Chanco Catholic Alumni Association launched in Lilongwe

Chancellor College Catholic alumni Saturday launched an association aimed at serving the Church in various areas such as infrastructural development and raising funds for various activities in the Church.

The event, which took place at Maula Parish in Lilongwe, commenced with a Mass in the morning and it later continued with speeches from selected speakers, among them Arch Bishop Tarcizius Ziyaye, and the Vice President, Dr. Saulos Chilima, who was the guest of honour.

In his motivational speech, Chilima hailed the formation of the Association saying it would not only promote fellowship among the members but that it would also promote and strengthen the Church’s goal of winning souls to Christ.

The Vice President urged the Association members to put all their efforts in serving the Church in any other way possible and that each of the members should stay focused in their endeavor to serve the Church.

“There are three things I would like to share with you as regards serving the Church,” said Chilima, a Catholic alumnus, himself, and a member of the Association. “Humility: amongst you there are people with Bachelor’s degrees, some with Master’s degree and others with PhD’s. You need to humble yourself to work with everyone because some of the people who will lead you in the Church may not be as educated as you are.”

Chilima further urged each of the members of the Association to stay focused and belong to any one or two of the several groups of the Church and help with the skills and expertise they the individual members had.

“As it has been said often times, ‘you can do two things at once, but you can’t focus effectively on two things at once’, otherwise, you end up being jack of all trades and a master of none,”

He added that commitment and faith were also other important elements that could strengthen the newly launched Association in its pursuit to serving the Church and the people who make it.

“With commitment comes faith; don’t delegate faith. Have it in you and do not rely on others to delegate your faith to,” said Chilima, adding: “Gone are the day people used to say “Mukatipemphere (Go and pray on my behalf): that is not faith.”

The Veep further advised the Lilongwe Arch Diocese Chancellor College Catholic Alumni Association members to desist from discrimination and formation of ‘cycles’ amongst themselves as this, Chilima warned, would close other members out, leaving them with what the Veep described as an it’s-for-them-and-not-for-me-or-us feeling.

In his speech, Arch Bishop Ziyaye, also stressed on commitment to serving the Church and the need for the Chanco Catholic alumni to use their respective talents to benefit the Church on pro borno basis as others were already doing.

“The Church needs you; engineers, contractors, doctors, lawyer, journalists and many other fields. We are proud to have people of various fields like is the case here and we ask you to serve the church because in doing so there is that contentment and a fulfilling feeling in your heart that you gave something to the Church or to someone when they needed it,” said Ziyaye.

Earlier, before Ziyaye and Chilima spoke, three members of the Association, Ian Malera, Innocencia Ottober, and Peter Kulemeka took turns in delivering motivational speeches as to how they had found fulfillment and contentment in serving the Church.

In their speech, Malera and Ottober, prominent and successful lawyers, explained how within their tight schedules they had found time to serve the Church in various ways and they urged the rest of the members to emulate the gesture.

Kulemeka also shared his experience of his long term task in the Church as a Catechism teacher and what feeling it brought to his heart.

The Lilongwe Arch Diocese Chancellor College Catholic Alumni has Father Frank Phiri its patron and Francis Matita as the Chairperson.

According to Matita, the Association will among other things contribute to infrastructural development where necessary and he said there were already plans to resuscitate the Namitete Joinery factory which closed down some time back.

He said the Association was also planning to have all catholic property and land well documented to avoid issues of encroachment.

It is also within the plans of the Lilongwe Arch Diocese Chancellor College Catholic Alumni to coordinate with the other similar associations of Mzuzu University, and the Polytechnic, among others.

Another that characterised the commissioning of the Association was candle lighting to symbolise the members as light to the Church and the society.

The Association has members from as far as 1978 – 1982 in take, like Kulemeka, to the recent alumni who exited Chanco in 2016.

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