ZAMBIA: Church Partnerships Should Not Be Anchored on Money, Projects, Says Bishop Benjamin Phiri
Bishop Benjamin Phiri
Mwenya Mukuka
Bishop Benjamin Phiri of the Catholic Diocese of Ndola says Church partnerships should not be anchored on money or projects as the main aim but evangelisation.
Bishop Phiri told members of the Catholic Committee facilitating the planned revival of the partnership between Zambia’s Ndola Diocese and Limburg Diocese of Germany that salvation of souls must be the aim of such partnerships.
The Bishop of Ndola has just constituted a committee that will facilitate the revival of partnership with Limburg Diocese which has been dormant for some years.
The committee includes priests, a Religious Sister plus representatives from the women, men and youth ministries.
Bishop Phiri said the two dioceses will be signing a new Memorandum of Understanding that will guide their corporation.
“The group that I have just been meeting, I have just constituted to spearhead this partnership programme between the Diocese of Ndola and the Diocese of Limburg. It is not something that is starting now. It has been there before for a long time from the times of Bishop De Jong. However, for some reasons in between, it had collapsed. So, the Bishop of Limburg wrote to me and asked, ‘Why can’t we resuscitate this programme?’
“The importance of this partnership is that it constitutes what we call a pastoral solidarity. So, it is a pastoral solidarity between the Diocese of Limburg and the Diocese of Ndola in which two dioceses support each other in various areas. The pastoral life in the Church involves everything which is the life of the Church.”
Bishop Phiri said the Church need to sustain herself in order to carry out her mandate of evangelisation and salvation.
“Some people might think that when there is a partnership then we are just talking about projects and so on. No! The only reason why projects are involved is because they are the means which can help us become self-sustainable, so that the local Church does not depend on handouts all the time. Time will come when it will not be possible to be able to run the Church from donations. We need to be able to invest, to be able to do those things which will generate funds for us to be able to run the Church. So, this pastoral solidarity is going to help us achieve that as it had done also in the past,” he said.
“I was orienting the team so that they have a proper focus. To tell them that what we are re-establishing is not for us to find funds for hand-to-mouth kind of business. No, this is so that the two sister Churches can help each other. People might say, what kind of partnership is that between a poorer diocese and a richer diocese in terms of money but the Church is not about money. The Church is about human resources. You need pastoral agents and you also need people who are the flock,” Bishop Phiri said.
“So, a time will come when Limburg will have no personnel in terms of priests, perhaps even the Religious to be able to do what they need to do. And they will come and ask us for help because we are sister Churches, and we are going to provide them support. So, the team that I have selected is going to prepare a new MoU. When that MoU is looked at by our colleagues in the Limburg Diocese then we will come up with the final document that will be our guide for us to be able to work together as sister Churches,” the bishop said.
