ZAMBIA: AMECEA Youth Gather in Lusaka for Pre-Synod Meeting
Organizing an AMECEA Regional Youth Day, developing holistic integral formation programs for the youth, creating awareness on existing documents and materials on sexuality and family planning as well as identifying new ways of evangelizing geared towards the youth are among the recommendations by the first preparatory meeting for the Youth Synod scheduled for October this year.
AMECEA Pastoral Department, in response to the call by Pope Francis to hold several consultative meetings at different Church levels prior to the Synod, has organized two preparatory meetings.
The first meeting took place in Lusaka, Zambia between 22nd to 25th August brought together Youth delegates who represented their respective Episcopal Conferences at the Pre-Synod meeting in Rome in March, this year; they were accompanied by their Chaplains.
At the meeting, the Youth Delegates had the opportunity to discuss the presentation made by each of them at the March pre-Synod; discussed the Final Document released by the Vatican after the Pre-Synod meeting; they also discussed summary findings collected by the AMECEA Pastoral Department on the Youth Synod, as well as the Working Document, Instrumentum Laboris, on the Synod for the Youth that has been released by the Vatican
During the opening of the meeting, AMECEA Pastoral Coordinator Fr. Emmanuel Chimombo said that the meeting was organized to offer an opportunity to the youth to air their concerns on issues that affect them and how best they want the Church help them considering that they are the future of the Church.
“We have brought the youth together, with priority given to those that went to the Pre- Synod meeting in Rome last March 2018. They have come with their Chaplains because they are the ones who have worked with them and know their challenges, difficulties and opportunities if at all the Church has to move forward within the AMECEA region,” Fr. Chimombo said.
Fr. Chimombo further disclosed that the meeting held at St. Dominic’s Major Seminary in Lusaka was intended to listen to the issues that the youths will raise before the Bishops, and which the AMECEA will present at the Synod as a region.
A second preparatory meeting organized by AMECEA Pastoral department is scheduled for 4th to 7th September in Nairobi-Kenya. It will bring together the Archbishop and Bishop Delegates who will represent the AMECEA Region at the Youth Synod in October.
The meeting in Zambia brought together 23 delegates from Ethiopia, Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and the host country Zambia. Eritrea and Sudan were not represented.
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By Mwenya Mukuka
