United Methodists in Africa elect
first woman bishop

By LINDA BLOOM

NEW YORK – The Rev Joaquina Filipe Nhanala, 51, has been elected as the first woman United Methodist bishop in Africa.

The Pastor of Matola United Methodist Church in Mozambique was elected at a meeting of the denomination’s Africa Central Conference at the Africa University in Mutare, Zimbabwe last year. She has succeeded Bishop João Somane Machado, who is retiring as the leader of the Mozambique area.

In another election during the conference, Bishop Eben Nhiwatiwa was re-elected to lead the denomination’s Zimbabwe area.

The Africa Central Conference includes the denomination’s Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Angola episcopal areas, the South Africa Provisional Conference, the Malawi Missionary Conference, and the East Africa Episcopal Area of Uganda, Southern Sudan, Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi.

Bishop Nhiwatiwa was first elected to the episcopacy in 2004 and has served as General Secretary of the Africa Central Conference since 2000.

Besides serving a large church in Matola, a suburb of Maputo, the Rev Nhanala has coordinated women’s projects for the Mozambique church and led a World Relief HIV/Aids programme designed to mobilise churches for education and advocacy in Mozambique’s three southern provinces.

The Rev Nhanala, the only woman United Methodist pastor in Mozambique holding a master’s degree in theology, facilitated the Mozambique Initiative’s consultation with 200 participants in Maputo in 2003.

She is is married to another United Methodist pastor, the Rev Eugenio Tomas, and they have four adult children.

Although she was baptised and confirmed as a Catholic – her father’s religion – she also attended her mother’s Methodist church. Drawn to the youth programmes, she became active in the Methodist Church as a teenager. She and her husband, who married in 1976, were both accepted for theological studies at the 1985 Mozambique Annual Conference and received sponsorship from the Women’s Fellowship. – United Methodist News Service.

Linda Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York.