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Nigeria’s Bishop Emmanuel Badejo of Oyo Diocese, who is also the Bishop-President for CEPACS has announced that African Bishop-Chairmen and Secretaries of Communications from Africa are meeting in Accra, Ghana from 6 June to 9 June 2016.

Known by its French acronym, CEPACS is the Comité Episcopal Panafricain pour les Communications Sociales or in English - Pan-African Episcopal Committee for Social Communications. It is one of the committees of The Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) which has its headquarters in Accra, Ghana.

Bishop Emmanuel Badejo says that this week’s meeting in Accra seeks to rally, strategise and re-energize Church communications on the African Continent.

According to Bishop Badejo, it was the wish of the First African Synod that social communications in Africa be revived under the auspices of the CEPACS.

“The Post-Synodal Exhortation of the 1994 Synod of Bishops for Africa,  ‘Ecclesia in Africa’ urged that “programmes of continental cooperation which exist in Africa, like the Pan African Episcopal Committee for Social Communications (CEPACS), be encouraged and revitalised. That revitalization will only attain relevance if CEPACS can rise to the challenge of animating the Church in Africa to tell her story at every level from parish through the diocesan; to the National and Regional Episcopal Conferences and on to a worldwide audience. It is a daunting but necessary task that requires not just hard work and careful strategies but abundant prayers from the Clergy and faithful alike,” Bishops Badejo said.

The meeting in Accra has assembled Bishop-Chairmen and Secretaries of Communications from the eight Episcopal Regional Conferences on the Continent. The African communicators have been joined by representatives of Catholic international media organisations, partners and other Church pastoral agencies from outside Africa to chart. Together they will chart a way into the future,” Bishop Badejo explained.

CEPACS as a committee of SECAM was restructured by the 5th Plenary Assembly of SECAM that was held in Yaoundé, Cameroon, in 1981. It was approved by an Episcopal committee with a mandate to take up all matters concerning Social Communications that come under the aegis of SECAM.

One of the core mandates of CEPACS is to stimulate, promote and co-ordinate the Church’s mass media activities both on the Regional and African Continental level.

(Fr. Paul Samasumo, Vat. Radio)

Email: engafrica@vatiradio.va

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