Uganda has hosted the 2025 Africa Regional Conference of World Union of Catholic Women’s Organisations (WUCWO) under the theme; “Women, Custodians of Mother Earth” with the aim to raising awareness on parenthood.
The conference brought together catholic women from over 14 countries in the African continent, including Uganda – the host, Tanzania, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa, among others.
The event in Entebbe kicked off with the holy mass led by Papal Nuncio Emeritus Archbishop Augustine Kasujja, who urged them to be ambassadors of peace by embracing the acts of Mother Mary.
He also highlighted women’s responsibilities in protecting the environment, saying, “Let’s educate people concerning the environment, as Pope Francis says, not only in schools, but also in families. And if it is done in families, the people who are mostly at the centre of the active activities of the family are the mother, the wife, and the woman. So women. Therefore, play a vital role in the formation of society, especially of their children, and of the youth.”
The WUCWO President General, Monica Santamarina, lauded the host remarking that the theme chosen, Women, Custodians of Mother, Earth, neutral and parenting, the path to happiness and holines, violence and discrimination against women in the African continent, fully comply with the organization’s resolutions for these four years, and must fill them with hopeful determination.
“Indeed, our priorities for 2023 – 2027 guide us with clarity and conviction in WUCWO. We are committed to consolidating and expanding the World Women’s Observatory. We have to go and work in for religious freedom, we have to build peace, we have to respond to the global food crisis and embrace ecological convention as well as renewing our commitment with the family, love motherhood and fatherhood, and promoting the formation of women so that they may participate fully in building a synodal church and in the whole world,” she noted.
Santamarina also encouraged the participants and the public to conserve nature by quoting some words of Pope Leo 14 in his message for the next World Day of Prayer, “Environmental justice, implicitly proclaimed by the prophets, can no longer be regarded as an abstract concept or a distant goal. It is a Nugent need that involves much more than simply protecting the environment, for it is a matter of justice, social, economic and human. For believers, it is also a duty for those born of faith, since the universe reflects the face of Jesus Christ, in whom all things were created and redeemed in a world where the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters are the first to suffer the devastating effects of climate change, deforestation and pollution. Careful creation becomes an expression of our faith and humanity.”
She strongly proclaimed that families generate the future of people and therefore concluded by asking spouses to be examples of consistency for their children and freedoms.
Evaline Malisa Ntenga, the Tanzanian and WUCWO Region of Africa president, noted that they have learnt a lot, including nurturing their families, nurturing the creation and making the world so beautiful as intended by God himself.
“Women as Custodians of Mother Earth, we’re now going back to reflect on our role in terms of creation, so we are looking back to our families and what God had intended women to do,” she said.
Ntenga further explained that several challenges still exist in communities, whereby in some countries, women don’t have a voice, adding “We have done some collection of data in the past two years, speaking to over 10,000 women across Africa and speaking to specialists in issues of gender and women development. And what we are seeing we still have issues within our community. So we are here to benchmark as well as to have possible solutions, especially on gender violence.”
Mary Assumputa Gidudu, the Uganda WUCWO President, asked mothers out there, at all levels, right from the top up to the most invisible mother down there, to have the love, the care for their children, because children are not for the government, as it is said by some people, but their own.
“As women in the church, as women in the community, women in the society, it is our responsibility to nurture those children, to give them their best so that we can get better children in future. The future is not ours. The future is for our children. When we make quality children, we make quality families, we make quality leaders in the world, and the society at large,” she said.
The conference started on 28th July with a great moment in Namgongo as pilgrims of hope went through what fellow children, brothers, sisters (the Uganda Martyrs) went through to where the religious are in Africa.
About The Author
