of the time the planned pastoral activities could not be implemented and reach to its intended goals this is because of financial constraints. Future strategies The ECS Pastoral Coordination will follow the strategic plan which has been exercised for the last 10 years and which is also very practical to accomplish the designed projects ECS pastoral coordination studies the pastoral strategic plan of diocesan offices and designs a national strategy on how the national pastoral plan is produced and implemented The recently structure Family and Laity Unit will take off in consultation with the National Laity Council and the Family Life Promotion programs Address:
Ethiopian Catholic Secretariat
This page was last updated on 10/10/2009 |
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©2005 Ethiopian Catholic Secretariat |