Christmas in Tanganyika: A Memoir by Jonathan Russin

Author:Jonathan Russin [Russin, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2015-10-13T16:00:00+00:00

After dinner, Anthony and I continued the discussion and I learned that the people in the camp—although a majority of them were Catholic—showed a great deal of reluctance to cooperate with the Church. This had resulted from the position taken by the Catholic missionaries in Ruanda who also began to preach the doctrine of social equality at the same time official Belgian policy shifted. The refugees felt that both church and state had unexpectedly betrayed them, and it is small wonder that they showed little friendship toward the mission.

The mission receives its funds mostly from the United States, Canada and West Germany. Its wealth contrasts vividly with the countryside: an eighty-bed, completely equipped hospital; a middle school supported by the government since there are no funds for a public school; more than twenty buildings forming a small community which is completely self-supporting. The mission has its own sawmill and brick kiln; it produces all the food which is not brought in by truck. It has a fleet of trucks, cars and motorcycles (called piki-pikis) which far outshines even the government equipment. As has been the policy of the Church for centuries, it invests a great deal of money in property. In addition to the ground held by the mission complex, the diocese has over fifty titles to property scattered in a radius around the central mission. As a generalization the Catholic Church in Ngara District is wealthier, more efficient, and better equipped than the government. (The Bishop takes great pride in his sleek black Mercedes with deep-red leather upholstery—completely unfit for the roads but a tangible symbol of the economic power of its owner.)

Brother Anthony, who I found to be the most intelligent of the fellowship, is the “bursar” of the diocese, and he spends most of his time keeping the accounts and making contracts for the complex enterprise which he administers. But even the centrally organized, devoted and self-effacing membership of the priesthood has its personal difficulties and conflicts. The Bishop had come to Western Tanganyika some twenty years ago at which time the Church was making its first attempts to proselytize in the area. He had settled in Bukoba, a port city on the western shore of Lake Victoria, and he gradually built up the Catholic influence after church upon church was constructed in a widening circle. He was promoted from missionary priest to Bishop and gradually became one of the most influential churchmen in Tanganyika. Then suddenly, without prior warning, as the Bishop himself related it, he received a direct phone call from the secretary to the Vatican asking him to vacate his bishopric. Nationalization had come to the Catholic Church and Laurean Rugambwa was designated as the first African Cardinal. The Bishop was asked to leave the Bukoba Cathedral which was now to be used as the seat for the new Cardinal Rugambwa. This was obviously a great blow to the old man. Bukoba represents an urban life, and the Bishop was now asked to take up a missionary outpost in the bush of Western Tanganyika.

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