SECAM convenes meeting of Africa’s Synodal team

Vatican News.

The Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), in collaboration with the African Synodality Initiative (ASI), has gathered members of the African Continental Synodal for a week-long meeting currently taking place in Accra, Ghana.

Prayer and discernment

The week-long meeting, which is the first of two gatherings, is meant to enable the Church in Africa to pray, listen and discern on the Document for the Continental Synodality (DSC).

The Synod experts’ meeting comes after the release of the Document for the Continental Synodality by the General Secretariat of the Synod on Synodality on 27 October 2022.

Continental Assembly

SECAM has since tasked the Continental Synodal Team, which comprises 25 experts from across the continent, to work out modalities to continue the discernment process, given the Continental Assembly scheduled for March 2023.

According to the SECAM Secretary General, Fr. Rafael Simbine Junior, during the Continental phase, the local Church is expected to be guided by the following three questions:

- Having read and prayed with the Document for the Continental Synodality, which intuitions resonate most strongly with the lived experiences and realities of the Church in Africa?

- What are the substantial tensions, divergencies and issues that have emerged as particularly important from Africa’s perspective and need to be addressed and considered in the next steps of the process?

-What are the priority areas, recurring themes and calls to action that can be shared by Africa with the universal Church and discussed during the first session of the Synodal Assembly that shall take place in October 2023?