The news is that Rev. Fr. Ejike Mbaka, the stormy petrel of the Catholic Church, has been transferred from GRA Enugu to a parish at Emene as a resident priest.
For the record, a resident priest is an official guest in a parish where he is posted to carry out a special assignment. The resident priest is not involved in the running of the parish to which he has been posted but is enlisted to say Mass in the parish.
I presume that Rev. Fr. Mbaka’s special assignment is the development of his Adoration Ministry’s permanent site for which he had acquired hectares of land at the same location.
What then is the issue here?
His transfer is good for the church because it restores discipline. No active priest is ordinarily allowed to stay for more than 10 years in one parish – that luxury is reserved only for Bishops and the Pope. Father Mbaka reportedly stayed 20.
His transfer is a good omen for residents of Abakaliki Rd GRA who have had to endure his ministry’s boisterous weekly spiritual events in a residential neighbourhood .
The transfer is good for Rev Fr. Mbaka himself as he is freed from parish duties for now in order to concentrate on developing his Ministry.
He can immediately deploy bulldozers and, in a matter of days, open a temporary adoration site and structure therein. He may even deploy free buses to ensure that the faithful get to the event ground.
In other words, if Fr. Mbaka feels he has been handed a lemon, nothing stops him from making lemonade from it.

Author

  • Ogbuagu Bob Anikwe, a veteran journalist and message development specialist, is now a community journalism advocate and publisher of Enugu Metro. Contact him on any of the channels below.

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