To the Bishops of Upper Volta (10 May 1980)
ShareOn Saturday, 10 May 1980, the Holy Father addressed the Bishops of Upper Volta, to whom he spoke of their concern for vocations and also of pastoral care based on “the properly African sense of the family.”
Brothers in the Episcopate,
1. As this journey unfolds in your African land, I never tire of expressing my joy at meeting, unfortunately too quickly, these men and women who are the Church in your countries, the kingdom of God who takes root and grows in you.
This joy is even greater when I meet the bishops, the spiritual leaders; of the new people, my brothers in the episcopate. And I am particularly happy, as I said, to pay his visit to dear Cardinal Zoungrana, who was the first African cardinal to come to see me in Krakow. We have just enough time, dear brothers, to evoke a few thoughts that are close to our hearts.
2. The first is our unity in collegiality. You live it among yourselves; we live it together, linking the Church which is in Upper Volta to the life and to the evangelical concerns of the universal Church. Collegiality is a structural element of the Church, a mode of government of the episcopate, to which our time, following in this an important teaching of the Second Vatican Council, rightly gives particular prominence. The fact of implementing it well, you certainly experience it every day, is a great support for our pastoral action, and also a great hope for increasing its effectiveness. But it is primarily on spiritual and theological grounds that we must build our episcopal collaboration, the source of our ministry being the person of the Lord.
I therefore encourage you to continue working to truly found your unity and that of your presbyterium in Christ. The latter is diverse; seek that its diversity is always a source of mutual enrichment, not of division or rivalry. And for that, you yourselves remain very close to your priests, very present to their difficult life. Your words and your examples will know how to orient ever more towards the service of the people of God the minds and wills of those who have given themselves generously to this mission.
Your dioceses are also diverse, with varied apostolic forces: you must face together the common tasks and the most needy sectors. This spirit of solidarity must also extend beyond your borders, in particular within the framework of the Regional Episcopal Conference of West Africa, of which Your Eminence assumes the presidency, and even within the framework of SECAM, for all Africa and Madagascar. You have to become more and more your own missionaries.
3. This leads me to share with you two primary concerns for evangelization and for the Christian fervor of your Church in Upper Volta. I want to speak of your concern for vocations, and also of a pastoral care which is based on the properly African sense of the family.
In addition to the “missionaries” whose peerless and always precious service everyone recognizes as a testimony to the universal Church, you have the joy of having many priests, men and women religious, seminarians from Volta, as well as many catechists. The mission of the Church would require more. It is an important part of your ministry to provide for the awakening and the guidance of priestly and religious vocations, through a solid formation, which has proved its worth in the Church, and which is well integrated into the African reality. We must never tire of explaining the deep meaning of this vocation in God's plan. To offer oneself to follow Christ with complete availability, at the exclusive service of his Kingdom, to devote one's strength and one's love to him in celibacy,
Through such priests, or religious, Christians will be helped to grow in personal awareness of their own vocation. Among them, the catechists, whom I still want to encourage through you, give a magnificent example of a lay Christian vocation placed at the service of the Church's mission. Paul VI himself wanted to decorate, five years ago, the centenary Simon Zerbo, the first Voltaic catechist and pioneer of the faith in your country.
4. For this mission, you have been pursuing, for several years, a pastoral effort aimed at showing that the Church is truly the family of God, where each has his place, where each is understood and loved. In this way, I hope with you, your Christian communities will benefit from a profound element of structuring, which will also constitute a concrete witness to the Gospel, and even a call for non-Christians. In this conception of the family there is thus highlighted the link between a fundamental reality and the Gospel revelation and one of the moral values characteristic of the civilization of your people.
5. There would be many more questions. Earlier I touched on the serious problem of the drought in the Sahel, which must give rise to more real, more concerted and more persevering solidarity throughout the world. I am also thinking of the fact that many of your compatriots adhere to Islam.
The two main religious communities, Catholic and Muslim, must therefore continue their efforts to respect each other, respecting on both sides what religious freedom requires, and collaborating when it comes to meeting the needs human beings of the populations and to their common good.
6. With you, dear brothers, I am full of hope, despite the difficulties, and I know your deep attachment to the Holy See and to the universal Church. The Lord has not promised us a life and ministry free from trials. He only assured us that he had overcome the forces of evil at work in man. This is why we must always bear in mind his missionary words pronounced after his resurrection: “Do not be afraid...I am with you always until the end of the world”. How can I best express my encouragement to you?
Your unceasing efforts in the service of the Lord will bear fruit. May the Lord bless each one of you, and all those you carry in your hearts, priests, men and women religious and faithful, each and every one of your dioceses!
© Copyright 1980 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Copyright © Dicastero per la Comunicazione - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
