The initiative, a part of the Sisters Branded Value Project (SBVP), aims to equip sisters with business skills and resources to ensure the sustainability of their ministries across East Africa.

Sr Celestine Nasiali, the regional coordinator of SVBP, said the conference is a pivotal learning opportunity.

She said it is vital that they learn from other social entrepreneurs outside their ministry so they can emulate these people, return to their institutes and implement the skills in their Social Ministry.

The programme, implemented by Strathmore University, supports sisters from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia.

Participants acquire knowledge in enterprise management and networking, empowering them to drive financial sustainability in their congregations' social ministries.

Equipping Sisters for sustainability

The programme was launched in response to a 2021 Conrad Hilton Foundation survey highlighting the challenges faced by Catholic sisters, particularly where there is limited funding and sustainability in their ministries.

By integrating social entrepreneurship into their work, sisters can secure the necessary resources to continue providing essential services.

Dr Angela Ndunge, the Investment Director of SBVP, noted the importance of training in helping sisters sustain and expand their outreach to underserved communities.

Ndunge said it is essential that the great work the sisters do is sustainable and that they earn money to support themselves.

She said that many of the sisters involved in the programme come from congregations that provide crucial services to the marginalised and in the running of schools and hospitals.

As Ndunge pointed out, these ministries often fill gaps left by the private sector.

"When you're looking for a place to get services, a lot of times the sisters will be the ones who are available, especially to those who are unable to access private sector services."

Focussing on women entrepreneurs

The Sisters Branded Value Project focuses on women-led businesses, recognising that women often face significant barriers in starting and sustaining enterprises.

Eunice Kimani, Strathmore University's head of Entrepreneurship Programmes, emphasised the importance of supporting women entrepreneurs.

"We are focusing on women because they are the ones running very successful businesses, especially in Kenya and even across Africa" Kimani said.

"Yet they face a lot of challenges when trying to set up and grow their businesses."

Source

• NTVUganda

Kräutler, a prominent voice for social justice, is disappointed with the Catholic Church's preparations for the second session of the Synod on Synodality.

"The Synod cannot retreat ‘from the evil world' into incense-filled sacristies.

"Trying to attract the masses with pomp and grand liturgical events is the wrong approach" writes Kräutler in a published article for Herder Korrespondenz.

The focus is on internal Church issues

Kräutler argues that the working document focuses primarily on internal Church matters rather than addressing real-world issues like poverty and social injustice.

He expresses concern that the Church risks becoming "preoccupied with itself", especially in the aftermath of the abuse scandals that have rocked its credibility.

"The document recommends listening to people who experience poverty and marginalisation" Kräutler said, "but has the Church only just realised that it is important to listen to these people?"

He says that genuine synodality would require Church leaders to move beyond the "sheltered security of the Church" and into the "abhorred insecurity of the peripheries".

Referencing Vatican II's Gaudium et spes Kräutler writes that, in principle, the Synod's working document is directed more 'ad intra' and not the "joy and hope, grief and fear of people today, especially the poor and oppressed of all kinds".

Call for reforms in Church leadership

Kräutler, who served as bishop in Brazil's Xingu diocese until 2015, called for deeper reforms, particularly the need to remove "barriers to a synodal church".

He noted that certain priests and bishops continue to cling to a traditionalist view of authority which he believes only widens the gap between Church leaders and the laity.

"Church ‘authority' does not elevate anyone above the people. On the contrary, we are here ‘for' the people and travelling ‘with' the people of God" Kräutler said, calling this the true spirit of synodality.

Women's role in the Church

Kräutler also emphasised the critical role women play in the Church, particularly in Amazonian communities where they serve as worship leaders, catechists and religious teachers.

He criticised Pope Francis for removing the topic of women's ordination from the synod's agenda, adding that gender justice in the Church is long overdue.

"If women have been keeping the Church alive in many communities, ‘gender justice' must now also arrive in our Church" Kräutler said, urging that women no longer be denied ordination.

Kräutler has long been an advocate for the rights of indigenous people and environmental protection, particularly in South America.

Source

• Katholisch.de

He will visit Indonesia, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea and Singapore. No doubt some Australians will grumble that he passed so close without dropping in to visit us.

For the 87 year-old Pope such travel will be arduous. His determination to continue visiting distant lands might well lead us to ask why he gives precedence to this over his other responsibilities as Pope.

The Pope's place in the Church

This question leads to reflection on the Pope's place in the Catholic Church.

As the Bishop of Rome, he is seen as the successor of St Peter and St Paul who both spent time and were martyred in Rome.

In Catholic tradition he shares Peter's role in the Church of strengthening his brother Bishops in living and spreading their faith in Jesus. This is primarily a pastoral service, a fact easily overlooked in the many controversies about the extent and limits of his powers in the Church.

Over the centuries the strengthening of faith in the local Churches has taken many forms.

Bishops of Rome have gathered the Church together in times of dispute about the implications of faith, have helped heal divisions in the Church, have been a centre of communication and of preaching the Gospel, been a sign of unity in the Church, adapted Church law and liturgy to changing circumstances, and have ensured that the prayer and devotional life of the Church reflect the Gospel.

Although public attention has focused on their exercise of power, their service through letters, preaching and teaching, holiness of life, and concern for the universal Church as well as for the local church of Rome, has been more significant in confirming the local Churches in faith.

The contribution of each pope has reflected his personal gifts and the influence of the culture of his time as well as his office. Like the rest of humanity Popes have also sometimes acted unwisely and rashly.

Papal visits

Travel has only recently entered the Papal armoury.

Like most people of their time Bishops of Rome generally travelled only when they were forced to flee to other towns or were dragged there as prisoners.

ln the nineteenth century the revolution that created Italy meant that the Pope ceased to be the ruler of his own territory and won some sympathy for being the ‘Prisoner of the Vatican'.

Even after they made peace with the new Italian State, Popes stayed home to be with their people in times of depression and war.

Pope John XXIII was the first pope to travel outside Rome for over seventy years.

Paul VI then travelled extensively, including to Australia in 1974.

Pope John Paul II, however, made travel central to his mission of encouraging the Churches in their faith.

He was a commanding presence with a gift for powerful public speaking and for such dramatic gestures as kissing the ground whenever he arrived at an airport. Particularly in nations where Catholics were discriminated against, as was the case in his native Poland, his presence stirred hunger for freedom.

Pope Francis has put an equal emphasis on travel to strengthen his brothers in the faith.

He also puts an equal weight on gestures to match his and words in preaching the Gospel. His style has been popular rather than patrician, showing a gift for the common touch.

He became famous for travelling simply, for leaving cavalcades to embrace crippled people waiting by the side of the road.

And in a nation divided by its attitude to refugees, one of his earliest journeys was to the isle of Lampedusa to mourn the deaths of refugees who had died at sea.

He has constantly reached out to people who are marginalised.

Pope Francis and marginalised people

Underlying these differences of style, however, is an enduring challenge that faces an international Church. It is to negotiate the tensions between universality and particularity and between the centre and the margins.

In any Church the focus of its members is local. It is about the relationship of each individual person with God, spreading out to the relationships in family and in local congregation, and so extending to city, state, nation and finally to world.

It is easy for commitment to the local to become parochial, and for Catholics in other nations and their concerns to be seen as a foreign country. Any local Papal intervention can be seen as a bureaucratic impertinence by head office.

'In these most recent travels, as in previous ones, Pope Francis preaches the Gospel through homilies at Masses, but equally through the warmth of his feeling for people who are doing it hard, through his concern for a world marked by discouragement, and through the people with whom he associates.'

It is also easy for people in small local Churches marginalised by their small size or by discrimination against them to see themselves as neglected and marginal, and for people in well-endowed churches to identify their perspectives and priorities with those of the universal Church.

In this world, the visit of the Pope who represents the Universal Church can be powerful in giving it a personal face and in encouraging people who feel marginalised.

It allows their gifts and concerns to be recognised outside their own local Church, and for the priorities of the Universal Church also to wear a personal dress. In strengthening faith, the choreography of the papal visit will be as important as the papal words.

Pope Francis has clearly seen the priority of the Church to lie in reaching out to the margins.

This calls for Catholics in parishes and dioceses to reach out to people who are marginalised by poverty, illness, flight from persecution. They must also reach out to people on the edges of the Church who belong to other religious groups and none.

These priorities are embodied in his visits.

He gives precedence to small Churches in non-Christian and developing nations, seen most recently and spectacularly in his visit to Mongolia with its few thousand Catholics.

In this week's journey he has chosen to visit East Timor and Papua New Guinea, and to nations and cultures in which Catholics are a small minority, such as Indonesia and Singapore. His journeys also reach out to Catholics living in cultures that where Catholics are small minority.

In all his engagements, he encourages the local churches by meeting as an equal the local heads of state and leaders in civil society, by meeting as friends the local Bishops and groups of clergy and catechists, and to celebrate Mass in large gathering of Catholics.

He also embodies the priorities of the Church at the margins. In this journey he will meet groups of young people in schools and programs for the poor, groups of people who are elderly, ill and with other disadvantages.

In countries where Christians are a minority, he will also meet groups from other religions on their home ground. In Indonesia and East Timor, too, he will gather informally with his fellow Jesuits.

In these most recent travels, as in previous ones, Pope Francis preaches the Gospel through homilies at Masses, but equally through the warmth of his feeling for people who are doing it hard, through his concern for a world marked by discouragement, and through the people with whom he associates.

His visits are gestures of encouragement.

• First published in Eureka Street
• Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.

And he says the church has also probably fallen short in fully meeting the needs of recent migrant communities.

Dew said this when he was commenting on new research by the Wilberforce Foundation which showed a sharp decline in the percentage of New Zealanders who identify as Christian.

Dew is the Archbishop of Wellington and vice-president of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference (NZCBC).

"The findings from this survey speak to Pope Francis' latest exhortation, in which he says 'we are all called to be holy by living our lives with love and by bearing witness in everything we do, wherever we find ourselves,'" Dew said.

"As the members of the NZCBC, we are aware of our leadership role and the role of faith in the public forum.

"We welcome the opportunity to listen more intently, talk more compassionately and understand more deeply how we can walk with New Zealanders in contributing to the wellbeing of all in our society."

During the Synod in Rome in 2015, Dew talked about the need for "new language" to explain church teaching on sexuality.

He spoke of compassion and inclusion.

"When we have documents which talk about intrinsically disordered or being evil, it's not going to help people.

"We've got to find a way to express what the teaching actually says, but not putting it in ways that people feel they're being branded and being told that they're bad or evil."

Source

• Supplied: Amanda Gregan: Communications Advisor - NZ Catholic Bishops Te Huinga o nga Pihopa Katorika o Aotearoa
• www.youtube.com
• nzcatholic.org.nz
• nzherald.co.nz
• Image: youtube.com

The Brothers' Melanesia district covers Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Bougainville, and the Pacific district includes New Zealand, Samoa and Kiribati.

Almost 50 Brothers attended a gathering at Marist College Ashgrove, in Brisbane, from January 11-13, to consider the challenges and opportunities facing them in the Oceania region.

Pacific district provincial Br David McDonald said Br Turu, the order's superior general, in raising the need to reach out to the margins, had asked the Brothers: "If not you, then who? And if not now, then when?"

"And I think those are very pertinent questions for the Brothers," Br McDonald said.

"That's uppermost in my mind.

"I keep saying to them, ‘I know the answers to those questions - of course it's you and of course it's now'. "But they need to come to that realisation themselves as well."

"I think the reality for the Brothers is that we have always been very strongly associated with the schools," said Australian provincial Br Peter Carroll

But we're at a point now where we have very fine schools transmitting faith and teaching in the Catholic tradition, and the Brothers have contributed markedly to that in centuries previous but that's not where the need is now, so much."

"It can still be, and we still have Brothers in schools and they have particular gifts in terms of leadership and teaching, and we're not looking necessarily at moving them out of that."

"We're also aware that the need is probably less institutional now and more community-based and hopefully more allied with local parish communities so that there's a witness value which the Brothers give to the place where they minister but also to the local Catholic community."

"And I think it's very likely that we will be looking at more opportunities to move into non-institutional, community-based works."

Source

• catholicleader.com.au
• Image: catholicleader.com.au

He plants himself behind a makeshift altar, light-blue stole draped over his peacoat, and asks the people milling about to "gather 'round."

Some settle into folding chairs; others stand. A regular known as "Mama Kelley" passes out sheets with the service printed on it.

Then, a man with a plastic bag stuffed with belongings interrupts.

"Sir," the man says, "could you spare some change?"

"Not tonight," the Rev. Mr. Harris replies gently, "but afterwards we have coffee and sandwiches … "

The "Church Beyond Walls," now marking its first anniversary, is designed to draw some of the neediest residents who might not otherwise feel welcome at an indoor church.

Some come for the service; others for the free coffee, snacks, sandwiches and bins of donated hats and gloves.

But while the free food is, no doubt, a draw, its organizers say, it's not the purpose.

"What I don't want this to be is a charity," the Rev. Mr. Harris said. "I want this to be a community." Continue reading.

Source: Providence Journal

Image: Providence Journal

Rev. Kekapa Lee says "Our island culture requires that we welcome all visitors with Aloha, but we have learned from the devastation NAFTA brought to our islands that we cannot remain silent during international trade talks and allow ourselves to be marginalized. Silence now risks further devastation for our people, our Pacific Island economies and our families' every day lives. All Pacific Island nations and cultures must have a seat at the table, not just the few."
Source

• Market Watch
• Image: Not the Whitehouse.govt1