A Pilgrimage of Pain and Hope: Emmanuel Katongole

In the most recent episode of NetVUE’s podcast Callings, our hosts John Barton and Erin VanLaningham speak with Emmanuel Katongole, a Catholic priest in Uganda and a professor of theology and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame. Known for his work on violence and politics in sub-Saharan Africa, Katongole is a theologian of peacebuilding and reconciliation who confronts the complexities of callings in various contexts. He is the author of many books, his most recent being Who Are My People? Love, Violence, and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In this episode, Katongole describes his experience of vocation as a journey, throughout which he observes, “I find myself crossing so many boundaries.” Over the course his life, this sense of crossing has consistently accompanied—and even haunted—him. “I am always belonging to more than one world,” he says, “and I find myself not totally fitting in any one of those worlds … I speak with an accent in all these different places.”

Although such dislocation—or sense of an “accented” vocation—might cause some people to suffer or feel alienated, it has prompted Katongole to imagine identity and belonging in much more capacious ways. When he asks, “Where is home?” and “Who are my people?” he realizes “a clear pattern, namely that God has kept pushing me beyond my people, beyond my home to a place where I’m no longer sure who my people are and where my home is.”

Ultimately, such questions and their answers sometimes create confusion or even bring us face to face with pain, but they can also lead us to a more expansive understanding of ourselves and the world—and to a deeper sense of joy and hope. As Katongole puts it, “Whatever way I can contribute to the movement of hope in the world, of caring deeply about something and throwing my weight around that something,” he will do so—pursuing his desire “to see that the world becomes a better place.”

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Geoffrey W. Bateman is the editor of Vocation Matters.