The Chiluba (Ciluba) language is spoken by around 6 million people in the Kasai Region in the southeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is one of the four national languages of this huge country in the heart of Africa. Some years ago the bishops of the eight Catholic dioceses within this region recognised the urgent need for new editions of the liturgical books in this language to be gradually introduced. For one thing, the books were already largely worn out; for another they needed to be extensively revised and corrected linguistically.
The Kasai Region is a vast and neglected region, with widespread deep poverty. During 2016 and 2017 there was a series of veritable orgies of violence across the region, during which several thousand people were killed. Dozens of mass graves were subsequently found there . Many church buildings were also attacked, looted and burned down, among them the cathedral and Bishop‘s residence in Luebo.
The government is to all intents absent here, and it is left to the Church to take care of all the needs of the people and provide help, to the extent of its possibilities. But man does not live on bread alone, and for the Church it has always been the health of the human soul that is its first concern. The Eucharist is the „source and summit of the life and mission of the Church“ as it says in the Vatican II document Lumen Gentium. Hence, for the bishops of the region, the republication of these liturgical books has been a top priority.
Now, thanks to the generous help of our benefactors, ACN was able to provide a subsidy of 20,000 Euros to enable the first edition of the new Lectionary to be printed. It has been welcomed with great joy, and the bishops, priests and all the Catholic faithful of the eight dioceses of the Kasai Region are profoundly grateful to all our generous benefactors!
