There are approximately 350,000 Catholics in the Diocese of Njombe. There are 115 Diocesan priests and 9 Religious Order priests. There are 49 parishes, but as you have learned, each parish has a number of Out Station Churches in the villages.

Yesterday, I was at the Cathedral Parish in Njombe; the Cathedral has 10 Out Station Churches in the villages in which the priests of the Cathedral must provide services including Mass. The  Parish in which I am residing in Wanging’ombe has 15 Out Station Churches.

Priests in Tanzania do not receive a salary from the Parish they serve. The Parish offertory collection provides food for the priest, pays for a rectory cook/laundry/cleaning person, and provides some money for the Diocese. The collection taken up in the Out Station Churches provides a salary for the Catechist serving the Out Station Church. The Catechist provides a Liturgy of the Word service including music for the three Sundays of the month in which the Parish priest is not present for Mass. The Catechist also takes care of all of the pastoral needs of the Out Station, and contacts the Pastor if such pastoral needs require the presence of the priest; for example, Anointing of the Sick. The collection in the Out Station also pays for supplies for the Out Station Church and provides some income for the main Parish.

The offertory collections are minimal by US standards, yet these collections require a significant sacrifice for the parishioners making the donations. And if you can’t make a financial donation, some parishioners bring fruits/vegetables from their gardens, eggs, soap etc. for use by the priest. I had previously reported the collection at the Kijombe Out Station Church last week as 64,000 Tanzanian schillings, which is about $28 US. The Church where I am residing reported a Sunday offertory of 45,000 Tanzanian schillings, which is about $20 US. The Cathedral Parish in Njombe, which has four Masses on a Sunday, has a significantly higher collection in contrast to theses Parishes; the Cathedral announced a Sunday offertory collection of 2.4 million Tanzanian schillings, which is about $1,040 US.

The offertory collections are minimal by US standards, yet these collections require a significant sacrifice for the parishioners making the donations.

In that priests assigned to parishes do not receive a salary, all priests have to have some outside income source. The pastor of the parish in Wanging’ombe (where I am residing), Fr. Renatus, farms a good-sized plot of land where he grows corn, sunflowers (he makes oil from the sunflowers), and beans. He also maintains a good number of goats, chickens, and pigs, which he eventually sells.

Another common source of income for priests is to have a small market/store. What a priest will do is go to a larger city (like Makambako) and buy staple food items (non-perishable) and household items, and then maintain a small market where an employee of the parish sells the goods for a profit. Fr. Nestor’s friend Fr. Alex maintains a stationary store. Fr. Alex buys supplies in Dar es Salaam and then sells those goods where his Parish is located.

A number of priests have other assignments in addition to the parish they serve. Fr. Nestor’s friend Fr. Bruno is the Diocesan Superintendent of Schools, and is also pastor of a parish with six Out Station Churches. The Diocese also has priests serving in their Minor Seminary, teaching at the Catholic University (St. Augustine in Mwanza) and Major Seminary, and two priests on loan to a diocese that only has 14 priests.

The Diocese of Njombe has 12 Catholic primary schools and 15 Catholic secondary schools.  
Of those 27 schools, 10 are diocesan-operated, with the other 17 schools being operated by religious communities.

In addition to offering a faith-based education, the Catholic primary schools offer a major advantage over the government-operated primary schools. The majority of Catholic primary schools use English as the medium to teach their subjects; the government-operated primary schools only teach using Swahili. This is a photo of a school bus for the Echo Pre and Primary School operated by ths FSMA Sisters from India; the side of the bus promotes the fact that English is the instructional medium in that school. All secondary schools in Tanzania, whether Catholic or government-operated, teach both Swahili and English.

Tuition for a Catholic primary school (no meal offered or transportation) is 600,000 Tanzanian schillings a year, which is $280-$300 US. A Catholic primary school that offers breakfast, lunch, and transportation will charge 1 million Tanzanian schillings per year, which is $450-$500 US. Above you will see a photo of St. Bokita Catholic primary school, which provides those services.

The Tanzanian government requires that there must be at least 45 children in a classroom (which the Catholic schools maintain, but in a government operated school, you could experience 70-80 children in a classroom).

There will always be a homeroom/classroom teacher at all times, and then a second teacher will come into the classroom to teach particular subjects. A child in a Catholic primary school will be taught English and Swahili along with math, science, religion, and life skills (examples: cooking, how to make wooden spoons, gardening, the appropriate time to plant coffee, bring in manure as fertilizer, and harvest coffee.). If a child does not continue on to secondary school (our version of High School), at least the child will have benefitted from learning life skills in primary school.

In grades four and seven, all children in Catholic and government-operated schools have to take National exams; if you do not pass the National exam, you must repeat that grade level. If you do not pass the National exam after seventh grade (even after repeating the grade level), you cannot continue on to secondary school, which is six years.

Fr. Nestor was the first child in his family of twelve children to attend secondary school. He is the eighth of his parents' twelve children. The fact that Fr. Nestor was the first child to attend secondary school is more of a reflection of the remote village in which Fr. Nestor was raised. A greater value was often placed on becoming an income generator for one’s family after primary school, rather than attending secondary school. Fr. Nestor also has three sisters who became religious sisters (Benedictines); all three of his sisters benefitted from getting advanced degrees in the United States.  Sr. Beatrice eventually became an oncolgy (cancer) doctor after graduating from medical school in Poland.

In 2019-2020 (the last year statistics could be found), there were 220,000 students enrolled in Tanzanian colleges or universities.