‘Learn, Practice True Motherhood As Divine Calling’

Bishop Tonito Francisco Xavier Muananoua has called upon Catholic women to embrace “true
motherhood”, which he described as a divine calling modelled after that of the Blessed Virgin
Mary.
In his homily during a Thanksgiving Mass for the Archdiocesan Women’s Day, The Auxiliary
Bishop of Mozambique’s Catholic Archdiocese of Maputo described women as “a gift of
motherhood that God has placed in the life of each one of us.”
“For us to be in this world, by Divine Grace, the work of God, God used a woman,” Bishop
Muananoua said during the celebration at the Holy Trinity Parish of Maputo Archdiocese.
He added, “It is a vocation to be a mother. Not all women have the vocation of motherhood.”
True motherhood, the Mozambican Catholic Bishop said, “is an apprenticeship that needs to be
practiced every day.”
“We need to learn every day to be true mothers, because being a true mother is a gift that we
must ask for,” he said.
The Mozambican Catholic Bishop, who was appointed Auxiliary Bishop for Maputo in March
2023 emphasized the need to embrace motherhood with humility and thankfulness.
He said, “We must also ask in an attitude of gratitude, because it is beautiful to be a mother, it is
beautiful to transmit a life; it is beautiful to know that we collaborate as mothers in God’s plan to
bring an incipient life into our wombs.”
Motherhood, Bishop Muananoua reiterated, “gives pride; but it needs to be exercised with
humility.”
While motherhood “makes us proud,” he said, “it is also laborious; it takes a lot of work, because
every day we have to ask for the humility to be true mothers, the humility to be aware of the
great responsibility that God has placed in us, to transmit the warmth of life, to nourish the hope
of life, to care for life from its earliest moments.”
The Auxiliary Bishop of Maputo further reflected on the beginning of human life, saying, “Each
of us was welcomed by a womb for nine months; each of us grew up, nourished by breasts for
some time. We lived in the warmth (of the womb); we are what we are because a woman, by the
grace of God, brought us to life.”
“Today, as we live this day in our Archdiocese, we have been asked to meditate on the vocation
of motherhood, to give thanks for the gift of motherhood, and to look to Mary as our Great
Mother,” Bishop Muananoua said on May 5, during the Thanksgiving Mass for Women’s Day in
Maputo Archdiocese.

He added, “Let us accept the recommendations of love that Jesus makes to each one of us,
looking also at those faces, looking at those mothers, looking at those lives that forget
themselves so that we can be what we are.”
Mothers, Bishop Muananoua said, “are a reflection of Divine Love.”
*Bishop Muananoua, blessing Catholic Women during the Diocesan Women’s Day in Maputo
Archdiocese.
ACI Africa