Tanzanian boys are becoming devout Catholic leaders — With your help
Episode Stats
Words per minute
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Hate speech
5
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Summary
In this episode of the John Henry Weston Show, we talk with Christopher Wendt, a priest and founder of the Diocese of Dar es Sala, about the need for Catholic education in Africa, and how the diocese can help.
Transcript
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I just felt called by Our Lady to make a climb of the Kilimanjaro. It sounds kind of crazy.
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My whole life has been a story of crazy ideas, and I just felt called to it. The Kilimanjaro,
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as everyone knows, is the fourth highest mountain of the world. And I thought,
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you know, I like to hike. I like to climb. I can take that
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God-given talent and try to help this place out.
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Hey, my friends. It's not all that often where you get to see an effort in the developing world
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that you really, really want to fund. There are a lot of things that, you know, UNICEF does,
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for instance. They give you pictures of these little children who look like they're starving,
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and you can help, and they name them, and so on. And then you look into those things,
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and lo and behold, UNICEF is promoting abortion. They're promoting contraception. All of these
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things that are so inimical to what we want to do to help these children. And they're almost using
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those children as a front in order to collect donations into a scheme that is really anti-Christ
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and anti-life. So it's very difficult, then, to find a project, because we do want to help
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especially good projects in the developing world. We're blessed to live in a land of plenty. So we
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want to be able to share how do we find the good organizations, the good groups that are running
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programs that are authentic, that are authentically Catholic, that are authentically good and helping
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the poor. LifeFunder has been around to do exactly that. But I've just come back from Africa,
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Africa. And in Africa, I was able to see a number of these ventures that were so worthy of support.
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And as you might know, I was in Kenya, Uganda, in Rwanda, and Tanzania. In Tanzania, I found such a
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group that is so good and so worthy of support. I wanted to focus specifically with you on that one.
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It's a group that runs a school for boys, another school for girls, a hospital for the poor,
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and also a house of studies for those considering the priesthood. It is so faithful. It is so amazing.
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But it's a work that needs your support. They've got 250 boys in their school, 60 new applicants.
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They're needing to build a new building just to house them. In terms of the girls' school, it's there.
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It's got like 170 students in it. And then there's the hospital for the poor. They need your help.
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They want to do this house of studies for seminarians or people considering.
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You know, this is a great work. And with us today, we have one of the people who also was in Tanzania,
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who can tell us more about it. His name is Christopher Wendt. Stay tuned for this episode of the John
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Henry Weston Show. Welcome to LifeSite League. What are we? We are change.
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We are a voice for the voiceless. We are prayer warriors. We are journalists. We are activists.
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As citizen journalists, we, members of LifeSite League, contribute stories to LifeSite news from across the world.
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with our greatest weapon in our hand, the rosary. The world we are living in is encompassed by evil.
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It is mocking God, killing babies in the womb, and burning down our churches. And what are so many
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of us doing? We are standing by in silence. Or worse, we are compromising and joining the devil's army
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Let's begin as we always do with the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father,
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Christopher, you are actually doing some fundraising for this venture already. You're doing a climb
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Sure. I was in Tanzania this summer, and I got to see the place there. Like you said, the school,
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the hospital, the boy's school, the sisters. And I was struck with what a beautiful picture of the
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church and how authentically Catholic it was. And I saw the need. And I see the growth, the future.
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And I just felt called by Our Lady to make a climb of the Kilimanjaro. It sounds kind of crazy.
00:05:53.280
My whole life has been a story of crazy ideas, and I just felt called to it. And the Kilimanjaro,
00:05:59.040
as everyone knows, is the fourth highest mountain of the world. And I thought, you know, I like to
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hike. I like to climb. I can take that God-given talent and try to help this place out.
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Beautiful. What was it that really struck you about this work in Tanzania? And what do you think
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really gave you that fire to go ahead and do this fundraising effort?
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I was there for a week, and just seeing a picture of the whole life of the church,
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of how it could be. You have sisters, you have brothers, you have priests, you have the children,
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you have—they're mostly farmers there. And it's just good people, and so on fire for the faith,
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the true faith, the ancient faith that we believe as Catholics. And I just—there was a remarkable
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charism. It is so as it ought to be. Like, it just resonates with our understanding of what the
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true faith is. And you see it lived out and expressed that way. And I think that really
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struck me. And then just seeing the mountain and the possibility and the challenge of that. And
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I thought, if that mountain's so big, maybe if we can get some visibility of that and climb it,
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have a Catholic climb up to the top of the mountain and really claim it for Our Lady,
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claim the reign of Mary from there, and see if we could get people to sponsor the climbers so that
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we can help. In particular, as you mentioned, there are some building that they need to do. They're
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overcrowded because of the growth. They're not only authentically Catholic, but they are
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booming and growing. And all they need is us to give a little bit from our own blessings,
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and that will actually be huge for them. Indeed. Now, you're still looking for climbers
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as well. This climb's going to happen in July. So I think there's still time to sign up, is it?
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Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So we're probably going to cut it off at about 20 people. And so far,
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we have about five or six people signed up. We haven't really pushed it. We're trying to push
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it a little bit by being on with you here, John. But if you are interested in supporting,
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like you said, John, an authentically Catholic cause, one that will really mean a lot and really,
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really grow the church and really help true Catholics out, and you love a challenge and you
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want to figure out who you are before Jesus and Mary and do something that's won a chance of a
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lifetime and do it for a great cause, then consider it. You can go to livefatima.io slash climb
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and go there and find out information. You can reach out to us there. You can register. But there's
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time for you to consider it. Take a look at this. This is an interview that I did with Father Antonius
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Maria, who is the head of the work there, and just talking about and showing us the school,
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the plans for the building of more school buildings and more buildings to house the young boys there.
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Um, because as you can see in the video here, the housing conditions are very, very crowded indeed.
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And these are all poor kids. So they're not ones who can afford lots of things. This is a real work
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of charity. And it's a work of beauty because their foremost thing is not only to feed the bellies
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and provide these children with a place to say, it's to feed the souls. And really, this will be the seed
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of the rebirth of the church in our day. Take a look.
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So Father, if you can tell us right now, how many properties do you have and what are they used for?
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Well, we're having some lands. We have schools in them. We have hospitals in them. And also we are
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a formation house in them. We are having small children cared in one of the convents you didn't see
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today because we are just running quickly, quickly. But all in all these lands, we are trying to save
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the needs of the church. Everywhere we are starting a mission, it's for the need of the place. So in the
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lands we visited, as you saw, there is a need for mission for young people. There is to care for the
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poor in the hospital who can't go to the very expensive hospital. So we are trying to care for them.
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Great. And how many sisters are here in the community?
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In this convent in Puma, more or less 70 something.
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Okay. And then you also have priests and monks as well. How many priests and monks do you have?
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Here in Tanzania, we are having eight priests. But we are having priests also in Brazil and
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somewhere in Italy. And one joint in Germany is working with our sisters in Germany.
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Beautiful. And how many brothers do you have here?
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Brothers, we are having here in the Monk Convent you visited, 16 of them. And others are in
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Good. And then in terms of what you do for the schools, how many students do you have?
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That's a big number to feed and to give for sleeping and everything.
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So you also have dormitories for them and things like that.
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Well, some friends were helping us, but now they are more and more
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coming down because they are friends of our mother's founder and they are of her age.
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So as those people who are friends or schoolmates, they already died also.
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The new generation in those countries, like in German, are fewer who are seeing to the mission countries.
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Now still we have good doctors who are coming, but the ones who are just donating for mission countries,
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So now some parents are trying to help at least a quarter of the costs some parents are doing,
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but we have to look for funds too for these boys.
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Because we see that there is a vocation, there is a future of these boys.
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In addition to the 252 boys, there are 191 girls.
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And still we have a primary school, from preschool to primary school, we have 67.
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So all together we are having 570 students to feed and give them to sleep.
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We are looking how to expand it, especially the boys.
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We saw today the sleeping quarters, they're as tight as tight can be.
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And then the crowds of them, you're going to send us photos and video of the crowds as they're there.
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You also have something of great interest, and that is you are unique in that you are celebrating Latin Mass.
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I think it's a question that people wonder, why, who, who, the Africans wanted Latin Mass.
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Well, you can imagine and you can think that maybe in Africa they are all looking for dance.
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Well, dance is good for Africa, but outside the church, not in the church.
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But they think that everywhere we have to dance.
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No, dance is in our blood, but not in the liturgy.
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So there is a good question I asked this many places and in meetings with the bishops.
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I said, you know, there is a wrong idea about inculturation.
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To inculturate the gospel or to evangelize the culture.
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So if you make a wrong definition, you have another word.
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To inculturate the gospel, that means to put culture in the gospel.
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Christopher, if you could give us your final thoughts on this beautiful movement in Tanzania.
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If you came and saw what I saw, you would come to the same conclusion that you'd either want to climb
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the Kilimanjaro and you would feel called like I did to do it.
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Or you would, if you can't do it, you would want to give whatever you have,
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$50,000, $100,000, $50,000, even $100,000, maybe stock options.
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I mean, there are vehicles to do that and you would clearly see the need and you would see,
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as we have with the interview, and you would also just know that your money is being well used.
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I've seen them do projects and they are, they work hard.
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Like the, both the, you know, everybody involved, they're very efficient.
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Like to build anything like that would be cost 50 times the amount of money.
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And here they're doing it at a fraction of the cost and very frugally.
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And your donation will go a very long way to really support the future of the church and
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bless these people, these fellow Catholics in any other place of the world.
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For all of the Lifesiders who want to support this very, very worthy initiative,
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And there you will be able to support this incredible initiative.
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I could not give it any more powerful endorsement.
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