The Episcopal Church of the Sudan has grown to 25 dioceses with the creation last month of the Diocese of Terekeka.On Jan 24, the Archbishop of Juba, the Most Rev Daniel Deng Bul Yak convened the first synod of the diocese centred in the town of Terekeka in the Sudan’s Central Equatoria State, approximately 50 miles north of Juba.
In his synod address, Archbishop Deng said the province had waited to create a new diocese for Terekeka archdeaconry of the Diocese of Juba for the Mundari people until they could support a bishop with his own house, car, office and with funds for economic and social development projects.
Last year the leaders of the Mundari community responded that they had raised the funds to support a bishop, and would commit to building schools and hospitals.
Working with an assessment committee sent by the Archbishop, the Terekeka archdeaconry also created a diocesan constitution and drafted a model structure, basing the cathedral at the Terekeka parish church and subdividing the diocese into four archdeaconries.
The Rev Michah Leila Dawidi was put forward by the assessment committee and received the unanimous support of the diocesan synod as bishop-elect.
Bishop-elect Dawidi’s nomination would now be brought before the Sudanese House of Bishops for confirmation, Archbishop Deng said.
Creating the diocese had been the “easy part,” Archbishop Deng told the Terekeka synod, but its “continuing it, developing it and caring for it will be the difficult work. Above all the new diocese must bring people together and unite them in order to bring change in,” the archbishop said according to a press release from the Province.
The new diocese serves the Mundari tribe, a nilotic tribe of small farmers and cattle herders.
Like a number of Sudanese tribes, the Mundari practice ritual scarification as a rite of passage for young men, with two sets of three parallel lines in a downward slope on the forehead.
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(Source: RI)