Kenya Missionaries Launching a "Comboni Year"

NAIROBI, Kenya, MARCH 16, 2003 (Zenit.org).- In anticipation of the Oct. 5 canonization of their founder Daniel Comboni, members of the institutes he founded are launching a «Comboni Year,» Catholic Information Service for Africa reported.

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A eucharistic celebration was scheduled for today in Nairobi’s Holy Family Basilica to open the year. Both the male Comboni Missionaries Order and their Comboni Missionary Sisters are involved.

In a related development, Archbishop Gabriel Zubeir Wako of Khartoum, Sudan, has launched a campaign for a Comboni University of the Sudan as «a gift to the Sudan on the occasion of the canonization of Bishop Daniel Comboni.»

Daniel Comboni, first bishop of Central Africa, died in Khartoum in 1881 at age 50. He had worked for a renewed African society grounded on the Gospel.

He strongly believed in the ability of Africans to evangelize their own brothers and sisters. Thus he is regarded as one of the «Fathers of the Faith in Africa.»

«I would like to have a hundred tongues and a hundred hearts to speak for Africa,» he wrote. «No torment will shake me, no labor discourage me, no difficulty stop me.»

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