Six thousand believers in Kalundu are building on us – and we are building for them

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO, Fr. Jean Marie Bisimwa •

Since October 11, 2020, we Schoenstatt Fathers have been working as missionary priests in the Bon Pasteur parish in Kalundu in the diocese of Uvira. When we arrived in Uvira, we had neither a house nor an address. Sebastian Muyengo, the bishop of the diocese of Uvira, provided us with a house where we could live and fulfill our mission. —

At that time, we Schoenstatt Fathers wanted to establish a first branch in the Democratic Republic of Congo to serve the growing Schoenstatt Movement in that country and the local Church, from which some of our Schoenstatt Fathers come.

We were very touched by this gesture of hospitality and pastoral care. He not only gave us a house to live in, but an entire parish to administer. We were three young priests with little experience in the pastoral care of a parish. After our installation, we organized various meetings to get to know the reality of our new parish better. One of the things that frightened us was the poor state of the infrastructure in Kalundu. Living in our house was almost impossible. We had to work hard to repair the sanitary facilities in all the rooms, restore the water and electricity supply, equip the house with furniture and household items and buy all the necessary things for a household. This work kept us busy for the first six months after our arrival in Kalundu.

Bon Pasteur parish in Kalundu in the diocese of Uvira

A roof for our church and the people

Worse than the house was the parish church, whose roof had almost completely collapsed. Water was seeping in through the cracks in the corrugated iron so that mass could no longer be celebrated when it rained. This caused us great difficulties.

We have a congregation of around six thousand believers, more than half of whom have no job or steady income. The majority of our parishioners live from farming and fishing in Lake Tanganyika. Our monthly local income as a community at that time was no more than 70 US dollars. It was impossible to think of a project to renovate the church.

Support from Switzerland

With God’s help and thanks to the cooperation and friendship of Fr. Paul Zingg, a Swiss Schoenstatt Father who had worked in Burundi for a long time, we received a donation from the Diocese of St. Gallen in Switzerland, which enabled us to renovate the entire roof structure of the Kalundu church.

However, our work on the re-founding of the parish was not limited to this. Being aware of the poverty of our faithful and wanting to create additional structures for the good functioning of the parish, we thought it right to open the doors to all people of good will who are interested in our situation to help us rebuild Kalundu.

We sincerely thank the Superior of the Community of Schoenstatt Fathers who has encouraged and supported us in this process, the Bishop of the Diocese of Uvira who spares no effort when we ask him for his advice on one or the other of our projects, and all our fellow Christians for their energetic commitment to unite us as one man for the reconstruction of our parish.

Building work

New offices and a church on the outskirts

We currently have two projects in progress. The construction of four offices for pastoral work in Kalundu and the construction of a branch church in Rugembe, a somewhat remote part of the parish, to alleviate the suffering of our Christians who have to walk so many kilometers to come to Mass in the parish church.

These projects were initiated through the local contributions of our Christians despite their very precarious standard of living. We continue to pray that Providence will open new doors for us so that we can successfully complete these two important projects for our pastoral work. May God bless all who contribute.

It will be built as far as the money goes

Original: French. Translation: Maria Fischer @schoenstatt.org