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An African Experience

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National Elective Chapters

In October, together with Fr. Ben, I spent three weeks in Africa in Zambia for the fraternal and pastoral visit, and in Tanzania for the National Elective Chapter preceded by a seminar on formation.

I left "in fear and trembling" aware of the enormous differences that I would have found in language, mentality and culture... I kept asking myself if I would be able to communicate (not counting translators) with these distant brothers, who have been asking for a meeting with the General Minister of the SFO for years. I continued asking myself what they really needed and what I would really be able to offer them. So I tried to prepare for it by reading everything that I could lay my hands on. Not only "Il Messaggio del Sinodo Africano" (1994) and the Apostolic Exhortation, Ecclesia in Africa, (September 1995), but also articles, papers and interviews that have been printed at the same time as the Synod.

From this brief experience I had a few surprises and some facts confirmed.

To begin with the "surprises", I must say they are all positive: Above all I was struck by the organisational level of the SFO in the two countries that I visited. I found that the Secular leaders were exceptionally well prepared and active and quite autonomous in Zambia. If I reflect on so many friar-dependent European fraternities, I must say that many Africans are way ahead of us. They know how to organise their meetings in ways that are more adapted to the real needs of their own members, alternating formation with prayer and festive moments, which are perfectly integrated. Even recreation, made up of songs and dances and small sketches are not ends in themselves but a desire to transmit a concrete experience for moral and spiritual teaching. I learned a great deal about the family and social life in Zambia and in Tanzania from these sketches which the young and the old participated in with great spontaneity and fantasy. Each of those sketches was "passing from life to the Gospel and from the Gospel to life", without unnecessary words and complicated reasoning, but showing the actuality of daily life.

Another surprise was the ability of the Africans to pay attention and assimilate. The responses of the work groups in the seminar in Tanzania were always appropriate, short and relevant to their daily life. There was neither, as it often happens else- where, any showing off by the group leader, nor repetition of stereotype formulas and common phrases, but they appeared to be eager to learn from the practical indications to be applied to their own reality.

And, finally, I was surprised by the readiness of the African Secular Franciscans to make great sacrifices in order to participate in the formative meetings. The annual district retreats in Zambia lasted three days and had a very large number of participants. In Tanzania, the representatives of 16 regions out of a total of 19 were present at the seminars on formation (6 days) and at the Elective Chapter (3 days). Some of them had to add 3 or 4 days' travel for going and coming! It is quite true that time has a different value than in the Western world, but the fact still remains that these Secular Franciscans are hungry for formation and are enthusiastic to participate when the occasion is offered.

And now to the "facts confirmed". There exists also for the SFO the problem of financial resources which must permit the African Church to face the needs of the missions and to fully assume their own responsibility. There is much to be done at this level to avoid real risks for the Franciscan (and Church) Fraternities living artificially through financial or other "transfusions" and nourished by baby food provided by others, condemned to an eternal begging and an intrinsic fragility which shall never permit them to reach their own objectives and realise the value of their own gifts and richness received by the Holy Spirit.

Also here in Africa exists the problem of unity of the SFO within the context of the Franciscan Family. Certainly here the weight of tradition and of centuries of controversy has minor importance. On the other hand there is felt the consequence of a poor and fragmentary presence of the Religious who offer guidance and spiritual animation in the territory. Each Missionary Order has its own area of influence and the contacts are very rare with the Orders operating in other areas of the same country. Yet, in Africa exists an exceptional organisation of collaboration among Friars Minor, Conventuals and Capuchins. It is the Centre of Interfranciscan Formation "St. Bonaventura" of Lusaka (Zambia), where the clerics of the three branches of the First Order study together. But then, in practice, each one tries hard to cultivate his own field and ignores almost completely what is being done hundreds and thousands of kilometres away. Sometimes the Superiors of one or the other branch have their seat in different countries and rarely have occasion to meet so that the unity of spiritual assistance remains only an abstract idea that has little possibility to be put into practice.

Even in Africa the friars' love and attention for the SFO express, in many cases, a conviction and a personal choice rather than an orientation on an operative level in the community or in the Order to which they belong. They should, therefore, make a common effort to bring into the Franciscan areas a "structure" by which an organised and faithful lay group, puts down roots and spreads, in this culture and society, a Franciscan outlook on life, which is so similar to the African soul and which is a response to its needs, hopes and aims.

If I may draw a conclusion about this African experience, it is for the validity of the seminars on formation rather than for other types of intervention and help. The CIOFS Presidency had already started a program of this type for the Republic of Central Africa, and the fruits were definitely positive thanks to the work of Mimi Def. Now the seminar in Tanzania is open to the same valid prospects. It is a road to be taken willingly and with conviction, but the costs cannot be sustained by the Africans: the SFO National Fraternities must also repair what others in the world have inflicted on the Africans by slavery and colonialism.