On 20^th March, 2022, Ntungamo seminary received visitors from the Tanzanian Episcopal Conference. These were the Archbishop Paul Ruzoka of Archdiocese of Tabora and Bishop Lazarius Msimbe of Morogoro diocese.  They came purposely as a normal routine of the visit of bishops from the Tanzania Episcopal Conference (TEC) in every academic year. It was a three-day visitation in which they had meetings with different groups in the seminary including Formators, Nuns, seminarians, and workers. The visitation ended on 22^nd March, 2022.

During the Holy Mass Bishop Msimbe who was the Main Celebrant urged us to always be responsible and to avoid the habit of complaining but rather encourage the habit of responsibility, patience and optimism towards handling different challenges. Discouraging the complaining behavior, he insisted that people with such behavior are likely not to reach their goals in their lives because, they use most of their time complaining instead of planning and implementing best ways towards success. He also urged the seminarians to abide to the rules and regulations of the seminary, as they are the pillars through which one in the formation towards priesthood must always keep.

Together with the two bishops, other Visitors who celebrated the Holy mass on 20^th March 2022 included, Fr. Thomas Kihangiyo the Diocesan Administrator of The Diocese of Tanga, Fr. Thomas Bilingi from Geita Diocese and Fr. Revocatus Mwemezi from Bukoba Diocese.

On 21^st March, the bishops and the whole community came together for a communial meal. In this occasion bishop Kilaini who accompanied Archbishop Ruzoka and Bishop Msimbe, was awarded a gift from the seminarians and was congratulated in a special way for having achieved a golden jubilee of priesthood.

On another occasion, His Lordship Archbishop Paul Ruzoka of the Archdiocese of Tabora, urged the seminarians to have proper use of the social networks and platforms such as You Tube, facebook, and Twitter, especially by looking through those things that are in line with their vocation, but also those concerning their studies including; learning different foreign languages via the internet. He also encouraged the seminarian to read novels and other English books in order to improve their English skills since it has a great role in priesthood vocation. Pertaining different challenges facing our seminary, especially those which were given out by the community members, the bishops promised to put them into consideration and present them in the episcopal conference where they will be discussed.

Generally, the bishop’s canonical visit was a blessing and a remarkable event in the seminary. The encouragement from the bishops was like an energizer which strengthened the seminarians to keep pushing towards the Holy vocation and always work hard to improve themselves every day in order to fit in the contemporary challenging society.

On behalf of the whole community Fr. Felix Magobe thanked the bishops for their fatherly concern and dedicating their time being with us from the beginning to the end.

Finally, when bidding us farewell, Bishop Lazarus Msimbe repeated his quotation from St. Augustine that “pray as though everything depended on God and work as though everything depends on you” directing these words to the whole community to pray and work hard for the prosperity of our beloved Seminary. Then Archbishop Ruzoka gave the final blessing and that marked the end of this year’s canonical visitation.

Prepared by: Frt. Emmanuel Mangu