Fr David Rowan SJ to Head Consecrated Life Body (LCCL)

Fr David Rowan SJ, Jesuit regional superior in South Africa, has been elected president of the umbrella body for religious congregations and orders in Southern Africa.

The new head of the umbrella body for religious congregations and orders in Southern Africa sees vocations and social justice issues as matters of concern during his tenure.

Fr David Rowan SJ, the Jesuit regional superior in South Africa, will serve a two-year term as the new president of the Leadership Conference of Consecrated Life (LCCL) in Southern Africa.

As president of the LCCL, Fr Rowan told the Spotlight.

Africa news site, his role is to oversee the executive of the association and — working with the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference—carry out their mandates set for the following year.

Migration, human trafficking, the protocols of dealing with other organisations, and racism are the four main areas of apostolic concern.

“We have various portfolios in the executive trying to coordinate our activities better in these areas,” said Fr Rowan.

Vocations—specifically fewer people entering religious orders — and problems across various sectors including education and health, are also among the challenges faced by the LCCL.

“These are the challenges we as a group of religious orders in Southern Africa have to face, and to find out how we can respond to these challenges that form part of our reality and reinvent religious life,” he said.

Fr Rowan explained that the LCCL is also “trying to work at cooperating more with the bishops”, with whom they meet every three years to discuss these concerns.

“We look at what the SACBC is doing, then we look at what [the LCCL] can do as religious. So I think there’s a bit of a confluence, and that’s why we have this meeting to make sure that we’re not working against each other, and try to complement each other’s work,” he said.

An initiative that the LCCL and the SACBC are currently working on together is setting up an orientation programme for new missionary priests and religious coming to work in South Africa, assisting them with travel-related matters and easing them into parish life.

The LCCL is an association of elected leaders, men and women, and religious congregations or institutes of apostolic life in South Africa, Botswana, and Swaziland. It is an associate body of the SACBC.