Parish Pastoral Council
The Parish Pastoral Council (PPC) is a consultative body in the Catholic Church that advises the parish priest or bishop on pastoral issues.
The PPC's objectives
- Assisting the pastor: The PPC helps the pastor plan, organize, and coordinate activities such as worship, religious education, and service.
- Assessing needs: The PPC assesses the needs of the parish and its members.
- Developing a pastoral plan: The PPC develops and implements a plan to promote the common good of the parish.
- Fostering unity: The PPC fosters unity and a sense of community in the parish.
- Improving decision-making: The PPC improves the decision-making process for pastoral planning, goal setting, and more.
- Evaluating effectiveness: The PPC evaluates pastoral effectiveness.
PPC Committees & Parish Groups
PPC Committees
The Parish Pastoral Council (PPC) operates through eight Committees, each of which is charged with a specific mission that seeks to advance a specific cause of spiritual life at the Parish. The eight PPC Committees are as follows:
The SAC represents the parish community in expressing its concern about poverty and injustice in both the local and broader community, and in transforming that concern into commitment and action.
The EC is responsible for discerning the needs, developing, promoting and evaluating all parish education programmes.
The Elders and Family Life Committee advises the Parish Priest and the Pastoral Parish Council on matters pertaining to the welfare of parishioners in general, and elders in particular, and work on building a Parish Community. The Committee looks after the welfare of the Parish Community, and coordinates the integration of new members and Elders in the Parish Community and…
The Committee is charged with the duty of planning and coordinating liturgical celebrations, as well as coordinating the overall spiritual development of the faithful at the Parish. To achieve its mandate, the Committee plans forthcoming celebrations, days of prayer, Novenas, spiritual renewal, as well as special devotions as called for by the respective occasion. The planning part includes both the timing as well as the how the celebration should be. Examples of celebrations that the Committee works on are Christmas festivities, Holy Week, Corpus Christi, Confirmation and First Holy Communion, as well as ad hoc events such as the IMBISA Holy Mass that took place on 25th September 2022. Furthermore, the Committee also recruits and oversees the training of parishioners to serve in various ministries of the Church as the need arises.
The current Office Bearers of the Committee are as follows:
Priest: Fr. Johannes Shalongo, OMI
Chairperson: Monica Bille
Vice-Chairperson: Emmanuel Olu-King
Secretary: Charlotte Sitler
The buildings and Maintenance committee serves to ensure that all buildings that fall under the jurisdiction of the St. Mary’s Cathedral are maintained and are in accordance to the building regulations.
This committee works together with the other committees in organising events and functions of the parish as well as make budgetary requests to the PFC.
The Committee provides a medium for the young membership of the St. Mary’s Cathedral to present the views of young members to the Parish Priest and Pastoral Parish Council. The Committee also organizes and arranges activities of interest to the youth. It also unites the various youth groups in the parish, and promotes the participation of the youth in Parish…
Parish Groups
‘Apart from PPC Committees, there are also several independent organisations that operate at the Parish, chief among which is the Finance Committee. This Committee, as per statutes that govern the administration of Church matters, reports directly to the Archbishop although they work closely with the PPC.
The Ambassadors of a Worldwide Brotherhood is a youth group formed in 2008 after some youths in Namibia attended the World Youth Day in Sydney. It comprises of youths from different parishes within the Windhoek Deanery.
The Group adopts Annual Action Plan, outlining the activities to be undertaken for that year.
NATEC is a movement of young people who, through the formation of leadership teams, retreat weekends, and various forms of follow-up, are given the opportunity to grow in faith and in witness and service to others. NaTEC is offered as an expression of God’s grace and love, extended to all for prayers, reflections, talks, discussions and activities based on the Paschal Mystery. NATEC offers a special experience on topics and approach designed for the youth through spiritual retreats.
The Parish Finance Council is responsible for the temporal administration of the parish finances, supplies, maintenance of properties, bookkeeping, budgeting and inventory.
Assisting with the smooth operation within the service
Mary Immaculate, the Mother of God, is the model of our League. Members imitate her obedience to both hearing and acting on the Word of God. We try to follow Mary’s example of bringing Jesus to others by living our faith and in the works of the League.