CEPACS NIGERIA: Bishop Mfumbusa Urges Adaptive Measures as CEPACS Marks 50 Years in the African Church
Sr. Henriette Anne, FSSA
As the Church in Africa marks 50 years of the Pan African Episcopal Committee for Social Communications (CEPACS), Bishop Bernadine Francis Mfumbusa of Kondoa Diocese, Tanzania has called upon the CEPACS members to consider reading and responding to the signs of the time in relation to its mandate of using modern means of mass communication for evangelization.
In the two-day meeting to mark the Golden Jubilee of CEPACS in Lagos, Nigeria under the theme “CEPACS at 50: towards promoting a synodal church in Africa through social communications”, the Local Ordinary of Kondoa Diocese, noted that the need to read and respond to the signs of the time is because of the difference of what was modern in 1973 and what is modern in today’s world.
In his speech, he acknowledged that CEPACS has faced a lot of disruption in fulfilling its mandate ranging from technology disruption which has come from mass communication to social communication, analog to digital, and AI (Artificial Intelligence) driven news, revolutions, change of actors, and change of control, from government to Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft.
He explained further that in the 1970s, news dissemination was often centralized with national entities, the media was subjected to government regulations and control, and the presence of gatekeepers who controlled the flow of information. At the same time, the church had its identity, controlling information through documents such as “Nihil Obstat, imprimatur, and by having its own printing press”, unfortunately, he continued, the church is experiencing babel mediascape, with no “gatekeepers, fake news, disinformation, misinformation, deep fakes, and doxing”.
To overcome all these obstacles, Bishop Mfumbusa recommended the need for training in media literacy as a core course to be introduced in formation, development programming, and coding skills, among others.
