All 80 priests in the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Durban involved in pastoral care are to take up a challenge to deal with vestiges of racism wherever they occur in the priesthood in southern Africa.
The challenge has been thrown down to the pastoral community by the Southern African Council of Priests, according to an article in the latest issue of the weekly Catholic newspaper, The Southern Cross.
The article says that Cardinal Wilfrid Napier, the archbishop of Durban, had given his consent for the archdiocese to start its own reconciliation process among the priests.
The majority of the pastors are expected to take part in a workshop on racism and reconciliation within the church at the Glenmore Pastoral Centre in Durban on August 28 and 29.
In a related move two years ago, the African Catholic Priests' Solidarity Movement was founded by a group of African priests.
The priests said at the time that they felt a "profound sense of alienation" in a church that was not really changing from "an institution rooted in the colonial and apartheid past to one reflecting the cultural ethos of the black community".
Father Dabula Mpako, speaking for the movement, said at the time that the Roman Catholic Church in South Africa was still "eurocentric" in its theology and agenda.
Father Cletus Mtshali, speaking for the Durban archdiocese, said on Monday that the workshop would cover several aspects of racism as they were experienced in South Africa.
One of the topics to be addressed would be the xenophobia often directed at foreigners from other African countries.