Holy Ghost Fathers Research Articles

A first survey of the history of Angolan lexicography

This paper is a first attempt to provide an overview of the main lexicographic works of the most spoken Angolan languages of African origin, which were written by missionaries of Portuguese Patronage and laymen who were living in the current territory of Angola (western Africa), from the beginning of Portuguese colonization until its independence in 1975. The current Republic of Angola encompasses old African kingdoms, specifically those of Kongo, Lunda, Matamba, Ngola-Ndongo, and Benguela, and has almost 50 African languages, but Portuguese is the only official language. The Angolan languages of African origin most studied and described by the Portuguese were initially Kimbundu, and, more recently, Umbundu and Nyaneka. The first dictionary of a Bantu language was written in mid-1648 by Italian and Spanish Capuchins led by the Portuguese–Congolese mestizo secular priest Manuel de Roboredo (later, Francisco de São Salvador, O. F. M. Cap., d. 1665). However, the regular linguistic description of the Angolan languages was initiated at the beginning of the 19th century by the Italian Bernardo Maria [Cassaro] da Canicattì, O. F. M. Cap. (1749–1834). In addition, after the “re-establishment” (which was never officially assumed) of the religious orders in Portugal (ca. 1870), the Portuguese Province of the Congregatio Sancti Spiritus (C.S.Sp.) [Congregation of the Holy Spirit] was formed in 1867 mainly because of the evangelization of Angola. In point of fact, the most relevant dictionaries of the Angolan languages in the 20th century were written by the Holy Ghost Fathers [João] Albino Alves [Manso] (1908–1956) (Kimbundu, 1951), António Joaquim da Silva (1909–1995) (Nyaneka, 1966), and José Francisco Valente (1912–1993) (Umbundu, 1972). There are also relevant lexicographic works by laymen, such as the Brazilian Doctor Saturnino de Souza e Oliveira (1820–1871), the Angolan poet, writer, and journalist Joaquim Dias Cordeiro da Matta (1857–1894) for Kimbundu, and the Portuguese medical officer José Pereira do Nascimento (1861–1913) for Umbundu.

The Ideology of the German Neukirchen Mission and Its Implication on Education in Tana River County, Kenya 1887-1986

This paper examines the ideology of the German Neukirchen Mission and its implication on education in Tana River County, Kenya 1887 to 1986. Western education and Christianity in Africa were introduced by Christian missionaries from Europe as early as the 16th century but took root in around the mid-nineteenth century. In Tana River, several missionary organizations ventured in the area notably the Methodist Missionary Society (MMS), the German Neukirchen Mission (GNM), the Holy Ghost Fathers (HGF) and the Swedish Mission. They all gave up in the area due to a multiplicity of hardships save for the GNM which hang on and continued with evangelization and education. Consequently, there is need to look at the ideology of the GNM that influenced its resolve to persist in an area shunned by its contemporaries. An understanding of GNM’s ideology would come in handy in helping to improve education standards in the area bearing in mind that the same problems that bedeviled the region have to a large extent remained to date The study had three objectives which were: to identify the educational institutions opened by the GNM in Tana River County 1887-1986; to establish the hardships experienced by the GNM in Tana River County in the period 1887-1986 and to examine the ideology which influenced GNM’s activities in Tana River County in the period 1887-1986. The time frame was 1887 to 1986. This period covers the time the GNM arrived in Tana River to the year the first secondary school was established at Ngao i.e 1986. Ngao served as GNM’s mission base or station since the arrival of the missionaries in the region. The study was historical in nature and utilized a historical research design. Sources of data were both primary and secondary sources. Primary sources were mainly drawn from the Kenya National Archives (KNA) and schools and churches in Tana River. Document analysis was also utilized as a data collection method. The research instruments were interview schedules and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs). Respondents to these research instruments were retired educationists, civil servants and politicians, church leaders and village elders selected through purposive and snowball sampling techniques; all totaling 33. Collected data was analyzed through qualitative and quantitative methods while documents were analyzed through external and internal criticism. The study found out that the GNM established 31 primary schools 28 of which are still operational. The GNM missionaries experienced several challenges among them deportation during the two World Wars, frequent Somali attacks, floods, poor transport network, malaria infections and inadequate finances. The ideology was examined under five perspectives namely The Great Commission, Faith Mission, Reformed Theology, Social Darwinism and Socio-Political and Economic view point. The study recommends improvement of road and school infrastructure, investing more on Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions, opening of a secondary school wing in every primary school, delocalization of teachers and establishment of an institution of higher learning in the area.

The Contribution of the German Neukirchen Mission (GNM) in the advent of Western Education in Tana River County, Kenya 1885-1986

The purpose of this study was to examine the contribution of the German Neukirchen Mission (GNM) in the advent of Western Education in Tana River County, Kenya in the period 1885-1986. The historical research design was preferred as the topic in question was a historical survey of the establishment and development of Western education in Tana River County from late 19th century to the last two decades before the close of the 20th century. Both primary and secondary sources of data were utilized. There were three research instruments namely; interview schedules, Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and Document Analysis. Both quantitative and qualitative data analysis techniques were utilized though the latter to a larger extent. Documents were analyzed through external and internal criticism. The results revealed that Western education was introduced in Tana River County majorly by the GNM. This was in spite of many hardships and challenges that saw some other Christian missionary organizations like the Swedish Mission, Holy Ghost Fathers (HGF) and United Methodist Mission (UMM) vacate the area to other more friendly locations. The British colonial government equally shied off from the area probably for perceiving it as an area without immediate and direct economic gains to the colony. At independence, of all primary schools in existence in Tana River County, over 90% of them had been started by the GNM. The four leading secondary schools in Tana River County namely Tarasaa, Hola, Wenje and Ngao all developed out of GNM initiatives. The GNM achieved this even after being deported twice by the British Government during the WW I and WW II which put Germany and Britain in opposing camps. The findings point out the need to acknowledge the role of the German Neukirchen Mission (GNM) in the introduction of Western Education in Tana River County. The findings also show that there is need as much as possible to ensure that differences of political nature are not allowed to affect the provision of vital social amenities like education. The German missioners ought not to have been deported due to the conflict pitting their country and the British at the international level. Moreover, the resilience and success of GNM where everyone else seems to have failed or avoided should be a reference point to stakeholders in education, notably, both the county and the national government on how to improve the education sector in the county and similar arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs).

Same Memory, Different Memorials

Abstract Recent literature on modern martyrdom and memory has focused on cases in which individual groups remember martyrs’ sacrifices by making similar memorials to them. However, this article argues that even if members of a group agree on a martyr narrative, different memorials with diverse meanings can still be erected in memory of the martyrs concerned. This article supports its argument by exploring the case of twenty members of the Holy Ghost Fathers (Spiritans) who were killed on 1 January 1962 in Kongolo in southeastern Congo-Kinshasa. The memorials dedicated to these Spiritans differ substantively with each other by emphasizing different aspects of sacrifice and memory. This article concludes by arguing that the diversity of memorials involved in this case alerts us to the fact that the traditions associated with martyrdom do not always dominate the public memory of those who sacrifice their lives for a cause.

Reading paratexts in missionary linguistic works: an analysis of the preface to the Holy Ghost Fathers’ (1855) Dictionnaire français-wolof et wolof-français

In this paper, I apply Gérard Genette’s (1987) concept of paratexts to an analysis of prefaces from different dictionary-grammars of Niger-Congo languages, written by French Catholic missionaries between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My analysis focuses on the preface to the Dictionnaire français-wolof et wolof-français (Dakar: 1855), compiled by missionaries from the Congrégation du St.-Ésprit et du St.-Coeur de Marie, variously known in English as the Holy Ghost Fathers or Spiritans. I also provide diverse examples from contemporary and near-contemporary dictionary-grammars of other Niger-Congo languages, also compiled by French Spiritans. I investigate the extent to which these prefaces rely on or inflect the conventions, devices and rhetorical strategies of the original authorial preface, as identified by Genette.

La pédagogie de l’ évangélisation des Noirs d’ Afrique selon la congrégation du saint-Esprit de 1841 à 1930

In the nineteenth century, François Libermann, a converted Jew who became a priest, is attracted by the ministry to the Black people of the French Colonies and Africa. Having obtained a mission site in Guinea, he sent his first vicar apostolic, Benoît Truffet, who set up the beginnings of a pedagogy of Pauline evangelization, according to the will of Libermann. In 1930, about eighty years later, the Directory for Missions, under the leadership of Bishop Alexandre Le Roy, was an indispensable summary of missionary teaching methods developed by the Holy Ghost Fathers in Africa. After analyzing it, we outline a two-step process. The first step is that of the Pauline insertion, “all in all” marked by kenosis, learning of indigenous languages and the insertion of the missionary in local life. The second step is that of inculturation which consists in making use of the culture as a vehicle for the new faith, then in practising a hermeneutics of cosmogonies and finally in establishing a suitable pastoral approach which should lead to the emergence of a native clergy. This process corresponds to that applied in Oceania.

In the shadow of the tree sultans: African elites and the shaping of early colonial politics on the Katangan frontier, 1906–17

This article examines the relationships between the Belgian colonial administration, Catholic missionaries, and local African leaders during the early twentieth century in eastern Congo. The article extends the argument that the state was weak by outlining how Belgian rule was shaped by local elites in the first instance. This study also reconsiders the misconception of an all-powerful Catholic Church that grew up in this period. This misunderstanding arose from works by historians that drew more on metropolitan agreements and missionaries’ self-promotion than on local archives. Instead, this article is one of the first studies to use the local archives. It examines the experiences of two Latin missions in the territory of Kongolo, in northern Katanga; the Society of Missionaries of Africa (SMA) and the Holy Ghost Fathers (HGF) and their relationships with local polities. A concordat Leopold II signed with Rome in 1906 may have sped the growth of Catholic out-stations, but both sets of missionaries struggled to expand their congregations in the face of opposition from traditional elites and the pervasive influence of the rural economy. Leaders of the SMA and HGF congregations lacked the personnel and resources needed to impose their agendas in full. The limits of Church and state control in conjunction with the power wielded by local big-men in their dealings with European priests have been greatly understated in the recent literature.

Child Slaves and Freemen at the Spiritan Mission in Soyo, 1880-1885

Catholic missionaries in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Africa more commonly than Protestants purchased slaves to build their mission stations. This article provides a micro-historical analysis of the redemption of child slaves by the Holy Ghost Fathers in Soyo, West Central Africa, in the years immediately preceding the colonial partition of Africa. It argues that the Spiritan missionaries liberated slaves for instrumental rather than humanitarian reasons. As local freemen were difficult to control, the mission depended for its growth on the import of slave children. Furthermore, since the missionaries operated on the same markets and paid the same prices for slaves as regular buyers, their purchasing practices showed a strong resemblance with ordinary slave trading.

Francophone Catholic Achievements in Igboland, 1883-–1905

When the leading European powers were scrambling for political dominion in Africa, the greatest rival of France was Britain. The French Catholics were working side by side with their government to ensure that they would triumph in Africa beyond the boundaries of the territories already annexed by their country. Thus, even when the British sovereignty claim on Nigeria was endorsed by Europe during the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, the French Catholics did not concede defeat. They still hoped that in Nigeria they could supplant their religious rivals: the British Church Missionary Society (CMS) and the other Protestant missionary groups. While they allowed the British to exercise political power there, they took immediate actions to curtail the spread and dominion of Protestantism in the country. Thus some of their missionaries stationed in the key French territories of Africa—Senegal, Dahomey, and Gabon—were urgently dispatched to Nigeria to compete with their Protestant counterparts and to establish Catholicism in the country.Two different French Catholic missions operated in Nigeria between 1860s and 1900s. The first was the Society of the African Missions (Société des Missions Africaines or SMA), whose members worked mainly among the Yoruba people of western Nigeria and the Igbos of western Igboland. The second were the Holy Ghost Fathers (Pères du Saint Esprit), also called Spiritans, who ministered specifically to the Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria. The French Catholics, the SMA priests, and the Holy Ghost Fathers competed vehemently with the British Protestants, the CMS, for the conversion of African souls. Just as in the political sphere, the French and British governments competed ardently for annexation and colonization of African territories.

Catholic Evangelizing in One Colonial Mission: The Institutional Evolution of Jos Prefecture, Nigeria, 1907-1954

CATHOLIC EVANGELIZING IN ONE COLONIAL MISSION: THE INSTITUTIONAL EVOLUTION OFJOS PREFECTURE, NIGERIA, 1907-1954 BY Andrew E. Barnes* This article describes the development of the Catholic mission to the Northern Province of the British colony of Nigeria during the colonial era. Its primary concern is to illustrate the complexity of the social/historical forces involved in shaping the institutional character of a mission , and then, as an example, to chart the institutional evolution ofpart of the mission to Northern Nigeria to diocesan status. Because of his contribution to this evolution, a second focus details the actions taken by Monsignor WiUiam Lumley, Apostolic Prefect ofJos (1934-1954), in regard to evangeUzing the indigenous population, and underlines the importance of these actions in the larger history of Christianity in Northern Nigeria. Born out of a successful effort by the French Province of the Society ofAfrican Missions (SMA) to lay claim to territory previously under the jurisdiction of the Holy Ghost Fathers, the mission to Northern Nigeria was first estabUshed in 1907. Rome officially recognized it as a mission territory by naming it the ApostoUc Prefecture of Eastern Nigeria in 1911· Since the French Province of the SMA could never adequately staff the prefecture, Rome in 1929 granted a renamed and somewhat larger prefecture of Northern Nigeria to the Irish Province of the same order. In 1934 this prefecture was divided into two; the southern/ eastern half becoming the prefecture ofJos, the northern/western half becoming the prefecture of Kaduna. In 1954, six years before Nigeria *Dr. Barnes is an associate professor of African and European history in Arizona State University, Tempe. Abbreviations used in the notes below: AHA=Arewa House Archives, Kaduna, Nigeria JDA=JoS Diocese Archives,Jos, Nigeria NAK=National Archives, Kaduna, Nigeria PRO=PuWiC Record Office, London, Great Britain SMAC=Society ofAfrican Mission Archives, Cork, Ireland 240 BY ANDREW E. BARNES241 won its independence, both prefectures were promoted to dioceses. The concern here is with the original prefecture of Eastern, then of Northern Nigeria, and the later prefecture of Jos. The mission in these years evolved from an (unofficial) government outpost into a (de facto) immigrant African church, and then, still serving as an immigrant church, developed into a (rural) school system for indigenous Africans. The Mission as (Unofficial) Colonial Outpost Government poUcy in Northern Nigeria toward Christian missions during the colonial era was based upon the concept of containment . Areas were placed in three categories: Muslim-controlled and -populated; Muslim-controlled but predominantly "pagan" in population ;"pagan"-controlled and -populated. Missionaries were permitted to establish stations only in areas in the last category. Muslim-controUed and -populated regions werein the extreme north and centered around urban emirates. Muslim-controlled but predominantly "pagan" regions were mostly adjacent to these emirates. "Pagan"-controlled and -populated areas were in the belt of tropical forest which stretched a hundred or so mUes north of the Niger-Benue waterway, and in the savanna lands upon what was first caUed the Bauchi, then later the Jos Plateau. In effect, Christian missions were held back from proselytizing in the densely populated, commerciaUy developed cities which had once made up the Sokoto Caliphate, and were directed instead toward hunter-gatherer and peasant societies too remote or pugnacious to have been conquered or "civiUzed" by Muslims.1 Even within the region in which they were allowed access, the government further sought to discourage missionaries from their preferred practice of traveling from village to vUlage preaching through interpreters .2 The government wanted missions to take the leading role in "civUizing" individual ethnic groups, a task administrators understood to involve settling in a given location and concentrating on supplying medical services and vocational training. Behind this set of constraints was a desire to inhibit the appearance in the North of the Christianized 1On the colonial government's views of the relationship between "pagan" territories and the Muslim emirates, see J. A. BaUard, " Pagan Administration' and Political Development in Northern Nigeria," Savanna, I (June, 1972), 1-14. On resistance to Muslim conquest see James H. Morrison, "Plateau Societies' Resistance to Jihadist Penetration," in Elizabeth Isichei (ed.), Studies in the History ofPlateau State, Nigeria (London, 1982), pp. 136-150. 2See E. R...

Resources for the History of Gabon in French Missionary Archives in Rome

The archives of two Roman Catholic congregations of French origin which have missionaries in Gabon are located in Rome: the Sisters of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception of Castres (commonly called the Blue Sisters) and the Brothers of Saint Gabriel of Saint Laurent-sur Sèvres. The Blue Sisters were founded by Emilie de Villeneuve in 1836 to improve the condition of women, in particular by educating poor and orphaned girls. The Brothers of Saint Gabriel were organized by Louis Grignion de Montfort in 1715 to provide a primary education for poor boys and were reorganized in 1821 by Gabriel Deshayes. Initially both congregations worked only in France. They entered Gabon at the request of the Holy Ghost Fathers-the sisters in 1849 and the brothers in 1900. The sisters had communities at most of the mission stations--in the Estuary at first and from the 1880s along the Ogooué river and other points in the interior. The brothers operated schools at Libreville and Lambaréné, and after the Second World War at Port-Gentil and Oyem as well. During the past century both congregations became primarily missionary bodies, with the sisters active in Africa and South America and the brothers in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. These international activities led to the transfer of their headquarters to Rome in the 1950s.The sisters who worked in Gabon prior to the Second World War included many with intelligence but few with much formal education beyond the primary grades. They spent their time in social service, health care, and elementary education. The latter included French as well as religion and the domestic arts. The sisters had much less contact with the government or the colonial administration than did the Holy Ghost Fathers, who were their ecclesiastical superiors. Though some sisters toured to provide medical aid to persons away from the mission stations, most of their contacts with Africans took place in or near the stations.

The Beginning of the Maynooth Movement in Southern Nigeria and the Rise of the St. Patrick's Missionary Society, 1920-1930

AbstractThe Catholic mission in Southern Nigeria under the management of the Congregation of Holy Ghost Fathers was established in 1885 by French and Alsatian Spiritans. In 1905 the mission came under the charge of the Irish Province of the Congregation with Father Shanahan (later Bishop) as the chief of mission. As a result of the fact that the Province was entrusted with responsibility for the supply of missionary personnel for the Spiritans' missions in the vast English-speaking areas of the then British Empire, and also because of the Irish Spiritans' preoccupation with schools and colleges in Ireland and Trinidad, the Province was unable to meet its personnel responsibilities to the missions. The dire need for priests made Shanahan, the ecclesiastical head of the Spiritan mission in Nigeria, who had been charged sub gravi by Rome with the obligation for staffing his mission, to invite Maynooth trained secular priests to serve on a temporary basis in Southern Nigeria. The coming of the secular volunteers to Nigeria created a series of problems leading to their being constituted into an independent secular missionary society, and subsequently to the allocation to them of a part of the vicariate as their own mission field.

The Methods and Ideology of the Holy Ghost Fathers in Eastern Nigeria 1885-1905

The Methods and Ideology of the Holy Ghost Fathers in Eastern Nigeria 1885-1905

The Methods and Ideology of the Holy Ghost Fathers in Eastern Nigeria 1885-1905

The Methods and Ideology of the Holy Ghost Fathers in Eastern Nigeria 1885-1905

The Holy Ghost Fathers in Eastern Nigeria, 1885-1920: Observations on Missionary Strategy

The Holy Ghost Fathers have been in Kastern Nigeria for about eighty-five years. Not until after the recent Nigeria-Biafra War has their influence been somewhat minimized. Arriving originally from France in 1885, the Roman Catholic missionaries, as we shall see later in this essay, exerted a considerable influence far out of proportion to their number. But despite that they had become a factor to be reckoned with ever since, their missionary activity has scarcely been studied systematically. One principal reason for this has been the reluctance of the Roman Catholic authorities to permit scholars to use their private archives in Paris. In the last few years, however, the Roman Catholic authorities seem to have relaxed their one-hundred-year rule which has often been invoked to deny bone fide researchers access to the archival source materials. I am not sure, however, that this is yet an official policy, but I was permitted in 1968 and again in 1970 to use the archives. It is perhaps important to point out that the archival materials are still jealously guarded. During my research, for example, I was not permitted to examine certain dossiers perceived by the Archivist as “sensitive” and “not proper for public use.” The study that follows is partly based on the materials collected from the archives and partly from other sources, especially from the archives of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in London.

Priest and Anthropologist

The points of growth and strain in our personal lives are usually those situations in which we have to fuse together our insights and our duties, or to put it differently to reconcile obligations and calls. These are the points where every Christian has to become in some sense his own theologian, within the terms of the New Testament promise that the children of God are led by the Spirit of God. While most priests are very conscious of not being professional theologians, yet they do develop by pastoral experience a rule of thumb theology in which the insights of grace, mother wit, what the Bishop said, and scraps from the textbooks mingle. Now it is surely regrettable that so little has been done to close the gap between academic theology and this kind of empirical wisdom which often enough needs rethinking and reshaping but which has qualities which are not always flourishing in an academic atmosphere. My own personal tension is not one of pastoral insight grappling with theological analysis but rather of another double focus—for as priest I must strive to see the people among whom I live as so many persons each besieged by grace, yet as an anthropologist I must see them at the level of the masks of culture and the bonds of society.Before becoming a member of the Holy Ghost Fathers I studied social anthropology, and did field work in Angola. At the present time I am in the Diocese of Makurdi, Northern Nigeria, and after experience as a bush curate, I have been given the work of making a study of the Tiv people on whom there already exists an extensive but in several ways incomplete documentation. Here, I am trying not so much to discuss missionary work in the Diocese or Tiv religion and social structure, as work out on paper my own theologizing of my work.

Africana at Duquesne University Library

Interest in African studies has long been an established tradition of Duquesne University and its founders, the Fathers of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost, who began missionary work in Africa in the year 1778. By this tradition, books on Africa have been treasured ever since the University Library came into existence. In November 1956, with the inauguration of the new Institute of African Affairs at Duquesne, special efforts were made to develop the collection to include large quantities of government documents, serial publications and books, and to enlist the active interest and assistance of Holy Ghost Fathers in obtaining and preserving material on Africa. The initial steps taken were all well received. Invaluable source materials poured in from the continent of Africa and from all over the world. This greatly strengthened the original collection.