African Ministry to celebrate Year of the Family

African Ministry lays out plans for new year


By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press

The new year started more than a month ago, with the start of the new liturgical year, for the diocese’s African Ministry.
“On the first Sunday of Advent we declared the Year of the Family, with the theme “Ut Omnes Unum Sint (that they may be one),” said Father Enoch K. Kyeremateng, chaplain. He is a priest of the Kumasi Archdiocese in Ghana, who is serving here.    
“We continuously thank God for a successful liturgical year last year,” he said. “We reflected on the theme: ‘We wish to see Jesus,’ (Jn 12:21) and we declared it the Year for Youth and Children.” The young people were excited about their spiritual growth and asked for more social activities, and there were also gatherings for adults, he said.  
This year, he said, their guide will be “Familiaris Consortio,” Pope John Paul II’s 1981 apostolic exhortation about “the Christian Family in the Modern World.”
 Father Kyeremateng said the African Ministry wants to encourage parents to be educators and examples of prayer for their children, to promote evangelization in their families and to accept their role to build up God’s kingdom by familial love and unity.
“So when we talk of the Year of the Family, we are looking at two things,” he said. “We are looking at our African community as one – the family of God. Then, secondly, we are looking at … family life … parents and children as a family of God.
“So by the end of this year we hope that parents will assist in motivating their children to respond to the Lord’s call to the priesthood and religious or any other life in the academic world … good careers where they will be responsible … in faith … social life … everything.… We hope that we will have … couples having their marriages solemnized,” coming for the sacrament of matrimony, and that there will be a reduction in breakdowns of marriages and families.
“The role of the Christian family is very, very important,” Father Kyeremateng said. “And, in this modern world, we need healthy families who will be models and examples to the children, especially as we face the challenge” of exposure to social media; children need families to guide them in appropriate use of it.
“Among the things we plan to do is establishing more small Christian communities” named for saints, he said. The aim is to gather children and adults in homes to pray, reflect on Scripture readings for the coming Sunday, emulate their saint and eat together.
Also planned are more African Masses. St. Anthony of Padua Parish in Fitchburg is to start this month having weekly, instead of monthly, Sunday Masses at 12:30 p.m. in Swahili and English, Father Kyeremateng said. He and St. Anthony’s administrator, Father Juan Ramirez, and priests in the Boston area will celebrate the Masses. Even when the priest speaks in English the people will respond in Swahili, he said.
He said he hopes that at some point they will have weekly Sunday African Masses at St. Paul Cathedral, where there are currently no regular African Masses.     
Continuing weekly Sunday African Masses are St. Andrew the Apostle (a mission of St. Peter Parish in Worcester) at 11:30 a.m. in English and Swahili and St. Joan of Arc Parish in Worcester at 2 p.m. in Twi, a language of Ghanaians.
Last year Bishop McManus and bishops from Ghana visited the African communities.
“It was a big blessing and they want more of that,” Father Kyeremateng said. He said Bishop McManus is scheduled to celebrate Mass at 3 p.m. May 19 at St. Paul Cathedral for all the African communities in the diocese. At that Mass the African ministry will launch its efforts for the diocesan capital campaign, he said. All the African communities will work together “to help our bishop with his dream for the diocese.”  
Bishop McManus is to celebrate Mass Aug. 4 at St. Andrew’s for the community there and the community from St. Anthony of Padua, and Aug. 25 for the community at St. Joan of Arc, Father Kyeremateng said.
“We always thank the bishop for his spiritual guidance, for his love, for his pastoral zeal, charismatic enthusiasm that he has for the African Ministry,” he said. “He’s always ready … to celebrate Mass with us, to share the joy with us.”
He also expressed thanks to Father Richard F. Reidy, vicar general of the diocese, for his readiness to support him personally and the African ministry as a whole, and to the pastors for their pastoral support.
Other plans for the new year include a suicide-and-drug-use-prevention seminar March 30 at St. Andrew’s, a Lenten retreat for leaders April 13 at Holy Family of Nazareth Parish in Leominster, a vacation Bible school for children the first week of July at St. Andrew’s, a summer family picnic with details to be announced, a career guidance weekend for high school seniors and their parents Sept. 7, marriage seminars for singles and for married couples with details to be announced, and a cultural night and carol service in December at St. Joan of Arc.
“So we are looking forward to having a year full of nourishment … enlightenment … blessings, and a year full of love, peace, unity among ourselves as Africans,” Father Kyeremateng said