Jesuit says African church challenged to care for pastoral workers

Published: 2004-06-24

NAIROBI, Kenya (CNS) -- As the number of African vocations increases, church officials face a growing challenge to care for their pastoral workers, said a U.S. priest who has worked in Africa since 1985. Jesuit Father Edward Brady, who works with the justice and peace task force of the Nairobi-based Sudan Catholic Bishops' Regional Conference, said the church also must work at "breaking the culture of violence" in East Africa. He said because of problems in their personal lives priests and nuns sometimes find it hard to fulfill their church jobs. For instance, he said, he talked to two priests in Nairobi whose mothers had been in refugee camps for 15 years. Many Sudanese priests are "psychologically stressed" because of decades of civil war in their country, Father Brady told a group of foreign visitors in June. He said when a bishop offers such priests a week's vacation some of them do not want to return home, because relatives add to the stress by pressing them for money; they assume the men are rich because they are priests.

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