Coronavirus Pandemic Brings Vital Lessons on Self-Sustainability and Self-Propagating

The coronavirus pandemic and everything associated with it, which includes lockdown and shut down of places of worship have brought with it great lessons and wake up calls that many would either cherish or loath depending on what the situation has changed in their lives. For the priests at St. Mary Mother of God Catholic Parish in Yambio, Rev. Fr. Luis Nvuekama Tomoata and Rev. Fr. Tombe Charles, their lesson has been that they cannot continue depending on collections from Christians for their upkeep and the running of the parish activities.

As a result, the two priests embarked on activities that included farming as they laid out plans for future plans for other activities that would generate income. This would ensure self-sustainability as generally the support from outside is slowly dwindling.

 The parish is among others that have taken seriously the initiative of the coffee plantation which was launched last year by His Lordship Barani Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Tombura-Yambio (CDTY) as a diocesan program meant to kick out poverty among the people of Western Equatoria.

 The parish during the coronavirus pandemic lockdown took the opportunity to plant coffee and as such, over 1300 coffee trees in a 3-acre land belonging to the parish. Hopefully, in three to four years' time, the coffee will be mature and hopefully bring good income to the parish.

 According to Fr. Luis who is the parish priest, apart from coffee, they have also managed to plant more maize and ground nuts for the parish’s sustainability and diocese at large.

 This work was accomplished, thanks to members of some parish devotional group, who offered their time

to voluntarily attend the Parish farm. Previously, these devotional groups have often come to voluntarily assist at the farm especially during planting and harvesting and through their work, the parish has been able to sustain itself.

 Fr. Luis has underscored the need for churches to be self-sustaining, self-propagating, and self-evangelizing saying that gone are the days when the Church in Africa depended entirely from the West.

 “Our Church needs to seriously embrace the spirit of self-supporting and self-propagating Church. To be self-propagating and self-evangelizing for instance means that we must always strive to raise our young people in faith and if possible encourage them to join the seminaries and the convent so that we can have future religious leaders,” Fr. Luis said adding that St. Daniel Comboni said that evangelizing Africa will serve Africa by Africans.

“I am concerned about vocations to the priesthood and to religious life, let us try our level best to encourage our young ones and bring them uprightly because it is one thing to have a good number of seminarians and another thing to find seminarians who are doing the right thing. I, therefore, encourage vocations as this will make us a self-propagating Church.”

On the issue of a self-supporting church, Fr. Luis said that what they have started in the name of humekodabe (local contribution for the diocese and for the parish) has to continue. “We have to care for our priests. It is our sole responsibility. There is no more money coming from Rome or anywhere else. I have written several proposals for a number of projects and the response is always negative; if the situation is like this now in 2020, how will it be in the year 2030, there will be absolutely nothing,” he expressed.

By Elias Ginana Mangbondo