Over the years, little or nothing is known about Sisters (Religious Women) regarding their role in the Church’s evangelisation. Interestingly, this is so even among Catholic faithful. A number of people are of the notion that, Priests celebrate the Holy Mass and during the Eucharistic celebration, the Sisters play no role at all except when they are called upon to help with the distribution of Communion.
Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion are charged by the Church to also help in the distribution of the Holy Communion, what then becomes the need of a Sister in the Church if this is all they do in the church, one may ask? What they seem to forget is that, the larger part of the Church’s evangelisation rest outside the Mass.
When Sisters go out for vocation promotion, the cliché question that is asked is “what is the role of the Sister in the Church”? As a lay faithful, you have in one way or the other equally questioned the role the Sister in the Church.
After the celebration of the Mass, Sisters move out of the comfort zones to reach out to the poor, the aged, the neglected, to take care the rejected orphans in our various families, go into the villages, teaching the less intelligent, among others. According to St. Lawrence, these less privileged, poor, rejected are the Church’s properties therefore, the need to cater for them; and this one of the roles Sisters play in the church’s evangelization.
Sisters go as far as to remote places where Priests may not love to go, they take care of patients whom nurses would not have the courage to stand and Sisters gladly to this with love. There is so much to learn about the beautiful and faith-filled life of sisters. From life in their congregations and the work that they undertake to their personal walks with the Lord, there is no end to the wealth that can be discovered about them and also from them.
However, unless you have had the privilege of meeting a sister or congregation or taken the personal time to educate ourselves, many of us may have trouble defining even some basic words and terms that form a part of their daily lives. When anyone gets to have a firsthand experience with them as they go through their daily routine, we will appreciate them the more. All these are not known because Sisters do have the platform and abilities to tell their own stories, this therefore, even lead people to look down on them in the case of Ghana.
This, however, is not the same with Sisters in Eastern and Southern Africa. Some Ghanaian Sisters in one of their meetings in Nairobi, Kenya, realized that Sisters over there are into social communication, videography, photography and news reporting, and they are able to tell their own stories in diverse ways.
For this reason, the Conference of Major Religious Superiors, Ghana, with the support of Conrad Hilton Foundation is organising a 9-day workshop on Media and Communication for Sisters to equip them to sell out the respective Congregations and apostolates. The composition of participants are twenty Sisters from ten Religious Congregations across the country.
Under the coordination of Sr. Cecilia Afari, SMMC, the workshop is currently on-going at the Centre for Spiritual Renewal in Santase-Kumasi. This workshop seeks to equip Sisters adequately for the media market, especially in the Catholic Church.
By: Sr. Marian-Hagar G. Dadzie, SIJ, Sr. Cecilia Afari, SMMC, Sr. Bridget Kator, SMMC, Sr. Agnes Mercy Nyatsoe, Sr. Esther Kutie, SVI
