Guest at the SECAM Bishops' Conference for Africa and Madagascar, August 2025
by Deacon Michael Wielath, Germany
I have been a deacon with secular employment in the diocese of Rottenburg Stuttgart in Germany since 2013. In my job I work as an editor at radio horeb, which is the German station of Radio Maria. As editor, 2nd chairman of radio horeb and commissioner for the missionary Africa projects, I received an invitation this summer to the 20th meeting of the SECAM (Bishops’ Conference for Africa and Madagascar). The Bishops’ Conference usually takes place every three years, this year from 30 July to 4 August in Kigali Rwanda under the motto: “Christ, source of hope, reconciliation and peace”. The location of Rwanda was of course chosen very deliberately, as the country and the church there are in a special situation of reconciliation 31 years after the genocide. Over 100 bishops and 13 cardinals gathered with a few invited guests. It was a great honour for me to take part and to gain a further insight into the hopes and challenges of the Church in Africa.
For over 7 years I have been travelling in sub-Saharan Africa to help set up new Radio Maria stations, we see ourselves as a voice of peace and reconciliation. For many bishops and priests, Radio Maria is the opportunity to stay in contact with the faithful in prayer and pastoral care, not only in remote areas. On my travels, which are always connected with meetings with bishops and cardinals, as a permanent deacon who lives a celibate life, I am of course also a witness to the diaconate after the Second Vatican Council. Unfortunately, the permanent diaconate is not yet an issue in most of Africa, but I am quite confident about it.
At the SECAM conference, I was particularly moved by the way the bishops discussed the current issues facing the African Catholic Church. At the beginning there was a reflection on the history of the African Church and a central sentence that Pope Paul VI said in his address to the first meeting of SECAM on 31 July 1969 in Kampala Uganda: “You Africans are now your own missionaries.”
The reflection and the look ahead were characterised by the question of what pastoral challenges the African Church will face in the future. What role can it play in relation to peace and justice in the individual countries and can SECAM, the Bishops’ Conference, be heard here as one voice.
As a participant, I was able to attend the entire conference and experienced a bishops’ conference that is struggling very intensively for the future on its continent and is rather impatient in this struggle. The Church has a healthy self-image with a view to the current issues of the continent, the bishops are anything but quiet when it comes to looking at peace and justice in the countries. The most important topic was a pastoral concept for the coming years, which, based on the words of Pope Paul VI, focusses on vitality and missionary activity for one’s own continent.
As a deacon who sees both sides, has experienced the German Church on the ground and has an insight into the Church in Africa, I am very hopeful for the future. From my perspective, we are all challenged to rethink and re-live the global church. In this holy year in which we are all pilgrims of hope, the African Church has placed an emphasis on Christ the source of hope, a hope that also goes hand in hand with Pope Leo XIV, who will certainly set a new missionary accent in the future.
The conference concluded with a moving joint pilgrimage to the pilgrimage site of Kibeho, not far from the border with Burundi. It was here that Mary, the Mother of God, appeared to three young women from 1981-1989, revealing herself as the “Mother of the Word”. The message of Kibeho is multifaceted and speaks to our times.
( kibeho-sanctuary ).
The author: Deacon Michael Wielath (here with Cardinal Protase, Tanzania) lives in Ravensburg, Germany and is a member of the IDC.