Preparations for Conference on Consecrated Life in Kenya Underway, Call for Early Registration of Participants

CANAA || By Fr. Don Bosco Onyalla, Nairobi || 17 September 2015

Preparations for a conference on consecrated life scheduled to take place in Nairobi in just under a week are underway, with the personnel organizing the event calling on the participants to avoid last minute registration.

In a message addressed to the Superiors of the various religious congregations and societies in Kenya on the necessary preparations for the conference, the Executive Secretary of the Religious Superiors’ Conference of Kenya (RSCK), Br. David P. Mahoney, called on the superiors to consider registering their members by Friday this week.

“Superiors, please don’t wait until Tuesday’s meeting at Dimesse to remit your own payment and that of your confrères. We hope to know by this Friday the names of every religious attending the Conference, so that nametags can be printed,” Br. Mahoney stated and provided various options of paying the one thousand Kenya shillings (US$10) per participant, including the Kenya’s popular mobile-phone based money transfer service, M-Pesa.

“Payment for whole groups of religious through congregational offices is certainly the ideal,” Br. Mahoney continued in the message.

He clarified that the conference will be “open to professed religious men and women and all the clergy,” adding, “novices and postulants are not included, but they are welcome to attend the closing liturgy on the Saturday.”

The three-day Conference, which will be graced by the Vatican-based Prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, João Cardinal Bráz de Aviz, will begin at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) next Wednesday, 23rd September, and continue until Friday, 25th September.

On the eve of the first day of the Conference, on September 22, Cardinal Bráz de Aviz will preside over the Holy Eucharist and interact with the cloistered nuns of Kenya at the Subiaco Center for Spirituality in Karen, before meeting the Bishops and Major Superiors in Kenya later in the day at Dimesse Spirituality Centre in Karen, Nairobi.

There with a closing Eucharistic celebration at the Tangaza University College Grounds on Saturday, 26th September.

The Select Catholic institutions in Kenya organizing the event include the Commission for the Clergy and Religious of the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB), Tangaza University College, the Association of Sisterhoods of Kenya (AOSK), and RSCK.

“Religious women, and this certainly includes Sisters studying at CUEA and elsewhere, should communicate with the Executive Secretary of AOSK, Sr. Agnes Wamuyu,” Br. Mahoney indicated in his message to the Superiors of Religious Orders and Societies in Kenya.

In a phone interview on Wednesday, Sr. Wamuyu told CANAA that out of the 162 women Religious Orders in Kenya, she expected at least one hundred Orders to take part in the planned Conference.

“We look forward to the Cardinal’s message to the Superiors of the religious congregations and Bishops,” Sr. Wamuyu told CANAA, making reference to the Tuesday gathering of Cardinal Bráz de Aviz together with Bishops and Major Superiors of the women and men Orders and Societies in Kenya.

“This is going to be a unique forum, the first one of its kind in the history of my five-year tenure as AOSK Secretary General, and perhaps in the history of this country,” Sr. Wamuyu told CANAA, expressing the hope that the meeting will foster unity and collaboration among the Church leaders who will be meeting.

On Monday evening, Br. Mahoney told CANAA that 65 out of the 78 men’s congregations had confirmed attendance of the Tuesday meeting.

“Because of space limitations, only one member per congregation may attend. Those attending are being asked to share rides so as to reduce traffic and save fuel,” Br. Mahoney advised in a message to the Superiors.

The planned Nairobi Conference is in line with the Year of Consecrated Life (YCL), which officially started on the first Sunday of Advent, November 30, 2014 and will conclude on the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, on February 2, 2016.

In his letter announcing YCL, Pope Francis urged religious communities to guard against gossip, jealousy and pettiness in community life, to live “in synergy” with other vocations in the Church, and to “step more courageously from the confines of our respective institutes and to work together.”

Organized under the theme “Consecrated Life in Africa Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” the Nairobi Conference is expected to provide an excellent opportunity for the consecrated in Kenya to respond to the aims of YCL as outlined by Pope Francis, namely, “to look to the past with gratitude; to live the present with passion; and to embrace the future with hope.”