The Pan-African Association of Catholic Exegetes (PACE) is a Pan-African Association of biblical scholars that has existed since the early 1980s. Biennially, the association organises a residential biblical conference for Catholic Biblical Scholars from all over Africa.
The Catholic Archdiocese of Accra will have the privilege of hosting this conference which comes to Ghana for the very first time, bringing together about 50 cardinals, bishops, priests, religious and lay scholars as well as an Anglican Bishop, to deliberate on the theme, “The Bible and the African Child in the Post-Pandemic Age”. The participants are coming from fifteen countries on the continent, namely, Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Kenya, Mauritius, Tanzania, Cameroon, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote D’Ivoire, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo and Angola.
The Conference will be held at the St. Arnold Janssen SVD Retreat Centre, Bortianor Hills, from 9th to 16th September 2024. It will also serve as an opportunity to honour Peter Cardinal Kodwo Appiah Turkson, one of the foremost Ghanaian Catholic Biblical scholars who recently turned seventy-five years.
The opening ceremony of the Conference will be held at Christ the King Catholic Church on Monday 9th September, 2024 at 9am. The Keynote speeches will be given by Cardinal Peter Turkson and Cardinal John Onaiyekan of Nigeria. During the opening ceremony, selected children of the Archdiocese of Accra will have the opportunity to engage in a panel discussion since the focus of the Conference is on children. Following the opening ceremony, the biblical scholars will present papers on various Old and New Testament topics relating to children. Some of the topics to be presented include: “Child Morality: An Intercultural Study of the Jewish and the Ewe Traditions”, “The Bible, the Child and Vulnerability”, “Reading the cry of Hagar’s child in Genesis 21:14-20 in the context of the cry of the African child ” and “Toward Child Integral Formation (Luke 2:48-51): Paradigm of Revitalizing the African Hearth”.
On Thursday, participants will have the opportunity to visit the Cape Coast and Elmina Castles, interact with seminarians at Pedu and also visit Archbishop Palmer-Buckle. On Friday morning, the participants will celebrate Mass and interact with children from neighbouring schools at the St. Bernadette school. This will be followed by lunch in honour of Cardinal Turkson.
On Saturday, the participants will have the opportunity to visit some sites in Accra such as the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum and finally on Sunday, join some parishes in Accra for Mass before departing to their various countries.
Other august participants of the conference include Archbishop John Bonaventure Kwofie, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Accra and Bishop Emmanuel Fianu, the Bishop of Ho and Vice President of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference. The chair of the Local Organising Committee is Rev. Fr. Dr. Michael Mensah, a senior lecturer at the University of Ghana who has recently been appointed the Chaplain of the St. Thomas Aquinas Chaplaincy, Legon. The conference will be funded by generous lay faithful from the Archdiocese of Accra and some corporate organisations.
