Mahama to address W/A Catholic bishops in Ghana

The Catholic Church in Ghana will from Monday host over 150 West African Bishops who will meet as the RECOWA- CERAO regional group in a plenary assembly.

RECOWA and CERAO are two Catholic regional groups which bring together both Anglophone and Francophone Catholic Bishops of West Africa.

The plenary assembly of Bishops will be held in Accra’s M-PLAZA hotel from 22 to 29 February under the theme, “New Evangelisation and the Specific Challenges for the Church, Family of God in West Africa: Reconciliation, Development, Family Life.”

Ghana’s republican president, Mr. John Dramani Mahama will address the opening ceremony of the plenary assembly.

Cardinal Théodore Adrien Sarr of Senegal is the current President of both RECOWA and CERAO.

The Conference Episcopale Regionale de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (CERAO) was formed in June 1963 to bring together all Francophone and Lusophone Catholic bishops from West Africa under one regional group. The Anglophone Catholic bishops region in West Africa was instead formed in 1977 as the Association of the Episcopal Conferences of Anglophone West Africa (AECAWA.

In December 2000, in Ouagadougou the capital of Burkina Faso, the governing councils of AECAWA and CERAO met for the first time. Bishops who participated in that joint plenary assembly took the decision to merge the two groups into one union that would allow for an integration of English, Portuguese and French- speaking episcopal conferences.

The first RECOWA-CERAO plenary assembly was inaugurated in Abuja, Nigeria In 2007.