AMECEA: Communicators in AMECEA Set for Jubilee in Rome, Ready to Learn New Communication Strategies
Sr. Jecinter Antoinette Okoth, FSSA
As the first event for the year-long Jubilee of Hope targeting communicators across the world is fast approaching, dozens of participants comprising the Presidents for Episcopal Communication Commissions and Directors of National Communication offices from the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa (AMECEA) region are set to be part of this major celebration in Rome.
Since the decree Inter Mirifica in 1963, on media of social communications and the pastoral directive Communio et Progressio in 1971, AMECEA bishops “organized a meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, 1973, and made resolutions on how to implement the decree. 50 years down the line, it is time to rethink those strategies in our context when digital technologies have dominated the communication landscape,” Fr. Andrew Kaufa the AMECEA’s coordinator for social communication said ahead of their travel.
From this jubilee celebration Fr. Kaufa said, the AMECEA conferences “will raise awareness among the bishops and national coordinators of communication on the new trends and pastoral approaches required. At the same time, the fact that the communicators’ conference will bring the bishops and national coordinators together, is in itself a synodal approach to doing Church communication.”
According to the cleric, since jubilee year is grounded the theme of the Church journeying together and inspiring the faithful with hope as they face the challenges of life, “national communication coordinators are committed to ensuring that the Catholic media apostolates engage with the people in the reflections of the theme even when the media, especially the social media get saturated with negative news.”
The jubilee celebration is open not only to AMECEA communicators but to all. In this case, recalling the Golden Jubilee of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar – SECAM’s Pan African Committee for Social Communications (CEPACS) that was celebrated in 2023, Fr. Kaufa notes that the eight regions under SECAM are not on the same page when it comes to the integration of communication in pastoral planning as some regions have invested more than others.
“This jubilee is another opportunity for all the participants from Africa to put their heads together once again, to explore new ways of doing church communication in Africa, and advise the African Church’s leadership through CEPACS and SECAM. This gathering taking place in Rome, might call for another gathering in the Africa context, be it at CEPACS or AMECEA level, to make a follow up on the jubilee and the communication conference that is taking place in Rome from 27th to 29th January,” he said.
