Prof. Makoala V. Marake

The Gaborone Assembly delegates arrived from all corners of the African Continent (Gaborone-Africa CLC Assembly 2025 – 24 to 31st August 2025) to assemble on a common theme: “Being Pilgrims, Leaders, and Witnesses of Hope in Today’s Africa” and called to pray for the Grace: “To Remain Faithful to Our Shared Charism”.

We gathered in the Assembly Hall of the Ave Maria Retreat House for the official opening ceremony and delegations introduced themselves with pomp in their spectacular national robes and colorful flags. The opening was accentuated in a Eucharistic Celebration lead by Fr Jose de Pablo, Vice Ecclesiastical Assistant of the World CLC. The program was ambitious in content and intensity of activities starting daily with morning prayers, pilgrim walks through spiritual conversation and thanking the Lord each day with Eucharistic Services expressing the diversity of cultural animation and inspiration.

a) Contemplation of our CLC experience of Living Hope in Africa Today

This started with sending delegates to explore the holy stories of their personal CLC journeys and national communities. The sending input was on the significance of telling our stories in the Ignatian Charism.

In our Spiritual Conversations: We sought to discern challenges and hopes that have shaped our personal CLC journeys and What the Spirit is inviting us to notice through the stories we have heard about hopes, challenges and ways forward. On the stories of our national communities, we sought to discern our national community experiences, focusing on membership, formal commitments, formation, apostolic frontiers, communication, relationships with the Society of Jesus, and financial co- responsibility.

We then took an empathy walk along which we reflected on what we feel invited to notice or prioritize from what we’ve heard and concrete steps we can take in response. Our call to the concrete apostolate on the youth and family emerged among many priorities for CLC in Africa with a deep sense of co-responsibility for finance and sustainability.

b) Renewing our Hope by drawing on the sources of the CLC charism

Fr Jose de Pablo guided our reflections and discernment on Ignatian Spirituality as a Seed of Christian Hope. The Assembly dived deep on how Ignatian spirituality could nurture hope in Africa Today through prayer, discernment, and committed action. Through Spiritual Conversations, we discerned the awakening of hope in us and reflected on where hope needs to be rekindled in our daily worlds of work and living.

In a particular way, we felt called to explore concrete ways CLC in Africa is invited to nurture Christian hope, spiritually or practically. We felt a strong pull towards collaborative decision making inspired by Fr Virgilio on the model of synodality in the Church in Africa. He called us to explore how Spirit-led, inclusive discernment strengthens Church and community life, and how CLC can embody this synodal spirit.

c) Proposals to reform our way of living Hope.

The Assembly metaphorically gathered under the cool shade of a Baobab tree with strong feelings to reform our way of living hope.

We reflected on contemporary challenge of CLC structures at the Service of discernment for mission with Chris Micaleff, CLC World President. He called for a healthy tension between structure and discernment for mission noting that with the right tension the structure can support life.

CLC in Africa was challenged to discern the structure needed in the community today particularly, how regional structures support communal discernment and shared mission and how to organize ourselves to connect, communicate and collaborate for mission.

d) Critical Inputs in the Guidance of Process

The Assembly process anchored on Spiritual Conversations with keynote inputs, individual reflections, sharing in small groups and feedback in plenary sessions. Makoala Marake reviewed the significance of telling our stories in the Ignatian charism while Catherine Waiyaki brought home the process of conducting spiritual conversations. The two inputs linked the process and significance of telling our personal and national community stories. The Sympathy Walk input inspiration by Norah Sichilongo drew the Assembly into critical discernment of the apostolic priorities we felt called to as CLC in Africa.

The Assembly was grounded in its pilgrimage by the talk of Padre Minaku SJ, President of the Jesuit Conference of Africa and Madagascar. In his prophetic utterances, he pointed that CLC could help individuals to bring their voices to different agendas and drew analogies from the story of Job to explain how spiritual conversations with God can help to form individuals as a key to spirituality. He brought the attention of the Assembly to the common history of Lesotho and Botswana on the genesis and evolution of CLC with out the supervision of Jesuits under the watch of Diocesan and Oblates priests.

This, Padre noted, is true testimony on how Ignatian Spirituality can be diversified and shared to all. He supported the mission of forming the youth as a frontier and projected the future of the church and CLC in the hands of youth and underscored the duty of communities to assist and help them to pass on the tradition of CLC.

e) Testimonies of Hope Despite the Gloom of Hopelessness

Just as many of us felt oppressed by the political, economic and environmental travesties of mother Africa, three pilgrims (Pius Mokgware, Minister of Labour and Home Affairs, Botswana; André Bion, CVX, Cameron and Robert Bayigamba, CVX, Rwanda) rekindled in our hearts Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones (Ezekiel 37:1-14).

The Gaborone-Africa CLC Assembly was inspired by these testimonies of hope truly symbolic of God’s prophetic promise to restore the spiritually and nationally desolate Africa out of its hopelessness into a living vibrant community of pilgrims, leaders and witnesses of hope. In Ezekiel like prophetic testimonies, these pilgrims breathed life to our national glooms signifying the restoration of our beloved Africa and our spiritual renewal through God’s power and the Holy Spirit.

Closure of the Assembly

The Gaborone-Africa CLC Assembly closed with key assignments. First, a special task team was commissioned to review the structure on behalf of the Assembly within six months. Secondly, the current regional coordinating team was mandated to oversee the Africa Region until a new Structure is adopted and elections held possibly in a virtual special elective Assembly. Finally, the Assembly adopted a declaration and commissioned a Task Team to finalize the editorials and incorporation of comments.