Bishop Rodrigo of Soddo - The Ethiopian Catholic Church

Bishop Rodrigo Mejia Saldarriaga SJ

Zenit carries an interview by a journalist from Aid to the Church in Need (Marie-Pauline Meyer) with Bishop Rodrigo Mejia Saldarriaga SJ, apostolic vicar of Soddo, Ethiopia. It is entitled "Championing Women's Rights in Ethiopia", but it is a more wide-ranging discussion discussing modern society in the federal republic, educating the population, the spreading of human rights and Christian values, hopes for closer ecumenical relations with the Ethiopian Orthodox Tawahedo (One Nature) Church, plans for a Catholic University in Addis Ababa, and the work of Catholic evangelisation among remoter tribes practising African traditional religion which have not been evangelised before.

At the end reference is made to the Ethiopian Catholic Church. Bishop Mejia is a Latin, but strcitly speaking the ECC is not an Eastern Catholic Church sui juris. The Catholics of Ethiopia of both the Ge'ez rite and the Roman rite constitute a unified Church (naturally, being in full ecclesial communion) and share common structures nationally. The archdiocese of Addis Abeba and Ethiopia to the north, including the two eparchies, use the Ge'ez rite. To the south of the capital, there are no permanent dioceses and the needs of the faithful are served by the specially constituted apostolic vicariates and prefectures of the Latin Church. There are also Ge'ez rite parishes and faithful in these territories.