Archbishop MBOGHA KAMBALE CHARLES, A.A.

Since that day, Archbishop Charles has been under medication and following rehabilitation exercices, but accomplishing his mission, the better he could, as the Pastor and the Seer of the Ecclesiastical Province of Kivu.

During these four long years of his life, Archbishop Charles revealed himself as a man of great faith. In a country where every illness or every ill fate is attributed to bad spirits or bad peoples called sorcerers, Archbishop Charles evangelized the faithful of his Archdiocese by his faith, his hope, and his unfailing love towards all, always asking his hearers not to forget that suffering and sickness is part of our life, and that Jesus, in his death and resurrection, had shown us how to overcome suffering and death in our life.

Archbishop Charles was for his priests a real father and a model and a witness of ministry in time of sorrow. For his assumptionists brothers, he was an educator and a promoter of the inculturation of the assumptionist religious life into the African culture. For Four Years (1998-2002), the bishops of Congo elected him the President of the Episcopal Committee for Religious Life. As assumptionist, Father Charles occupied all the posts of responsibility, in schools, in houses of formation, and in parishes. With a heart of a father and of an educator, Archbishop Charles was helping many young congolese men and women to pay their school fees and get a good education because he believed only education in all its forms will transform Congo into a better place to live. The African Province has lost its elder but as the elder precedes us into God’s Kingdom, we know he will continue to play his role of elder among many and intercede for the Province of Africa, the Assumptionist family, and the many dioceses he served as a bishop.

Born at Lubango-Kilubo (Diocese of Butembo-Beni, Nord-Kivu, D.R.Congo) in 1942 and ordained priest in 1969, Charles Mbogha Kambale joined the Augustinians of the Assumption (a.a) in 1972. Bishop of Wamba (1990-1995) and later of Isiro-Niangara (1996- 2001), he had become Archbishop of Bukavu in June 2001. Archbishop Charles Mbogha Kambale’s funeral will take place on Wednesday, October 12, in the Cathedral of Bukavu (Sud-Kivu, D.R.Congo), local Catholic Church where he was serving as archbishop. (Fr. Vincent K. Machozi, a.a., Boston, MA)