Lilongwe Archdiocese Reviews Progress, Plans for 2025

Auxiliary Bishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Lilongwe, Right Reverend Vincent Frederick Mwakhwawa says the archdiocese has made significant progress in fulfilling its plans for 2024, particularly in areas to do with pastoral development, social development, and administration.

Bishop Mwakhwawa made the remarks on Friday, 20th December 2024, during a planning workshop held at Msamba Catholic Centre in Lilongwe.

“In the first place, we have to thank God that most of the commissions and departments have fulfilled their plans which they made last year. I should say some of the plans in order to achieve the mission of the Archdiocese of Lilongwe in building the kingdom of God and helping people to experience the salvation of God especially here on earth, but also as we go to heaven,” said Bishop Mwakhwawa.

Despite the progress made in 2024, Bishop Mwakhwawa emphasized the need for integration and collaboration among different diocesan commissions and departments in 2025.

“We are also encouraging integration, that we work together, so each commission shouldn’t do things alone, they need others. Social development needs pastoral and communication needs pastoral, so we want this togetherness. Now we are talking about being together, communion, participation of everyone, so that’s the speed we want to move together,” explained Bishop Mwakhwawa

The auxiliary Bishop stressed the importance of planning together and working hard towards achieving the goals of the archdiocese.

“We want to plan and see what we can do. So the first thing is planning, and this planning, then we are going to sit down to see how best we surmount some challenges like financial resources, of course obviously we have to plan, to work hard, to look for more partners, because as a church, we are implementing, we are bringing interventions, we are helping people to experience love of God, experience salvation through various activities,” added the Bishop.

Jacob Mapemba, a member of the 2025 planning task force instituted by the archbishop of Lilongwe, His Grace George Desmond Tambala, mentioned some of the key priority areas which the departments and commissions have to consider in 2025.

“There are so many issues that need action for example in the department of pastoral issues to do with youth ministry, the family apostolate, issues to do with liturgical celebrations, issues to do with life in the deanery because the archbishop really wants most of the activities happening at the deanery level, so these are the key and of course the synod,” Mapemba said.

Mapemba is of the view that the Catholic Archdiocese of Lilongwe’s social development department needs to focus on resource mobilization to achieve its objectives.

“So, in-terms of social development, I think issues of resource mobilization that’s one of their mandates because the archdiocese needs money to adequately achieve its objectives, they need to attract more donors and having more projects because social development is there to address social needs of the people, of the poor and vulnerable people,” he said.

He added that the Catholic Archdiocese of Lilongwe, in its 2025 planning, will prioritize resource mobilization, financial sustainability, and strengthening its human resources to effectively address the social needs of the community.

“In-terms of administration and management, I think the key areas that came up were issues of finance control, having proper financial management systems, financial controls and financial sustainability. What can we do to make sure that the archdiocese is sustainable? And the third issue was the issue of human resources, ensuring the archdiocese has enough human resources, has adequate people, people with the knowledge and skills to help the archdiocese achieve its objectives,” He concluded.

In his remarks, Director of Social Services and Industries in the Lilongwe Archdiocese, Brian Odiambo, acknowledged a slight improvement on how the department has perfomed in the year 2024 compared to 2023.

“In 2023 the performance was much better. We saw a lot of cohesion in all the commissions, we also saw that there’s a lot of incorporation of pastoral aspect in the activities of the commissions, we also saw that Catholic identity was also much stronger last year,” explained Odiambo.

Odiambo added by disclosing plans of working much on resource mobilization in 2025 so that all interventions to be carried in 2025, are to be fulfilled.

“The most important of those interventions is ensuring that our human resource is robust, making sure that the workforce is well formed and established, once the workforce is well formed and established implementing activities will be much smoother so that will be our priority area that our people are well trained, the positions that are yet to be filled are filled up and that people have priority areas taken care of,” said Odiambo.

The planning workshop brought together various representatives from various departments and commissions with the aim of reviewing the progress on the plans of the year 2024 and identity areas for improvement in the year 2025