Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Austen IvereighSeptember 03, 2010

In Nairobi, Kenya, a Vatican communications official attending a workshop organised by the African bishops has called for something the African Catholic Church does not yet have: a continental news service.

Catholics in Asia have the excellent UCAN. Latin-Americans have the redoubtable ACI Prensa. The US, of course, has the Catholic equivalent of Reuters, CNS. The Australians have CathNews. And so on.

But the African Church has no equivalent.

As someone who used to scour these sites looking for stories for The Tablet's international "Church in the World" section, I know what the effect of this lacuna is: Africa remains, for Catholics in the West, the dark continent. Stories about Africa tend to come from the news reports of missionary organisations, or through the secular media. But mostly they don't come at all.

Honeymooning in Tanzania recently, I glimpsed the vast, fascinating, prophetic and holy world of the Catholic Church there, and realised how ignorant I was of it. And how it was all but impossible to correct that back at my desk in London.

So here's my message to the African Church -- and I'm sure I speak on behalf of all my colleagues in America and of Catholic journalists across the English-speaking world:

Africa Catholic News Service: YES PLEASE.

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
Jim McCrea
14 years 10 months ago
Did not the Comboni Fathers have a new service that at least purported to report the news of Africa at large?  I don't know if what I think I remember even exists any more.

The latest from america

Pope Leo XIV has appointed the French archbishop of Chambéry, Thibault Verny, as the new president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. He succeeds Cardinal Seán O’Malley, 81, the emeritus archbishop of Boston.
Gerard O’ConnellJuly 05, 2025
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks with other members of the House July 3, 2025, on Capitol Hill in Washington after final passage of U.S. President Donald Trump's sweeping spending and tax bill. (OSV News photo/Jonathan Ernst, Reuters)
“Deep cuts” to SNAP and Medicaid will “inflict real suffering on these families…. SNAP and Medicaid are not luxuries, they are lifelines for millions of children across our country.”
Kevin ClarkeJuly 03, 2025
It was one of the first times Leo has spoken unscripted at length in public, responding to questions posed to him by the children.
The Vatican has named the judges that will preside over the trial of disgraced Father Marko Rupnik.