MISSION APPEAL

Every year during the summer months, the parishes of the Diocese host missionaries from around the world. These missionaries come to the parishes in the Diocese to explain the work that they do and to ask for our prayers and support for their various missions.

This year the Office for the Propagation of the Faith in our Diocese has assigned the Diocese of Kumbo, Cameroon, to visit St. Louis Parish. However, because of the ongoing pandemic a missionary is not able to visit us this year. I have been contacted by Rev. Ghenghan Mbinkar about this year’s mission appeal for the Diocese and assured him we will still support him in his work by taking a collection for him on the weekend of August 14th and 15th.

The Diocese of Kumbo was erected by Pope St. John Paul II on March 18, 1982. The Diocese currently has six main pastoral divisions. These are further divided into Parishes/ Pastoral Zones. As of December 2018, there are twenty eight Parishes and nine Pastoral Zones.

The Diocese covers an area of 8600 kilometers with a population of 867,000 as of 2013. The Catholic population is 19.6%. Other Christian groups include Presbyterians, Baptists, and some Evangelical and Pentecostal Communities. Other Religions are Islam and African Traditional Religions.

The current social-political crisis in Cameroon which has been going on since 2016 and the lack of political will to resolve the crisis, has affected the diocese drastically and has rendered many helpless. The non-functioning of the judicial system has led to lawlessness which has caused fear and tension among the civilian population and a lack of trust between armed groups and independent fighters. This, together with the non-functioning of schools over the past four years, the collapse of business establishments, the continuous decrease in security, increase in uncertainty, and fear of the unknown, has caused many people to migrate into other parts of the country and neighboring countries where they now live in very difficult conditions. The population left behind in the Diocese of Kumbo comprises mostly women and children who have no other means to escape, and their only hope now is the church.

The collection for the Diocese of Kumbo will assist the diocese in carrying out this huge burden which is now on the shoulders of the Church.