SW News:














Amid mounting insecurity in Burkina Faso, it was a moment of great joy for the Catholic Church in the African nation as 31 seminarians received the diaconate on June 24, the Solemnity of the Birth of St John the Baptist.




















Bishop Ollo Modeste Kambou of the Diocese of Gaoua ordained the seminarians from various dioceses across the country at Saint John the Baptist Seminary in the capital, Ouagadougou. The newly ordained deacons expressed their desire to carry out the responsibilities of their new ministry with diligence, charity and simplicity.

They promised to be “faithful to the mystery of the faith, cultivate a spirit of prayer, be conformed to Christ, and live in communion with the Bishop in a spirit of obedience.”

During the ceremony, Bishop Kambou exhorted the deacons to follow in the footsteps of St John Maria Vianney, the patron of parish priests, and urged them to pray for the grace of humility, the “virtue of virtues.” The prelate also called the congregation to pray for the deacons so that God may give them the grace to offer themselves entirely to His service and to that of humanity, like Saint Stephen, the first martyr of the Church.

The ordination of 31 deacons comes as a beacon of hope as the nation is undergoing Islamist insurgency by extremist groups linked to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Recently, Burkina Faso witnessed one of its worst massacres in recent history as armed assailants attacked a village and killed more than 130 civilians, including children, overnight. In just over two years, the violence has displaced more than 1.14 million people in Burkina Faso