A New Church for an Apostolic Vicariate in Ethiopia
Thursday, March 26, 2015

Project Code: 118-01-19

The Apostolic Vicariate of Jimma-Bonga – situated in Western Ethiopia and with an area of some 20,000 square miles– is larger than New Jersey and almost twice the size of Maryland. Here the number of Catholics is growing, although a large proportion of the population still follow traditional pagan religions, and many are forest dwellers and hunter gatherers. In 2010, there were 22,000 Catholics within the vicariate, but steady growth has led to close to 30,000 today. When the bishop comes to the parishes to administer the Sacrament of Confirmation, the line of candidates seems to stretch out endlessly…

The Catholic faith is not entirely new in all of this area. In the town of Araba, European missionaries were active in the first half of the 20^th century, founding a mission station and engaging for decades in a richly blessed apostolate. They were then expelled from the country under the Marxist dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam, whose brutal persecution of all religions included the destruction of churches, the confiscation of monasteries and convents belonging to religious communities and the arrest, imprisonment and even murder of bishops, priests and ordinary Catholic faithful. His reign of terror from 1974 until 1991 was responsible, according to Amnesty International, for the deaths of some 2.5 million people.

Thankfully, since then the Church has succeeded in recovering at least some of her former properties and in gathering the faithful together and re-establishing religious life once again. But still in Araba there is nothing but a small, grass-roofed wooden chapel that is far too small for the size of the present community. To put it more plainly, it is nothing more than a grass hut.

Now Father Zecharias Dejece and his congregation want to build a proper church, and they are counting on our help to be able to do so. As Father Zecharias wrote to us, “The construction of a worthy church building will have a positive influence on the spiritual life of these devoutly spiritual Christians. God will then be fittingly worshipped and praised. The most Blessed Sacrament of the altar will be devoutly adored and will find a worthy place in the Tabernacle. It will help to promote unity among Christians and encourage a sense of mutual love and belonging.”

“The Catholic Church will be more visibly recognizable as the family of God. In this church the Catholic faithful will gather together with one heart and one spirit in order to pray, to hear the word of God together and receive the Sacraments.”

Father Zecharias also knows that there are a significant number of people who are interested in the Catholic faith but who are then put off by the sight of the chapel, and so they do not come back again. He is hoping that in future many more people will embrace the Catholic Faith and that even already baptized Christians will want to play a more active part in the life of the parish, especially the young people. He is delighted that so many of these young people already participate actively in the Church, and he hopes that still more will do so.

We have promised him $6,500 so that he can build the new church. Will you help Father Zecharias to build this church and so to spread the faith in Ethiopia?

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