Tanzania and Madagascar, March 26, 2025
A scene from Tanzania. Photo: exarchate-africa.ru
More than 65 people were received into holy Orthodoxy in Tanzania and Madagascar over a 10-day period earlier this month.
The Baptisms and Chrismations were celebrated by clerics of the Russian Orthodox Church’s African Exarchate.
From March 11 to 15, 2025, the Dean of the Northern Church District in Tanzania, Fr. Peter Majune, together with Fr. Polycarp Buchenja and Fr. Makarii Mangwa, visited the communities in Musoma and Mwanza—port cities on the shores of Lake Victoria.
On March 12, they received 27 people from other Christian confessions after a lengthy catechism, the Exarchate reports.
On March 14, Fr. Peter baptized 10 locals from other Christian confessions who had studied Orthodoxy for seven months.
A scene from Madagascar. Photo: exarchate-africa.ru
And on March 21, Metropolitan Constantine of Zaraisk, the Patriarchal Exarch of Africa, celebrated the Divine Liturgy at the Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos in Ambatondrazaka, Madagascar, before which he baptized 26 people, mostly teenagers and children, and received an entire local family into the Church.
The service was celebrated in Church Slavonic and Malagasy.
The evening before, the Metropolitan tonsured Riassaphore Nun Nektaria (Razanamahasua), giving her the name Mary in honor of St. Mary of Egypt.
The bishop presented the parish with an icon of Christ the Savior and a censer, as well as a Russian matryoshka doll for the little believers. Each member of the congregation was given crosses and icons.
Several groups of catechumens were baptized by clerics of the Patriarchate of Alexandria in Tanzania in February. Bishop Prodromos of the Patriarchate of Alexandria’s Diocese of Toliara and Southern Madagascar baptized 100 children in January.
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