The SACBC is Present and Loud

In the second part of a wide-ranging interview, SACBC president Bishop Sithembele Sipuka tells Günther Simmermacher about the bishops’ conference’s finances, media, the effect of Covid, ecumenism and more.

In our August issue, Bishop Sithembele Sipuka of Mthatha, president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC), looked back at the history of the structure after its founding in 1947, and some of the SACBC’s present endeavours. This is the second part of the interview, with the third running in October.

Günther Simmermacher: There always is a lack of resources, but is the SACBC financially viable?

Bishop Sipuka: In the recent past there have been efforts to make the SACBC more financially viable. In addition to the Lenten Appeal — which continues to be a success story, even though with Covid-19 its income has declined somewhat — we embarked on raising R50 million a few years ago and has now reached that target. Furthermore, to mutually support each other, the bishops have established a solidarity fund to which each diocese makes an annual contribution.

The scandal of abuse is still haunting the Church throughout the world. What is the situation within the SACBC?

Yes, we too in the SACBC region have unfortunately had cases of sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable people. The SACBC was among the first conferences to develop protocols and policies to deal with this terrible crime within its structures. However, there is no doubt that more needs to be done, especially in educating the laity and in the formation of seminarians and ongoing formation of priests and bishops, to ensure accountability and that our churches are safe for children.

The SACBC’s former secretary-general, Sr Hermenegild Makoro CPS, is serving her second term on the Pontifical Council for Protection of Minors.

The bishops are sometimes criticised for not speaking out on various political issues. Why is that?

We can sometimes be seen as being slow in responding to emerging issues. This is due to the conference’s collegiality, which means that before issuing a statement or taking action, one needs a consensus of the bishops.

Furthermore, the media chooses what it wants to publicise so that even though we react to challenges, we are just ignored. As members of the South African Council of Churches (SACC), we actively participate in the discussions, with ensuing statements and actions. So in some situations requiring a response, we may seem to be absent as the Catholic Church, but we are present and loud through the SACC.

One obvious problem area in the Southern African Church is media, which has been on the margins of the bishops’ concern for the past 30 years. The Catholic Church has a low public profile, and struggles to communicate internally as well. Are there any plans to remedy the situation?

As a Church, we have not always prioritised social communications, particularly at diocesan level and especially in smaller and rural dioceses. We are working on raising awareness about the importance of communications in the Church.

Archbishop William Slattery and Fr Paul Tatu CSS, the former liaison bishop for social communications and previous SACBC communications officer, laid a good foundation and led us to formulate a communications policy in the SACBC. This has seen us improving a bit with the arrival of Fr Phuthi Makgabo, a trained media and communications  priest from Johannesburg. Our challenge is personnel and resources, because even though we had determined that Fr Phuthi would work with a team, he is still working alone.

This issue of resources and personnel is seen in the struggle to maintain other media and communications channels, like Catholic newspapers and magazines and Catholic radio stations. We should have more, but even those we have, like The Southern Cross and Radio Veritas, are always in danger of closing down because of a lack of financial resources.

The other issue is the changing face of the media. We need to reimagine modes of media communications according to the need. When communications technology began to outpace the paper world, the writing was on the wall. I presume that, going forward, the Church will need to look at digital technology for communicating with the great majority of young Catholics in Southern Africa. It will also need to beef up radio communications, because Catholics listen to the radio more than they read.

We also need to work hard in tailoring the content and interest of our media communications so that they include all culturally, linguistically and economically diverse people of our Conference area.

A major reason for not having resources is that we are a minority Church beginning to wean itself from dependency on overseas support. Given the small numbers and the loss of institutions we used to run, the Catholic Church is not so visible and attractive to the media, so most of its activities and statements are not publicised.

This is slightly different in Eswatini, where the media is invited and attends most of the diocesan events, and quotes statements from such gatherings.

So part of remedying the situation in the rest of the Conference is to work for more people in the Church who can provide financial and human resources for communications . In many parts of Africa, laypeople run media and communications centres. In the SACBC, the tendency is to look to the bishops to provide; it will not work.

What we can do now is to train priests and religious media and communications experts to maximise what is available, namely the Internet and social media. This is beginning to take shape; a few dioceses have begun educating priests in media and communications. Hopefully, as they get more efficient, they will also get the laity interested.

After he became president, Cyril Ramaphosa made it a point of meeting with Christian leaders. Is that dialogue still ongoing?

After Nelson Mandela in the late 1990s, Cyril Ramaphosa was the only president who met us Catholic bishops. When we met him three years ago, we had honest and constructive discussions with him. He has also made a good effort to also meet with the SACC and other Church formations several times. During the height of Covid, meetings between the president and Churches were very frequent, and often with openness and listening on the part of the president.

How are the Conference’s ecumenical and interfaith efforts going?

We place a lot of importance on ecumenism. As you know, it is part of our ecclesiology, highly-considered by the Vatican, and it has a dicastery in Rome. We, too, have a full commission for ecumenism, whose leading bishop sits on the administration board of the SACBC.

Some dialogue is happening on the top level, but only in a few dioceses is something happening. We succeeded in reviewing the guideline booklets, one for ecumenical dialogue and the other for interreligious dialogue.

Efforts are being made to encourage and support ecumenical structures in dioceses. There was a successful conference where delegates of most dioceses were present who were asked to be link-persons with the department for improved involvement of the local Church in such a dialogue. Not much seems to have happened since. The department has not had much contact with them through a WhatsApp group which was formed to enhance this communication — very few interact. It would appear that most of the delegates are no longer functional.

So at the grassroots level, ecumenism is not that visible. This lack of visibility is not due to lack of trying by the Catholic bishops; it is due mainly to the lack of appreciation of the value of ecumenism by other Churches. This, however, is not the same in all areas of the conference. Two areas of the conference, namely KwaZulu-Natal and Eswatini, are doing very well. In KwaZulu-Natal, Cardinal Wilfrid Napier is the chair of the KZN Council of Churches.

In Eswatini, the Catholic Church is one of the founders of the Council of Swaziland Churches (CSC), together with the Anglican and Lutheran bishops. The building of the CSC is called “Mandlenkhosi”, remembering Bishop Zwane. In Eswatini, the Church actively works with other Churches, particularly at this time of unrest.

In other provinces, it has varying success, from fair — such as Pretoria — to zero, for example most parts of the Eastern Cape. Part of the problem is that many church formations meet according to their leanings, like the Pentecostals, evangelicals, and mainline churches.

As seen in KZN and Eswatini, ecumenism has a lot of relevance because a joint effort is needed to tackle some of the social challenges, like it was at the height of Covid-19, fighting poverty, and dealing with migrants and refugees. Moreover, as I have said, it forms part of our ecclesiology.

The SACBC has led the way in empowering the laity and especially women by giving them concrete leadership positions in the conference. Has that approach filtered down the levels in the Church? 

Speaking for Mthatha, the diocese I head, and indeed for the most part of the Conference, the laity is playing its role in the Church and are allowed to do so. With the universal synod, for instance, in Mthatha lay people play a significant role. For example, the chairperson of the synodal process is a woman, and she is doing very well. Sr Hermenegild is the administration and finance director of our diocese. Other dioceses have also appointed Sisters and lay people in key positions in the diocese — I am thinking of Aliwal and Pretoria, for example. So yes, I believe this has somehow filtered down to the diocesan level.

At the Conference level, we have established a National Council of the Laity. Even though patriarchy continues in society, for the most part, it is not a felt thing in the Church because there are more women in church than men.

In Part 3 of the interview, Bishop Sipuka speaks about the youth, evangelisation, the legacy of Covid, and the challenges facing the Church.

Read Part One
Read Part Three

Published in the September 2022 issue of The Southern Cross magazine