The birth of "Parish Caritas"

“Caritas Swaziland” is a well known organisation in the Kingdom of Eswatini as it has been serving the country for more than 40 years.

The government of the Kingdom considers Caritas Swaziland an implementing partner of some national projects and many people come to our offices in time of need.

For the last few years, though, we have been reflecting on an essential step that needed to be taken: the birth of “Parish Caritas”. While the diocesan offices are well known and service all our people, Caritas has never been directly present in each of our parishes.

In order to make it possible, during 2019 we took the following steps:

• At the first meeting of the Diocesan Pastoral Council the bishop introduced the need to start “Parish Caritas”;
• he asked each parish to identify one person from the parish centre and from each of the outstations, together with a delegate from each group or sodality (Sacred Heart, St Anne's, St Joseph's, altar servers, youth...); 
• the reason for doing this is that Caritas IS the Church and her service is an expression of who we are as Church. Therefore it could not be entrusted to “volunteers” or “people of good will” but to delegates of the different bodies of the parish. Everyone had to be represented; 
• once a parish had identified the members of the “Parish Caritas” the bishop together with the national director would do the training. 

By the end of November, 10 out of 17 parishes have trained their members and launched the local Parish Caritas.

The training is based on three elements:

• our identity from God's Word
• the identity of Caritas Swaziland (together with Caritas Internationalis, Caritas Africa, Caritas IMBISA...)
• the identify of a Parish Caritas

From January 2020 “Caritas Swaziland” might start to decentralize some projects entrusting them to the Parish Caritas. Each local Parish Caritas, though, has been asked to identify those most in need in their areas and find ways to witness the love of Jesus to them.