A House of Welcome
The Society does not yet have its own formation building in Harare. For the time being, the SMB community lives in a few buildings within the compound of the Manger Sisters Home, in Meyrick Park — buildings that the sisters have generously made available to the young SMB candidates while a permanent solution is being built. The two communities remain distinct, each with its own life and its own house, sharing a piece of the same neighbourhood.
There is a beautiful providence in the name of the place. The SMB charism is the spirit of the Child of Bethlehem — the Christ laid in a manger, who chose to enter the world in humility, poverty, and presence. And the first home of the young SMB postulants of Africa ans Asia is found in a Manger Home: a name that quietly remembers the scene from which the Society draws its identity.
The Postulancy - a Three-year Journey
The postulancy unfolds over three years of community life, study and pastoral apprenticeship. The daily rhythm follows the same Bethlehem cadence as at Driefontein, now applied to the demands of university study: morning office, the daily Eucharist, classes, personal study, manual service, evening prayer, and the regular practices of Lectio Divina, Eucharistic adoration and the rosary. Weekends bring parish service in the local communities, where the postulants learn what apostolic life looks like from inside.
The programme covers Sacred Scripture, theology, Church history, the relationship between faith and society, and the elements of psychology and pastoral accompaniment — alongside the academic curriculum of the partner institutions. The first year is also a time of deeper discovery of the SMB charism and of an apprenticeship in simple forms of mission.
Two Tracks - Priest and Brother
Two complementary tracks unfold side by side under the same roof.
- Candidates to the priesthood study philosophy at Arrupe Jesuit University: logic, ethics, metaphysics, Christian philosophy, history of philosophy, and African philosophy. The aim is not academic distinction but the gradual interiorisation of the Gospel — to think rigorously about faith and the meaning of life, so that the missionary's word may carry the weight of his own listening.
- Candidates to the brotherhood take their formation at the Wadzanai Training Centre, where they study religious studies, leadership and society — a path that prepares them for service in the SMB as consecrated brothers with their own apostolic gifts.
A Community Born of Partnerships
The Harare house lives within a tight network of religious partnerships. The rector of the formation house and his collaborator are both Capuchin friars of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin (OFMCap) — Fr. Talent Tawanda Nyarungwe OFMCap as rector and Fr. Joseph Mawedze OFMCap in the formation team — offering the young SMB candidates their long experience of religious life. The Jesuits of Arrupe University, the sisters of Wadzanai and several local parishes complete the circle.
This network is not a logistical accident. It expresses something deep about the SMB charism — that the Bethlehem missionary is sent with the universal Church, not alone, and that the very first apprenticeship of mission is the apprenticeship of friendship across charisms.
As religious, we must transcend our cultures by adopting the new culture of religious life — which, for us, is the SMB spirituality, founded on simplicity and oriented toward mission. That gives us unity, and a clear orientation on how to live.
- Fr. Talent Nyarungwe OFMCap
The candidates come from many countries — Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Uganda, Sri Lanka and beyond — and the diversity itself is, for Fr. Talent, a quiet sign that "the future of the SMB in Zimbabwe and in the world is promising."
Towards a Permanent House - Bondolfi at Marlborough
The Society has now acquired a property at Marlborough, on the northern edge of Harare, with the intention of building its own formation house there. The new house will carry the name "Bondolfi" — in memory of Fr. Pietro Bondolfi (1872–1943), the Italian-Swiss priest who founded the Bethlehem Mission Society at Immensee and led it as its first Superior General, from 1923 until his death.
To give the founder's name to the future house of African postulants is not a small gesture: it places the next generation of Bethlehem missionaries — born of international vocations — under the spiritual paternity of the man who first dreamt the Society into existence. The lifestyle he described as the heart of the SMB charism — simplicity, humility, filial trust, self-giving in service, and obedience to God's will — will continue to be learned, day after day, in the house that bears his name.
