Archive for the ‘Africa’ Category

Over 1,000 students, teachers, parish members, and others passionate about faith-inspired social justice will gather in Washington, DC, from November 12-14, 2011, for the 14th annual Ignatian Family Teach-In for Justice (IFTJ) sponsored by the Ignatian Solidarity Network.

The Teach-In is an opportunity for members of Jesuit institutions and partners to gather for learning, prayer, networking and legislative advocacy on Capitol Hill. Teach-In attendees represent twenty-eight Jesuit universities, over twenty-five Jesuit high schools, Jesuit parishes, Jesuit volunteer communities, and many other Catholic institutions and organizations.

Keynote speakers include Jesuit Father Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator, Provincial of the East African Province of the Society of Jesus, among others.

Fr. Orobator is a lecturer at Hekima College Jesuit School of Theology, Nairobi, Kenya, the author of Theology Brewed in an African Pot and often presents on ethical and theological issues in church, religion, and society in Africa.

The theme of IFTJ 2011 is “The Gritty Reality: Feel It, Think It, Engage It,” derived from a speech given by former Jesuit Superior General, Jesuit Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, in 2000 entitled, “The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in American Jesuit Higher Education.” Kolvenbach said, “Students, in the course of their formation, must let the gritty reality of this world into their lives, so they can learn to feel it, think about it critically, respond to its suffering and engage it constructively.”

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Jesuit Father Stephen Rowntree was 17 when he joined the Society of Jesus in 1961. He saw it as a chance to seamlessly pair his faith with his desire to be a college professor.

“The thought was, I can do what I want, which is to be a college teacher, and I could be a priest, which is what God wants,” he said. “My identity was set. I would reflect now that God wanted what I wanted most deeply, and that is why this has been such a charmed life for me.”

Fifty years later, the Loyola University New Orleans philosophy professor is celebrating a half-century as a Jesuit. Rowntree’s teaching style has been driven by his engaging and energetic personality during his 35 years in the classroom. He said he likes to try to “rattle students’ cages” a little bit, but he does so with a purpose…

Rowntree’s work has not just focused on undergrads. He also has worked extensively to teach philosophy and ethics to seminarians studying to be Jesuit priests. From 1994 to 2001, he helped found Arrupe College, a four-year integrated philosophy, religious studies and humanities program for English-speaking African Jesuit scholars in Harare, Zimbabwe. Before that, he taught seminarians at Loyola for 10 years.

“It was a great adventure. We started out with an empty field, and within a couple of years, we had a fully functioning campus,” he said about his time at Arrupe College.

Read more about Rowntree’s life as a Jesuit at Nola.com.

Fifth grade students from Our St. Joseph Jesuit Parish Primary School in Kasungu, Malawi visit the site of the future Loyola Jesuit Secondary School with their headmaster (back left), Fr. Peter Henriot, SJ, development director of Loyola Jesuit Secondary School (back center) and Fr. Alojz Podgrajsek, SJ, project director of Loyola Jesuit Secondary School (back right).

Serving in Zambia on sabbatical in 1989 had a life-changing affect on Jesuit Father Peter Henriot. “Working in a village development project with local people and doing simple tasks did almost more for my education than all the other learning I gathered while studying and working in the United States. And at the end of that year, the people there gave me the best gift – the desire to stay.”

And for the next 21 years that’s exactly what Fr. Henriot was able to do, having joined the Zambia-Malawi Province (transferring from the Oregon Province) while working with the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection in Zambia after having spent the previous 16 years with Center of Concern in Washington, D.C.  And, then in 2010, he was assigned to another purpose – to help establish Loyola Jesuit Secondary School (LJSS) in Malawi.

Although it is a country rich in natural resources, Malawi, whose nickname is “The Warm Heart of Africa,” continues to be one of the poorest countries in the world in terms of human development. It ranks a somber 153 out of 169 on the United Nations Human Development Index, which is largely caused by lack of educational opportunities for its youth.

“There simply is no future for Malawi without better education for the young people,” Henriot states.

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In August, Jesuit Father David Hollenbach, conducted a workshop for leaders of the Catholic community of South Sudan in the national capital of Juba and addressed South Sudan’s Parliament on the role of moral values in shaping the institutions of the World’s  newest country. In his article for America Magazine about the experience, Fr. Hollenbach reflected on the sizable Catholic population in South Sudan, and how the lengthy civil war has weakened the country’s society with the Church left as one of the few functioning bodies.

“The Catholic community in South Sudan especially shares the responsibility to help shape the life of the new country. Because of this important role, Catholic Relief Services and an association of women’s and men’s religious orders named Solidarity with South Sudan invited me to conduct a week-long workshop in August for church leaders. I was asked to speak about how the Catholic understanding of social justice and peace could contribute to the development of the new country. It was a humbling privilege. What follows sketches some of the suggestions I made, moving from the foundational principle of Catholic social thought to several more practical recommendations…”

1. The protection of the human dignity of every person, which requires active participation in the life of society, is the core responsibility in all social interactions, and protection of the most basic requirements of human dignity is the particular responsibility of the new government of South Sudan.

2. The people of South Sudan should be helped to become active citizens through civic education that teaches them how to work together for the common good of all.

3. Citizens should hold government officials accountable for using the power bestowed on them to serve the common good of all, and the capacity of citizens to hold officials accountable should be strengthened.

4. Every person is to be treated with reverence and respect, independent of ethnicity, race, or religion; tribalism is a serious threat to attaining the justice and peace that independence promises and must be resisted.

5. National unity depends on justice in the distribution of land.

6. National unity depends on justice in the distribution of the proceeds from the extraction of natural resources such as oil.

Click below to listen to an interview with Fr. Hollenbach on Radio Bakhita, the leading FM station in Juba, South Sudan.

More than one million people live in Nairobi’s squatter community of Kibera, including 30,000 orphans of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Recently, Chicago Public Media spoke with Jesuit Father Global Terry Charlton, co-founder of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, a unique Catholic high school designed specifically for young people affected by HIV and AIDS in the Kibera slums.

In 2001, as Charlton visited people suffering from AIDS, he kept hearing a repeated concerns for the children of those suffering, primarily about the child’s ongoing education.

“There is free universal primary education in Kenya, but all secondary education, including at the government schools is for a cost, and a cost that would be far beyond the means of these people mired in poverty because of their illness, not able to hold jobs and that sort of thing. So in 2003 our school decided to sponsor 12 of their children for freshman year of high school,” said Father Charlton.

Working to help more children in the same situation, Charlton opened a school for 25 students in 2004. Through the support of many people from around the World, plus a $600,000 grant from the U.S. Government, they have been able to build a school that now accommodates 280 students.