St Augustine’s Seminary in Bulawayo, the country’s second city, closed eight years ago and re-opened in January as a secondary school, shutting off the possibility that it might resume training priests.
This comes during a period of difficulty for local parishes, faced with declining congregations which prompted a symposium last month to discuss how to get parishioners back to Mass.
Archbishop Alex Thomas Kaliyanil of Bulawayo attended the symposium with local priests and lay people, to discuss why the local Church is struggling even as Africa is touted as the future of Catholicism.
Lay people at the symposium raised a number of concerns, suggesting that the decline was encouraged by mixed marriages and parents enrolling their children in non-Catholic schools.
They also said there was a “lack of openness to new ideas and poor preparation for liturgical celebrations”.
“This symposium is a beautiful start to make our Church great again and I propose that such programmes be held more often as they help the Church leadership to reflect on best ways of growing the Church,” Archbishop Thomas said.
However, local priests report that Bulawayo’s minor seminary also has dwindling attendance, and there are likely to be long-term effects from the present decline in vocations.
The difficulties for the Zimbabwean Church mirror those of the Church in the West, where rapid secularisation has led to a sharp decline in the numbers of priests and practising Catholics.
Yet statistics for 2023 reported an overall increase in the number of Catholics worldwide – with growth concentrated in Africa and the Americas – while the number of priests in Africa has also increased in recent years.
There were concerns locally that the problems in dioceses like Bulawayo could undermine the African Church’s role in combatting global secularising trends.