By Fr. Anthony Adetayo

The body of Laity of the Catholic Province of Lagos beg the Bishops of the Province to create more Dioceses. This appeal from the province Laity Chairperson Mrs. Mary Ekundayo, was made on 27^th January 2022 at the conference of the Provincial Catholic Bishops in St. Agnes Maryland, Lagos. The appeal was done in a strong voice backed up with some research result analysis using the creation of Abeokuta Diocese as a case study. This appeal took a good portion of the discussion time of the conference. They insisted that few years ago the creation of Abeokuta Diocese has quickly generated into a lot of advantages for the Province like an increment in the number of Catholics in the Province, reduction of economic imbalance, including closeness of the church to the people of God and her ecclesiastical goods.

In response, the chairman of the Conference, Most Rev. Alfred Martins Adewale said “the Catholic Church does not create a Diocese in a village meeting context. However, we have identified this necessity for many reasons. It takes a process. The Bishops themselves don’t create Dioceses, we have done the preliminary works, we have done the feasibility study and animated some of the requirements in the the proposed juridiction. We will present our proposals to the CBCN which will then go through them to the Holy See. This process is not in the hands of the Bishops in this Province alone. We hope that in sooner or later time this wish can come to reality.”

This expression and response obviously brought fresh look and relief to the faces of the conference delegates. May God bless the Catholic Province of Lagos.