In the whole of Africa, the number of deacons is rather small: 385. It is alleged that the expansion of lay ministries in the African Church has somewhat curbed the development of the diaconate.
Perhaps so, but a good exception is South Africa, where they number about 225. Maybe this is the reason why the meeting sponsored by the International Centre for Deacons (ICD) was held in Johannesburg and Durban in April of 2008. Across the African continent, there exist two models of diaconal service: the first, but not the most popular, is the deacon assisting a priest in a parish; the second is the deacon being given direct responsibility over several parishes with no priest, particularly within the sprawling and fast developing megalopolis in many African countries.
Soweto is one such area: that’s where Bishop Desmond Tutu lives and that’s where the house of Nelson Mandela is located, now turned into a museum. According to Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier ofm, Archbishop of Johannesburg, the African Church expresses in the ministry of deacons a diaconate of weakness: in its service to the poor, the elderly, women and children, the handicapped and the victims of violence and abuse, and the many whose rights are not respected simply because they are not known.
If, in South Africa, the ministry of deacons is increasingly taking on its own character, what can be said of the only deacon, Jean-Pierre Hiron, in the little Church of Algeria? The minority status of the Church does not prevent it from witnessing, silently through its martyrs, to the light of the Gospel of Christ. Even this brief review of the conditions of the diaconate worldwide has brought to light not only the uneven numerical distribution of deacons across the Catholic world, but above all the various interpretations about the nature of service or diakonia.
In the first instance, it seems to me that in countries where the diaconate has been undergoing a recent development, such as, for example, in the United States of America or even in Australia, a monitoring body has been established at the national level. And that is a welcome move. It is to be hoped that the practical process of inclusion in the life of any Church, though significantly varied as local needs are, will not sidestep the most important question, and that is: who is the deacon?
This issue of identity needs to be thoroughly examined in its historical, theological, pastoral and sociological foundations. As priests, deacons are ordained to carry out their ministry in the universal Church. No matter how diverse the mission of deacons may be, the inner fibre and personality of the diaconate should reflect a common understanding.
During a clergy conference in the diocese of Lismore in 2007, Deacon Paul Simmons, speaking on the restoration of the diaconate, quoted Bishop Anthony Fisher op who, in 2003, at the National Conference of Deacons in Australia, remarked: The challenge facing us is to avoid reducing it (diaconate) to function(s), but rather theologising and spiritualising this vocation more richly than has occurred to date.