VATICAN BREAKTHROUGH! Pope Leo XIV Appoints Ugandan Priest Fr Katongole Among Top Advisers

Pope Leo XIV has appointed a Ugandan priest, Fr Emmanuel Katongole, as a Consultor to the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, the Vatican body that guides the Catholic Church’s work on peace, migration, health and ecology. The appointment, announced by the Holy See Press Office on August 18, is part of a list of 12 new consultors named by the Pope. They take up their roles on September 1.

Fr Katongole is a priest under the Kampala Archdiocese and Professor of Theology and Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame in the United States, where he also directs the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion. He is the second Notre Dame faculty member on the new list, alongside Prof Clemens Sedmak, director of the university’s Nanovic Institute for European Studies.

Consultors are experts called upon periodically to advise the dicastery’s leadership. They are drawn, according to Vatican guidelines, “from among the faithful who are distinguished by their expertise, proven ability and prudence.” The Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development was created by Pope Francis in 2016, merging four pontifical councils into a single office responsible for justice and peace, migrants and refugees, health care, and Catholic charitable and ecological initiatives.

Its leadership was recently renewed, with Sr Alessandra Smerilli appointed Prefect and Cardinal Fabio Baggio Pro-Prefect, both taking office on September 1. Also named as consultors were Msgr Peter Klasvogt, Fr Francesco Coluccia, Fr Joseph Jeyaraj Swaminathan, Omer S. Combary, Lucy Afandi Esipila of Caritas Africa, Paolo Foglizzo, Peter G. Kirchschläger, Kathryn A. Koch, Jacqueline Remond and Caren Rodrigues. Fr Katongole was ordained a priest of Kampala Archdiocese in 1987 and was immediately appointed assistant parish pastor of Christ the King Parish in Kampala, where he served for a year before moving into seminary formation and academic life.

From 1988, he taught at National Seminary Katigondo in Masaka, rising over more than a decade to the rank of Assistant Professor of Philosophy before leaving the seminary in 2000 to pursue further studies and teaching abroad. That academic path had already taken him to Rome and to the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, where he earned a doctorate in philosophy, laying the ground for the international career that would follow his years at Katigondo.

Before joining Notre Dame, he taught at Duke University Divinity School, where he was a founding co-director of the Duke Center for Reconciliation. He is the author of several books on theology and politics in Africa, including The Sacrifice of Africa and Born from Lament. In Uganda, he is known as co-founder and President of Bethany Land Institute, a training centre in Kasana-Luweero Diocese that offers a two-year residential programme in regenerative agriculture and economic entrepreneurship.

Founded in 2012 with two fellow priests on a plot of land in Luweero, the institute has grown into a 400-acre campus that combines agricultural training, forest restoration and pastoral formation for young Ugandans.