Bishop’s House, Soppo
P.O. Box 64, Buea
South West Province, Cameroon
E-Mail: dioceseofbuea@ yahoo.com
Tel: (00237) 332 22 41 / Fax (00237) 332 26 71

PASTORAL LETTER TO ALL CHRIST’S FAITHFUL AND
PEOPLE OF GOODWILL IN THE DIOCESE OF BUEA
ABOUT THE CREATION OF THE CATHOLIC
UNIVERSITY OF THE DIOCESE OF BUEA
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
The Peace of the Lord be with you. 
I.        INTRODUCTION.
Among the many requests that the People of the Diocese of Buea have presented to me since I became the Bishop of Buea on 30l January, 2007, the creation of a Catholic University of the Diocese of Buea, has been one of the top priorities. I formed an Ad hoc committee soon after my installation, to study the possibility, feasibility and necessity of founding and running a university of the Diocese of Buea, and a lot of ground work has been done. Practically all the people who were consulted around the Diocese on this issue, were not only in favour of the idea, but also expressed willingness to support the idea in any way possible to come to fruition.
In accordance with “Ex Corde Ecclesiae” (The Apostolic Constitution on Catholic Universities by Pope John Paul II) and the Code of Canon Law, every diocese has the inherent right to found and own a Diocesan University and running a university is in line with the teaching of Christ who commanded the Apostles to go and teach all nations (Mtt.28:l8-20) . In fact, the Code of Canon Law states that “The Church has the right to establish and to govern universities, -which serve to promote the deeper culture and fuller development of the human person, and to complement the Church’s own teaching office” (Can.807).

According to the laws governing higher education in Cameroon, the creation and running of every university that has to issue secular and recognized degrees must be authorized by the Government of Cameroon. Seeing the need and being convinced that the Diocese of Buea needs its own university,  I asked the Ad hoc committee to go ahead and compile documents for the creation of the Catholic  University of the Diocese of Buea,  for submission to the Ministry of  Higher Education in Yaounde.  On

the 9th of October, 2008, the Diocese of Buea, deposited a complete file addressed to the Honourable Minister of Higher Education in Yaounde, requesting authorization to create a Catholic University of the Diocese of Buea.
II. WHY THE DIOCESE OF BUEA NEEDS ITS OWN UNIVERSITY
We considered that in a country like ours where development is still at the primary stage; a country in which the population is growing very rapidly; a country which turns out thousands of youngsters as successful candidates in the General Certificate of Education Examinations and the Baccalaureate; a country from which thousands of students travel abroad and even to neighbouring countries in search for higher education, the creation of more universities is an urgent necessity. This should be so because of the glaring inadequacies of existing universities and study facilities, inadequate curricula content, and the slow pace of executing new projects and plans, both by the private and public sectors.
We also considered that the present Catholic Institute for Central Africa situated in Yaounde, welcomes students from the whole of the Central African region, and thus narrows the possibility of our children who wish to study there. More so, there is the great cry of the people of the Diocese of Buea, to get a Catholic university which will be grounded in solid Anglo-Saxon traditions, and contribute to the formation of conscientious Cameroonians.
As at the academic year 2007/2008, when this cry was launched for the creation of the Catholic University of Buea, out of the more than 20.000 students who applied for admission into the Buea University, the university could admit only one quarter of these students. This means that close to 16.000 students had to look elsewhere to continue their education. There are many other students who would love to attend Buea University, but do not apply because their career objectives are not offered by the said University. The Buea Diocesan University, as a witness to this reality, would meet the needs of these stray students.
The Diocese of Buea alone runs 15 Secondary and High Schools with a population of 5.954 students and 73 primary schools with a total of 24.407 pupils. These are young Cameroonians who are potential candidates for

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admission in the Catholic University, and who have a right to choose a confessional institution for their tertiary stage of education.
As the Bishop of Buea, having considered the spiritual, demographic, socio-economic situation of the Diocese of Buea, and in consultation with both the College of Consultors and the Diocesan Council for Education, I have decided to create a Catholic University to provide opportunities for students to benefit from the fruits of Tertiary Catholic Education. 1 went ahead, taking cognizance of the autonomy enjoyed by every diocese as guaranteed by canon 369 of the Code of Canon Law.
III.      ORIENTATION  AND    MISSION    OF  THE    CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF THE DIOCESE OF BUEA.
The Catholic University of the Diocese of Buea will be more professionally orientated. Its main mission will be to make available a higher institute of learning that will provide vocational and professionally marketable skills to college leavers. The university will target the cultivation of a culture of self-employment and auto-job creation for the masses of unemployed young people that graduate from our higher institutions every year.
The Catholic University of Buea will focus towards the integral development of the human person, who is both body and spirit, basing its sciences on the real source of Wisdom who is God. The university will drift away from the academic distortions of the period of the Enlightenment where universities produced intellectual giants who were emotional and spiritual dwarfs. Our university will not only provide intellectual formation but also human, moral and spiritual formation that will make the graduate sensitive to the needs of man around his environment, the evils of bribery and corruption, the need for building and developing our Cameroonian society, and the desire to compete with top brains from other universities in research and discovery.
IV. GOOD NEWS TO THE DIOCESE OF BUEA.
On the 18th of June, 2009, I received a letter from the Ministry of Higher Education, Protocol number 09/0194, dated 11th June, 2009, in reply to our request to create the Catholic University of the Diocese of Buea. It is good news indeed for the whole Diocese.  This letter informed me that the

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National Commission for Private Higher Education had met and given a favourable consideration to our application to create the Catholic University Institute of the Diocese of Buea, and this is the good news I am communicating to you all today in this letter.
It is our intention to begin this University Institute with four professional Schools; i.e., the School of Management and Social Sciences, the School of Engineering, the School of Information Technology and the School of Agriculture, Forestry and Animal Husbandry. More schools will be added in the course of time, and as the university grows.
Although we are still compiling the file requesting authorization to run this newly created Catholic University of the Diocese of Buea, it is hoped, that everything being equal, the university will open its doors to the pioneer batch of students in October, 2010. We hope to get 2 simultaneous campuses in Bonjongo and in Buea. This means we must start working very hard from now till the opening date of this our new creation.
V.  AN APPEAL TO ALL THE PEOPLE OF THE DIOCESE OF BUEA.
It is only a couple of weeks ago, since I issued a pastoral letter, informing ail the members of Christ’s Faithful and people of goodwill in the Diocese of Buea about the plans for a new Cathedral to be situated in Molyko. This is a very giant project and many people are already sacrificing so much to ensure the smooth take-off of this cathedral project. Here again comes another giant project for the Diocese of Buea, the new university. We shall not fear because it is God’s work we are doing and not our own.
Although this new university will belong to the Diocese of Buea, it will open its doors to all those who are searching for knowledge, irrespective of nationality, religion, race, sex, ethnic group and language. It is against this background that I am appealing to all people who are resident within the territorial boundaries of Buea, people of the Diocese who are resident outside the Diocese, and other people of goodwill to put all hands on deck to make sure that we give our children quality tertiary education. We need to put up the buildings, recruit qualified staff, get enough didactic and technical material to make sure that this university gets a smooth take off. This will be a project that will be ongoing for a very long time in the future.