Why a Second Synod for Africa?
As Pius Rutechura puts it, “in convening the Second Synod of Africa, the interpretation is that the Church in Africa has an unfinished agenda!”[1] That agenda is in the area of reconciliation, justice and peace. The Instrumentum Laboris asserts that “the present synodal assembly is to be considered in the continuing dynamics of the preceding one.”[2] The pastors in Africa feel that further discussion needs to be done on the problems already treated at the preceding Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops and taken up in the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Africa. At the time, they used the model of the Church in Africa as the Family of God which evangelizes through witnessing: ‘You are my witnesses’ (Acts 1:8). At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the Church wishes to continue to reflect on her mission of communion and her commitment to serve society in proclaiming the Gospel from a new vantage point, that of being “the salt of the earth” and “the light o
