AMECEA: AMECEA Bishops Eulogize Bishop Mfumbusa as a “Singular Gift to the Church”
Sr. Jecinter Antoinette Okoth, FSSA
“Bishop Mfumbusa was a singular gift to the Church in Africa, and AMECEA in particular,” Bishop Charles Sampa Kasonde, the Chairman of the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa (AMECEA), and the Local Ordinary of Solwezi, Zambia, has eulogized Bishop Francis Mfumbusa of Kondoa Diocese, Tanzania, who died on Tuesday, April 14, while undergoing treatment at Benjamin Mkapa Hospital in Tanzania.
In a condolences message addressed to Rt. Rev. Wolfgang Pisa, the president of Tanzania Episcopal Conference (TEC), Bishop Kasonde wrote on behalf of the Eastern Africa Bishops, “In a continent where Bishops with deep expertise in social communications are rare, he stood out as a shepherd who understood with conviction that the Gospel must be proclaimed through the communication channels of every age.”
He mourned the loss of one of the continent’s most gifted and forward-thinking episcopal voices in social communications.
Bishop Mfumbusa, who served as President of the Pan-African Episcopal Committee for Social Communications (CEPACS), has been remembered not only for his pastoral leadership but for the breadth and depth of his service to the wider Church in Eastern Africa.
For many years, the AMECEA chairman said, Bishop Mfumbusa served as a member of the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) Council and has been credited with playing a pivotal role in “a turnaround strategy that restored the university to stability following a period of significant turbulence.”
The grief expressed by Bishop Kasonde was deepened by the circumstances of Bishop Mfumbusa’s passing. Pope Leo XIV, on April 9, appointed him as a member of the Dicastery for Communication in Rome, a recognition he described as long overdue, and an acknowledgment that the African Church has much to contribute to the universal mission of digital evangelization. The appointment was cut short, only five days into the new mission, before Bishop Mfumbusa could fully realize its possibilities, making the loss all the more painful.
In his tribute, Bishop Kasonde remembered Bishop Mfumbusa’s final appearance among his AMECEA peers just weeks before his death, when he participated in a training workshop on Artificial Intelligence for bishops in Nairobi.
He encouraged the bishops to embrace new digital tools with apostolic boldness, Bishop Kasonde explained, adding that it was a moment entirely in character for a man whose life’s work was defined by the conviction that the Church must engage the modern world on its own terms.
The AMECA Chairman extended condolences to the bishops, priests, religious, and faithful of the Diocese of Kondoa, and to Bishop Mfumbusa’s family and loved ones.
