The de Nicola Center is a founding and continuing sponsor of the Church Life Africa initiative, which hosted its third conference August 29–31, 2024, on the theme “Theology for Service Leadership.” The conference was hosted at the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria Resource Center in Abuja, Nigeria.

The initiative grew out of the vision of three of the de Nicola Center’s graduate Sorin Fellows—Rev. Kenneth Amadi, Rev. Joachim Ozonze, and Rev. William Orbih—who organized an initial two-day conference in their native Nigeria in 2022 on the theme “Lay Theological Engagement and the Future of Church Life in Africa,” in an effort to develop young lay Catholics for substantial theological education, pastoral ministry, and public engagement in service to Africa and the global Church. The de Nicola Center provided support to help underwrite the inaugural conference through its Sorin Fellows grant program.

“We have heard the long-expressed hope—spoken with great passion by popes, bishops, and other Church leaders, especially in the West—that the future of the Catholic Church is in Africa, and so we started thinking about what we could do today to secure that future,” said Father Amadi. ‘“And we asked ourselves, if Africa will be the future of the church, where are the laypeople who constitute over 90 percent of the population of Africans? How are we nurturing their faith?”

“Inspired by the dCEC Fall Conference, we wanted to create a similar kind of space in Africa where scholars, practitioners, and young people especially could come together to find a voice, to listen to others, to share their ideas and convictions about the faith, but with a view to equipping them theologically,” Father Amadi continued.

The organizers received more applications than expected for the initial conference and professed to be “blown away” by the enthusiasm and active engagement of the participants. Encouraged by the positive response, they organized a second conference in the summer of 2023 on the theme “In Solidarity with the Church in Africa,” attended by 235 participants from 40 dioceses across Nigeria, again with support from the de Nicola Center and partners across Notre Dame, including the McGrath Institute for Church Life, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and the Department of Theology.

The 2024 conference received advance registrations from across the African continent, again more than the conference center could accommodate. Speakers at the third conference included His Eminence John Cardinal Onaiyekan, Archbishop Emeritus of Abuja; the Most Rev. Ignatius Kaigama, Archbishop of Abuja; Rev. George Ehusani, founder of the Lux Terra Leadership Foundation (Abuja, Nigeria); and Stacey Noem, professor of the practice and director of human and spiritual formation for lay students in the Master of Divinity program at the University of Notre Dame.

In accord with their strategic vision for the Church Life Africa series, at the 2024 conference, organizers introduced a two-year certificate program in Theology for Service Leadership, based on the McGrath Institute’s STEP online theology program, to offer select conference participants the opportunity to undertake further theological formation and to apply their learning in internships. “The laity need to be educated and empowered in the African Church,” said Father Ozonze. “Although there have been some efforts to form the laity theologically, such efforts need to be more strategic and supported by intentional investment from stakeholders.”

“These three years of hosting the Church Life Africa conference have been hugely successful in building a stable community of passionate service-oriented lay leaders,” said Father Amadi. “Coming from various dioceses across Nigeria, conference participants are already building bridges of friendship and partnership for service in the Church and society. We are developing Africa-oriented courses and programs that draw upon the rich heritage of African ethics and culture. These will help students better appreciate the charism of African Christian spiritualities and culture.”

“The University of Notre Dame has been very generous to Africa and to African Catholics. We are all beneficiaries of the generosity of Notre Dame to come to this, without modesty, best Catholic university in the world to study,” Father Amadi added. “We thought that we owe it as a duty to ourselves and to Notre Dame to be the hands and feet of Notre Dame, to go back and give to Africa. In partnership with the de Nicola Center, we are poised to help form this band of lay African Catholics who will lead the Church into the next generation.”

Fathers Amadi, Orbih, and Ozonze were guests on the dCEC’s podcast, Ethics and Culture Cast, where they spoke about their own doctoral studies at Notre Dame and the vision for the Church Life Africa conference series. Listen to the episode at ndcec.fireside.fm/83.