Photo by Patricia Coll Freeman, via catholicanchor.org

African missionaries bring vibrant faith to Alaska

Long considered the last frontier for Catholic missionaries, Africa is now

sending thousands of its own missionaries back to the once thoroughly Christian West. They have also reached Alaska, where four African missionaries now share the Gospel at Providence Alaska Medical Center and Providence Extended Care in Anchorage, reports Catholicanchor.org.

FAITH GROWS WITH MARTYRS

The four Alaska-based missionaries come from a homeland that is undergoing extraordinary spiritual growth.

While the developed world has stagnated in terms of conversions to the faith, in Africa, Catholicism is vibrant. Between 1978 and 2007, the number of Catholics shot from just 55 million to 146 million. Vocations to the religious life jumped, as well. The largest Catholic seminary in the world is located in Nigeria, where more than 1,100 men study for the priesthood.

Still, Catholics in Africa face myriad persecutions. In 1994, before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, bishops in Sudan reported several cases of crucifixion of priests. The country’s penal code, based on Shari’a (the Islamic law), provides for execution by crucifixion. In 2002, another 88 people were condemned. And in 2008, five of the 20 Catholic pastoral workers killed throughout the world were African.

At the same time, pagan superstitions and witchcraft assail the church in Africa. Additionally, there is disease, widespread government corruption and persistent war, especially in the Great Lakes region, which leaders of a synod of African bishops lamented at the Vatican this October.

At the opening of the synod, Pope Benedict XVI warned of at least two new “dangerous pathologies” attacking Africa: “firstly, an illness that is already widespread in the West, that is practical materialism, combined with relativist and nihilistic thinking” that the developed world exports to other continents.

The second “‘virus’” that could hit Africa, he said, is “religious fundamentalism, mixed with political and economic interests.”

But given its “deep sense of God,” Africa stands as “the repository of an inestimable treasure for the whole world,” the pope explained.

The continent, he continued, “represents an enormous spiritual ‘lung’ for a humanity that appears to be in a crisis of faith and hope.”

A CONTINENT OF PRAYER

One cell of that “lung” is Anchorage-based Father Aloysius Ezenwata, a Nigerian priest of the Missionary Society of Saint Paul. Since 2006, he has served as a chaplain at Providence Alaska Medical Center.

As early as 1976, his society’s founder, Cardinal Dominic Ekandem wrote: “The Church in Nigeria by reason of her bright future in vocations, has a responsibility towards the whole of Africa … to bring the Good News to all places in the Continent and even further afield.”

Today, Father Ezenwata is one of more than 700 African-born priests serving in the United States.

His society has a regional house in Houston and serves parishes in Texas, Louisiana and Alabama.

Inspired by the needs of his dying mother, Father Ezenwata requested hospital work so he could “join with people in that difficult moment in life.”

In Anchorage, Father Ezenwata anoints the sick and brings the sacrament of reconciliation to Catholic patients — as they heal or, in some cases, as they die. And six days a week, Mass is celebrated in the hospital chapel. Another African priest and chaplain-in-training — Father George Agbley of Ghana — assists him.

In a tiny, windowless room the size of a closet and tucked behind the chapel’s sacristy, Father Ezenwata hears confessions after Mass. There on Oct. 19 the soft-spoken priest with an imposing frame talked with the Anchor about the faith in Africa and America and his mission in Anchorage.

“In Africa, people have gone through and still go through a very difficult time,” he said. “You grow to understand what it means to say, ‘Our Father’ and ask for ‘daily bread.’”

“There are people in Africa who when they say that prayer, they’re really asking God without knowing where their daily bread is going to come from for that day.”

“One of the things I will say about African faith is that it never ceases to amaze me how people who have so little can be so happy about their relationship with God, so dependent on God and so thankful for what God has given to them,” he added.

Sometimes, that is missing in the developed world, he said. “We know the lights will come on if we turn on the switch. We know that water will flow if we open the tap.”

“In some parts of Africa, it’s not that way. You pray that the lights come. You pray that the water flows through the tap,” he explained.

“So everything about life in Africa is prayer.”

FAITH AND APATHY IN AMERICA

Father Ezenwata sees both faith and great spiritual challenges in his host country.

“There is amazing faith in this country,” he said — which is marvelous, he added, because “there are so many things that seem to erode the faith from people.”

Those include a false notion of freedom and the dissolution of the Christian family, he observed.

Freedom, he remarked, is often defined as “the ability to do whatever you like.”

“I don’t accept it,” he said. “Freedom should be defined as being able to do the right thing.”

When it comes to children, Father Ezenwata explained, some parents consider taking them to church as “invading their freedom.” But by not introducing children to the faith, he said, “you have chosen for them.”

A Christian family, he continued, is where the faith is transmitted to the next generation.

“People of my age now … somehow judged that being taken to church by their parents was something forced on them and bad,” he explained. “I don’t think people see that it was a beautiful thing that their parents were able to hand over the faith to them.”

Some adults, he has observed, have not taken their “faith to heart” or their responsibility for the next generation “very seriously.”

But recalling the Scriptures, he explained, “wherever sin abounds, grace abounds even more.” So, “America is feeding my faith, and I’m hoping also that my faith is feeding the people that I come in contact with here in America.”

PUBLIC WITNESS OF THE FAITH

Two African religious sisters are also bringing the riches of the Catholic faith to patients in Anchorage.

Photo via catholicanchor.org

Sister Mary Anulichukwu Emebo is a chaplain at Providence Extended Care. And Sister Immaculata Maria Uwanuanwa is a nurse at Providence Alaska Medical Center. They are members of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of Christ, a missionary congregation begun in Nigeria by an Irish missionary in the 1930s.

But instead of being an evangelist in a faithless land, Sister Emebo sees herself as simply an “instrument of God” to be used by him “any place.”

“It might be Nigeria, it might be Rome, Italy, it might be London,” she said.

Anchorage Archbishop Roger Schwietz is grateful it is Alaska.

“We have been fortunate to have religious from Africa present and serving in our archdiocese,” he told the Anchor. They care for the sick and give “witness to religious commitment,” he added.

When asked how she would characterize her work as chaplain in the long-term care facility as missionary work, sister Emebo replied, “I wear my habit.”

For most, she said, her habit “reminds them of the world to come, of the next life. Just seeing my habit reminds people about God and his Kingdom.”

“There are some people, who for one reason or another have gone away from the church and have separated themselves from God. And when they see me, they will start telling me what has been going on in their lives.”

“I know I have accompanied many people in their journey to eternity,” Sister Emebo said. “I’m glad I’m here. I’m glad God is working through me.”

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TAGS: USA African missionaries share the Gospel Catholic Church evangelism

[11/05/2009]

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