THE BENEDICTINES IN AFRICA AFRICAN BENEDICTINES OF HANGA PO

BENEDICTINESCATCOM LAS MONJAS BENEDICTINAS DEL MONASTERIO DE SANT PERE
CONFERENTIE DOOR EEN ZUSTER BENEDICTINES VAN DE BASILIEK SACRÉCOEUR
RELIGIOUS ORDERS AND MISSIONARY CONGREGATIONS AUGUSTINIANS BENEDICTINES CAPUCHINS

The Benedictines in Africa

The Benedictines in Africa

African Benedictines of Hanga

P.O. Box 217 Songea-Tanzania.

[email protected]

Brief Introduction:

We are Benedicine monks of Hanga Abbey in Tanzania under the Congregation of St. Ottilien. We were founded in 1957 by the Missionary Benedictines of Peramiho Abbey who were sent to Tanzania from Germany for evangelization.

Our main charism is ORA ET LABORA, which literally means PRAY AND WORK. We don’t only teach people about faith in relationship with God, but also our daily life has an impact on social development of the people wherever we stay.

Apart from Church activities, our monasteries are engaged in the following:

Education programs:

We run kindergarten, primary and secondary schools.
We run Training centers for both females and males. Their skills are based on the following aspects_
- Carpentry and joinery.
- Auto mechanics.
- Agriculture and National Conservation. On this base, we have a project of planting wood trees one thousand each year.
- Tailoring
- Masonry and brick laying.

N.B. Most of the areas mentioned above, monks themselves are totally involved to provide the respective skills. The main intention is to eliminate poverty and ignorance in order to enhance the self-reliance of the people.

Social Service to the People:
- Hanga Abbey has provided a pipe water supply which serves two villages of about 7,000 people.
- We also run the health center based on Curative and Preventive services for the people around the monastery and outside.

Future Prospectives:

We are planning to build a high school in order to facilitate education levels.
We are planning to expand our health center unit as it is now overwhelmed by the high population of the people who come constantly to seek medical services.
We also plan to build a hydro-electric power supply, in order to serve the people around the abbey, the Institutes and the monastery.
We still need to have a continuous provision of skilled people so as to cater to needs of different areas mentioned above and to be able to face the challenge of the current science and technology.

Conclusion:

Despite all of the efforts of the abbey, we still have a very big burden, because we don’t have an ensured support and therefore we don’t meet the goals in time and we don’t work to the best that we want.

We still need financial and material support to meet the basic human needs and development. We kindly invite anybody who is ready to bear with us to serve the people in the developing countries as we are now overwhelmed by so many factors contributing to poverty; HIV-AIDS being the most and the leading killer of human life and rights.

Prepared by Abbot Thadei Mhagama, O.S.B.

Tags: benedictines in, missionary benedictines, benedictines, hanga, african, africa