Comboni

Tuesday, December 3, 2024
“Thank you for your prayers and your goodwill messages for my appointment as Auxiliary Bishop of the Archieparchy (Archdiocese) of Addis Ababa by His Holiness Pope Francis. (…) I feel small and I recognise my limitations in the face of the call to the new mission, and for this reason I ask you to support me with your prayers. With this letter I would like to express my gratitude to every one of you.” (Mgr. Tesfaye Tadesse Gebresilasie, mccj)

“Shout joyfully to the Lord, all you people;
serve the Lord with gladness… Give thanks to him, bless his name;
good indeed is the Lord, His mercy endures forever”
[Psalm 100 (99)]

Dear confreres, greetings and prayers from Rome.

Thank you for your prayers and your goodwill messages for my appointment as Auxiliary Bishop of the Archieparchy (Archdiocese) of Addis Ababa by His Holiness Pope Francis.

This appointment is the conclusion of a long process of discernment, which ended with my response to the Church’s call to begin a new service, interrupting the one I was carrying out in the General Council.

I feel small and I recognise my limitations in the face of the call to the new mission, and for this reason I ask you to support me with your prayers.

With this letter I would like to express my gratitude to every one of you.

I have received copious blessings and feel greatly enriched by my service to the Institute and the mission during my years on the General Council, despite my limitations.

I am especially grateful to the confreres of the three General Councils in which I served from 2009 to 2024. A big thank you to the two General Secretaries and the Personal Secretary: I appreciated the service they rendered to our Institute with generosity, competence and skill. And now I accompany with my prayers the discernment that is taking place for the election of our new Superior General.

Thanks also to all the members of the General Administration and to the confreres in the Generalate with whom I have had the opportunity to walk and serve together over the past 15 years.

My thanks also go to the circumscription superiors and to each confrere, for the collaboration and the journey we have made together in the sequela Christi and in the commitment to evangelisation, at the service of the Kingdom of God, to the construction of which each of us seeks to contribute.

I have really been greatly enriched and I have received a lot during the journey I have made together with many brothers and sisters during these years of service on the General Council. Thank you for the journey we have made together with the Comboni missionary sisters, with the Comboni secular missionaries, and with the Comboni lay missionaries.

At the end of the long period I have spent in the General Curia, I have many more people to thank. For the sake of brevity, I say thank you to all the employees and office staff in the Generalate who are engaged in the service of the Comboni mission.

I ask forgiveness from all the confreres for my faults and for the mistakes I may have made during my service. And I trust, above all, in the immense mercy of God who knows how to transform everything for the good of his Kingdom.

I pray to the Virgin Mary and St Daniel Comboni to accompany us in this process and to obtain for us the necessary graces.

With gratitude and in faith!

“All my trust is in God, who sees everything, who can do anything and who loves us” (Writings 447).

Fr. Tesfaye Tadesse Gebresilasie, mccj