AMECEA: Executive Board Considers How 20th Plenary Assembly Takes Place in Case Coronavirus Pandemic Continues

Sr. Jecinter Antoinette Okoth, FSSA

The Executive Board of the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa (AMECEA) region in their recent meeting are contemplating ways on how the bishops will be able to carry on the 20^th Plenary Assembly scheduled for next year in Tanzania following the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic that is still a concern in most of the AMECEA countries.

“As we look forward to next year when the AMECEA bishops are to have the plenary, we are aware that the pandemic is still a challenge but the Board is working on how the region can go about this,” AMECEA Secretary General Fr. Anthony Makunde said after the meeting.

“The Board members resolved that the Plenary Assembly preparations continue: meanwhile the region is on the lookout as per the situation of the pandemic in the different conferences and in the hosting country Tanzania, whether it will be possible to have it on site or online,” Fr. Makunde added.

The board whose role among others is to oversee AMECEA activities on behalf of the Catholic bishops in the region also discussed issues pertaining to member conferences especially those undergoing various challenges due to the pandemic.

“The AMECEA Chairman Bishop Charles Kasonde expressed solidarity with conferences who have lost their bishops in the recent past and also with South Sudan where Bishop-elect Msgr. Christian Carlassare was shot and is still in hospital recuperating,” Fr. Makunde said adding that “we continue to pray for him and for the people of Rumbek Diocese, South Sudan.”

The Board members during their online meeting Thursday, May 6, also appealed to all AMECEA member conferences to offer humanitarian support to the people of Tigray, Ethiopia who have been in crisis since the war broke between the Government security forces and the regional forces of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

They said in their statement requesting for the appeal that “The people in the affected communities need food, medication, shelter, water and other health and sanitary items in such a volatile environment.”

The AMECEA Secretary General also noted that the Executive Board members discussed the reports from the Secretariat’s departments and from all AMECEA institutions which include the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA), AMECEA Pastoral Institute (API) in Eldoret and the AMECEA Bakanja College.