HISTORY

The Catholic Theological Association of Nigeria, abbreviated as CATHAN, came into existence through the initiative of late Rev. Msgr. Theophilus Okere (then Rev. Fr. Dr, Theophilus Okere). The Association was formally inaugurated with a Conference at Onitsha (Bethany House) in April 24-26, 1985. This was CATHAN’s first theological Conference, and it was well attended by the cream of Nigeria’s Catholic Intelligentsia. Msgr.

Theophilus Okere became elected as the first President. In his inaugural Presidential address, Okere explained that CATHAN was formed to contribute towards “articulating the faith in an African idiom so that our faith becomes genuinely our own.”

The first Conference at Onitsha was immediately followed with the publication of the Nigerian Journal of Theology (NJT) which has remained the organ of the Association till date. It was later in the course of the years that a second publication, the Proceedings, was introduced for the production of the Conference papers. After the first Conference at Onitsha, the Catholic major seminaries in Nigeria, whose instrumentality largely helped in the foundation of CATHAN, took turns in hosting the annual Conferences and meetings from 1986 to 2011, apart from 1997 when it was held at the Divine Love Retreat and Conference Centre (DRACC), Enugu. After 2011, through the general decision of members, the CATHAN Conferences have been held in other centres other than the seminaries with the financial contributions of members. Usually, the Conferences are rotated across the three main old geopolitical locations of Nigeria, namely North, Southeast and Southwest.

To its credit, CATHAN, after its formation in 1985, organized an uninterrupted series of annual conferences from 1987
to 2019. This was interrupted by the covid-19 total lockdown in 2020. But after 2020,
the cycle of annual conferences has remained uninterrupted.