COMSAM is a Vatican-endorsed confederation that the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) established in 2005. It brings together Conferences of Major Superiors from across Africa and its islands to support, strengthen, and empower the Consecrated on the continent.
COMSAM works in close partnership with the Vatican Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (ICLSAL), the department of the Roman Curia that is responsible for matters concerning women and men Religious.
COMSAM aims to foster collaboration, provide formation, and encourage mission engagement among ICLSAL across linguistic and cultural boundaries in Africa.
In her New Year 2026 message to COMSAM members, Sr. Brambilla lingers on the healing power traditionally associated with sacred trees. “Often, in sacred trees, true sanctuaries of the people, everything is healing, nourishing, and protecting,” she writes.
The Vatican official adds that the various parts of sacred trees “constitute true resources of therapeutic energy to strengthen and sustain the physical, mental, relational, and spiritual life of individuals and the community.”
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From this flows a challenging question for Religious Life today: “From which of ‘sacred trees’ do we draw strength and support along our journey? How can Consecrated Life become a ‘sacred tree’ along the pilgrimage of our brothers and sisters?”
Answering this call, the Vatican Prefect urges members of ICLSAL in Africa and Madagascar to cultivate both memory and renewal. “It seems important to me that Consecrated Life create spaces and paths to cultivate both the roots and the shoots of the tree,” she writes.
These include “spaces and paths of graceful memory,” where the history, charism, luminous witnesses, struggles, and sufferings of each institute are revisited and honoured. Such remembrance, she insists, enables roots “to sink ever deeper into the healthy soil of the charism,” so that Consecrated Life may be nourished by “ever new and fresh sap” and give rise to “new shoots that spread the oxygen the world needs today.”
“Happy New Year!” Sr. Brambilla says, leaving COMSAM members with a vision of Consecrated Life as Africa’s sacred tree: deeply rooted, generously sheltering, quietly healing, and abundantly life-giving for the Church and the world in 2026.
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