Holy Family

Mandevu - 10km from Lusaka City Center

25,000 faithful - and 6,000 families - make up Mandevu’s Holy Family Parish. The cornerstone of Pallotti’s Zambian mission, its history dates back 30 years prior, with its first construction by German missionaries. Yet contrary to the parishioner’s immensity, is its littleness in life expectancy. 35 years marks the average lifespan; the young mortality rate due to HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria, among other sicknesses and an unjust social strata. This leaves an increasing number of orphans, as well as widows dependent on society. As it be so, the Parish reaches out to the suffering through its Home Based Care / Social Welfare Programs.

Both pastoral and socio-charitable activities propel the parish’s constant missionary action. Especially towards the peripheries are the latter; with financial educational assistance to as many as 460 poor or orphaned students at the Church’s primary school, and the feeding of 1,500 children each year on Christmas day. 120 volunteers make possible the ‘home based care’ apostolate, whereby 900 patients are visited by their fellow parishioners, and food distribution to the elderly is a communal mission.

St. Michael’s

Westwood, Zambia

Always missionary, always adaptable; in September 2012, a new Archdiocesan decree constituted St. Michael’s Parish, encompassed by 8 substations within a 40km radius. Pallottine Missionary Fr. Sijoy Thomas was its first parochial shepherd, and henceforth it has transcended through the spiritual guidance of the Society of the Catholic Apostolate.

As the whole is greater than the part, its best to see the extraordinary way in which it becomes one through the little churches that constitute Christ’s heart. Beginning with St. Michael’s Church, 40% of parishioners - and 150 families - are farmers, with the remaining 60% constituted by 20% retires, 20% unemployed, 10% working class, and 10% of either school-going or drop outs. Holy Cross Church, with 150 families, was originally a thatched grass hut, until it was burned by a wildfire. An unfinished, though structurally fit, shelter is used to celebrate the Sacraments. St. Luke’s Church is comprised of 65 families in deep poverty, unable to send their children to school; an alarming reality of paralyzing indifference, only capable of changing through a new cultural model.

Saints Patrick, Peter, and John Churches - in their small number - represent a great truth of the logic of Jesus; a miracle of the multitude is made by giving the little we have, with all our hearts. And no greater is His covenant of charity strengthened than through St. Vincent Pallotti Catholic Church; built up by grass walls and a roof, as the first Church to bear our Founder’s name. As one of its faithful exclaimed, “Jesus is born in our little manger!”

Across St. Michael’s Parish and its substations, the heart of the Gospel is engaged through community actions and associations, always based on the core mission of charity.