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The Bishop of Eswatini’s lone Catholic Diocese is calling for calm in the Southern African nation amid pro-democracy protests.
Catholic charity and peace foundation, Denis Hurley Peace Institute (DHPI), fears that lives will continue to be lost in the ongoing violence that is fueled by pro-democracy protests in Eswatini, the landlocked Southern African country that is commonly known as Swaziland.
All was well at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Parish in the Diocese of Manzini in the Southern Africa nation of Eswatini, popularly known as Swaziland, until Fr. Francis Onyango announced that Public Mass had been suspended. Fr. Onyango made the announcement that pierced the heart of an elderly woman who was attending Mass that morning on Wednesday, March 18.
Bishops from nine countries in Southern Africa have, under their umbrella body of the Inter-regional Meeting of the Bishops of Southern Africa (IMBISA), expressed their commitment to fighting human trafficking in the region.
The challenge of natural disasters in the Ecclesiastical territories within Southern Africa and how to deal with them and having financial resources are among the deliberations of the ongoing six-day workshop in Pretoria, South Africa, involving the coordinators of Caritas Southern Africa, with participants having come from Botswana, Eswatini, South Africa, as well as Namibia.
As youths around the world prepare for the next World Youth Day to be held in Portugal in 2022, Church leaders in Botswana, Eswatini, and South Africa have “approved in principle” the plan to have a Mini World Youth Day (MWYD) proposed for December 2020 in Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa.
The newly-launched pastoral plan of the Southern Africa Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) is expected to be “a light in darkness” for Botswana, Eswatini and South Africa, to guide the three countries on the path of evangelization in contemporary times, and possibly redeem the people of God there from economic instability, corruption and social evils to become, once again, “the model and envy of the world,” a section of SACBC members have said.