Prenote

Identifying the possible challenges of Mission in Sierra Leone at present time, we can’t forget the long history of the Catholic missionary endeavours in Sierra Leone. My intention is to bring back the memory of missionary journey in Sierra Leone from the time of the first missionaries arrived the region of Sierra Leone to our present time. And from this perspective we classify the possible challenge(s) of our contemporary missionary endeavours in Sierra Leone.

Remembering the past

The Catholic missionary endeavours in West Africa and in Sierra Leone particularly date back to 1510 A.D. when the first Portuguese missionaries arrived. They belonged to the missionary society known as the “Order of Christ” which was sponsored by Prince Henry the Navigator. Later in 1532, Rome created the diocese of Santiago, Cape Verde and Upper Guinea, to which Sierra Leone and The Gambia belonged. The members of the congregation of the “Order of Christ” played a historic role as they spearheaded the first phase of missionary activity in Sierra Leone. This phase was succeeded by the members of the Society of Jesus who also took the challenge of spreading the Good News in Sierra Leone. Their apostolate lasted from 1604 to 1720.

One of the earliest missionaries on record was Father Balthasar Barreira (1538-1612), a Portuguese Jesuit, who returned from a previous missionary expedition in Congo and Angola, landed on the coasts of Sierra Leone, Pogomo on 25^th September 1605. He founded a mission in Sierra Leone when he was sixty years old and was part of the Ecclesiastical Province of Cape Verde with the headquarters on the Island of Santiago. He returned to Santiago in 1609 and eventually died in 1612. In 1617, the Jesuits withdrew from Sierra Leone and the entire mission to Guinea was closed. After the Jesuit’s withdrawal from Sierra Leone, there was a period with the total absence of missionaries in the whole area.

On request of Propaganda Fidei, on February 12 1645 issued a decree ad regna nigritiarium and entrusted a mission to Spanish Capuchins all territories and the kingdoms of the northern part of West Africa so called Upper Guinea. In 1646, a group of twelve Capuchin monks set out from Spain to establish a mission on the mainland of Guinea. Among them was Seraphim de Leon who decided to remain in Sierra Leone after the Spaniards abandoned the mission and moved to South America the following year. The mission of Sierra Leone was particularly difficult for the Capuchins. They were naively convinced that Christianity was natural for those people of Sierra Leone, and for this it would be enough therefore to baptize them. Christianity was so natural for these populations that as soon as the Fathers left Sierra Leone, Christianity disappeared almost entirely from this land. With the departure of the Franciscans, another period of the evangelization of Sierra Leone came to an end.

In 1822 missionary activity began to blossom again marked by the encounter between Sir Charles MacCarthy, governor of the British West African Settlement, and Sister Anne Marie Javouhey, foundress of the Missionary Society of Women in 1807, known as the Sisters of St. Joseph Cluny. The governor invited her to visit Sierra Leone to help organize the government hospital in Freetown. She arrived in Freetown in March 1823 and went away in September 1823. According to her wish, in 1866 the first group of sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny arrived in Freetown to found St. Joseph’s Convent.

On the 8^th of December 1856, the “Society of Priests for Evangelisation of Africa”, known as the S.M.A.  Fathers was formed by Monseigneur Melchior de Mario Bresillac in Lyons, France. When the Vicariate Apostolic of Sierra Leone was inaugurated on the 13^th of April 1856, Msgr. Bresillac was appointed its first bishop in June. In November 1858, two SMA priests accompanied, Frs. Reymond and Bresson by lay helper, Bro. Eugene, sailed from Marseilles for Freetown, and they reached the port of Freetown on the 12^th of January 1859. They stayed the Spanish Counsul’s residence, celebrated mass on the following Sunday which was attended about thirty Catholic, mostly Europeans. They paid a courtesy call on the governor Captain A. E. Kennedy who promised them the same protection as he gave to other religious groups.  A few months later, the founder of Society Msgr. Bresillac himself sailed from Brest in March 1859, accompanied by other two members Fr. Riocreux and Bro. Gratien. They arrived in the port Freetown on the 14^th of May, when the city was in the grips of a yellow fever epidemic. The bishop was insisted to disembark, against the advice and fear of the ship’s captain and reacted to the captain by saying, “I am in my diocese. Will I not share the misfortune of my children?” The epidemic claimed the lives of the lives of Bishop and his SMA band of Missionaries in quick succession: the first SMA victim died on the 2^nd of June 1859, the second on the 6^th of June, the third on the 13^th of June and the bishop himself on the 25^th of June at the age of 46. The only survivor returned home. Despite of these misfortunes and tragedies, Catholic Missionary endeavours in the region continued unabated and were in fact intensified.

There was no missionary activity for over five years until the arrival of Fr. Edward Blanchet of the Holy Ghost Congregation in 1864. He was joined by Fr. Joseph Koeberle and together they transformed part of Freetown into a Catholic community. Fr. Blanchet built St. Edward primary school at Howe Street, the church of the Immaculate Conception in Murray Town, and the Sacred Heart of Jesus Cathedral on Howe Street. In 1866, he witnessed the arrival of the St. Joseph of Cluny Sisters. He also witnessed the opening of the St. Patrick’s Mission on Bonthe Island in 1890. He retired in 1892 and died in 1896 in Senegal. Fr Blanchet was succeeded by Fr. Brown, who arrived in 1893. During Fr. Brown’s tenure as Vicar Apostolic, the interior of Sierra Leone was declared a British Protectorate in 1896. He was also present when the Hut-tax war was fought between the British and the natives.Fr. Brown established St. Anthony’s Parish in 1900. He also opened St. Joseph’s Mission, Mobe in 1902. In the same year he opened St. Columba’s Church and built the Fathers’ house in Moyamba. He became ill on April 7, 1903 and died on April 22, of that same year. Fr. Brown was succeeded by Bishop John O’Gorman, who was an Irish academic. He arrived in Freetown in 1904, and immediately signed an agreement with King George Cummings, the Mende tribal Headman in Freetown, for the purchase of land to construct St. Anthony’s Church at Brookfields. The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in Cornwell Heights in Pennsylvania helped to finance the purchase of the land. The arrival of the Holy Ghost Fathers has been encouraged or provoked by the presence of the protestants. Up to 42 different denominations in the city welcomed the new arrivals with strong rejection and propaganda to discredit the Missionary endeavours of this new group. The Holy Ghost Missionaries evangelized mainly the southern, eastern and western part of Sierra Leone, while in the northern part they only opened one Mission in Lunsar and established a primary school in Lunsar and Makeni. The northern part remained Islamic predominated area.

The other group of Missionaries, four Xaverian Missionaries led by the eldest of them Fr. Augusto Azzolini, Fr. Pietro Calza, Fr. Camillo Olivani and Fr. Attilio Stefani sailed from the port of Liverpool on the 29^th of June and arrived in Freetown on the 8^th July 1950. These four new missionaries were assigned to the Northern part of the country, which was considered more difficult for Evangelization for a high concentration of Muslims and Protestants. The Xaverian Missionaries took the challenge to penetrate the northern part of the Sierra Leone with the Gospel value. They run the evangelization throughout the northern part by adopting the methodology of education (schools) and youth formation, health service and works of charity, and the foundation of local church.

What remains

Despite of the ups and downs of missionary endeavours in Sierra Leone, one thing is defined, mission has planted and reaped the Sierra Leonean Church. There are 4 established dioceses with good numbers of local clergy in the region. Yes, Mission has brought up the Sierra Leone church to be a mature local church. However, we might agree to say that Sierra Leone is still, literally, a missionary field of first proclamation, very much in tune with the mission ad gentes. There is still a lot of basic missionary work to do for missionaries. In this regard, Sierra Leone remains a mission field with news challenges and opportunities for those who willing to continue their missionary endeavours.

1. Shift methodology and missionary strategy.

Shifting methodology and strategy in doing mission in Sierra Leone, to my opinion, is a major challenge for missionaries to be taken into consideration. This challenge echoes the call of Pope John Paul II to “a radical conversion in thinking [and doing] is required in order to become missionary, and this holds true both for individuals and entire communities. (Redemptoris Missio 49). In the past, missionaries used to be the pillars and center for all activities. The grown-up local church has changed our missionary endeavour and strategy. Missionaries are no longer the main actor of mission but the local church. Instead the missionaries become partner to the local church.

The renewal of structures demanded by pastoral conversion can only be understood in this light: as part of an effort to make them more mission-oriented, to make ordinary pastoral activity on every level more inclusive and open, to inspire in pastoral workers a constant desire to go forth and in this way to elicit a positive response from all those whom Jesus summons to friendship with himself. As pope John Paul II once said to the Bishops of Oceania: “All renewal in the Church must have mission as its goal if it is not to fall prey to a kind of ecclesial introversion”. (Evangelii Gaudium 27)

2. Evangelization and formation for the youth

The church of Sierra Leone is young church. Majority of the baptized and registered Catholics is young people. However, in many parishes we witness how poor the participation of our young people in the Church. Many of our youth are alien to Church, teaching or doctrine of faith. The challenge of our present youth described by Pope Francis is that “substantial number of young people, for all sorts of reasons, do not ask the Church for anything because they do not see her as significant for their lives.  Some even ask expressly to be left alone, as they find the presence of the Church a nuisance, even an irritant.  This request does not always stem from uncritical or impulsive contempt.” (Pope Francis, Post Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christus Vivit to Young People and to the Entire People of God, #40).

The question is that how our missionary endeavour will be able to embrace and to involve our young people. We have to recognize that one of neglected field of our endeavour is to evangelize and to form the missionary awareness of our young people. The challenge of young Sierra Leonean church leads us to ask: What are today’s Salone young people really like?  What is going on in their lives?

3. Challenges of Pentecostal churches’ movement (Mushroom churches)

Another reality we encounter is the rapid spreading of Pentecostal Church’s movement. We witness the new establishment and construction of churches in our parishes or community. Unfortunately, these movements are capable to attract many members of our church, including the vast numbers of our youth. This challenge echoes the exhortation of pope Francis as written “the Catholic faith of many peoples is nowadays being challenged by the proliferation of new religious movements, some of which tend to fundamentalism while others seem to propose a spirituality without God. This is, on the one hand, a human reaction to a materialistic, consumerist and individualistic society, but it is also a means of exploiting the weaknesses of people living in poverty and on the fringes of society, people who make ends meet amid great human suffering and are looking for immediate solutions to their needs. These religious movements, not without a certain shrewdness, come to fill, within a predominantly individualistic culture, a vacuum left by secularist rationalism. We must recognize that if part of our baptized people lack a sense of belonging to the Church, this is also due to certain structures and the occasionally unwelcoming atmosphere of some of our parishes and communities, or to a bureaucratic way of dealing with problems, be they simple or complex, in the lives of our people. In many places an administrative approach prevails over a pastoral approach, as does a concentration on administering the sacraments apart from other forms of evangelization.” (Evangelii Gaudium #63)

The lack of a sense of belonging to Church among our people raises a question concerning our catechesis for catechumens, the formation to our laity. Missionary endeavour nowadays is not just focusing on establishing church and community but to take care those who are already baptized.

4. Cultural Challenges

Sierra Leonean church is enjoying the richness of cultural values and traditions. However, Sierra Leone is not excluded from the threaten and challenges of globalization, digital era and rapid mass communication. In many countries, globalization has meant a hastened deterioration of their own cultural roots and the invasion of ways of thinking and acting proper to other cultures which are economically advanced but ethically debilitated. Facing this fact, African bishops, for example, taking up the Encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, pointed out years ago that there have been frequent attempts to make the African countries “parts of a machine, cogs on a gigantic wheel. This is often true also in the field of social communications which, being run by centres mostly in the northern hemisphere, do not always give due consideration to the priorities and problems of such countries or respect their cultural make-up. As a result, the negative aspects of the media and entertainment industries are threatening traditional values, and in particular the sacredness of marriage and the stability of the family”.[58] here it comes the challenge for missionary endeavour how to bring forward the value of the Gospel in the midst of crisis cultural identity of our people, specially our youth. In other word, how to make our proclamation (Gospel’s value and Christian culture) effective and relevant to Sierra Leonean.

Let me end this article with the words of encouragement of Pope Francis saying, “Keeping our missionary fervour alive calls for firm trust in the Holy Spirit, for it is he who “helps us in our weakness” (Rom8:26). But this generous trust has to be nourished, and so we need to invoke the Spirit constantly. He can heal whatever causes us to flag in the missionary endeavour. It is true that this trust in the unseen can cause us to feel disoriented: it is like being plunged into the deep and not knowing what we will find. I myself have frequently experienced this. Yet there is no greater freedom than that of allowing oneself to be guided by the Holy Spirit, renouncing the attempt to plan and control everything to the last detail, and instead letting him enlighten, guide and direct us, leading us wherever he wills. The Holy Spirit knows well what is needed in every time and place. This is what it means to be mysteriously fruitful!”. (EG 280)