Jesuit Lives

At Home in the World

Patrick Carberry

• Publisher: Messenger Publications
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781788120326
• eBook ISBN: 9781788122184
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

Adaptability is the hallmark of the Jesuit charism. From early on, they spread rapidly, to the Far East, to North and South America, to Africa and eventually to Australasia. This new collection tells the stories of a few of these Jesuits, from different continents and eras – their successes and failures, their frustrations and hopes – in the belief that their commitment and struggles will prove inspirational once again today.

PART ONE

Africa

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Beyond the Zambezi: Joseph Moreau SJ (1864–1949)

Brendan Carmody SJ

Joseph Moreau was born at La Bruffière, Montaigu, in the region of Nantes in western France on 12 January 1864. Being of peasant stock, he was well acquainted with the demands of life on the farm, something he would put to good use later in life. He received his early education at Chavagnes-en-Paillers, some fifteen kilometres from his home, in a school conducted by a religious society known as the Chavagnes Priests. He later studied at a minor seminary in Sables d’Olonne, a seaside town about eighty kilometres from his home.

At the age of eighteen, Joseph made a retreat under the direction of a Jesuit, and it appears that it was in the course of this retreat that he first discussed his idea of becoming a priest. The retreat director wisely advised him to take some time before making a decision, and he encouraged him to attend the Jesuit apostolic school at Poitiers where he could further ponder the possibility of such a vocation.

During his time in Poitiers, Joseph read a recently published book called Trois Ans dans l’Afrique Australe, describing the beginnings of the Jesuits’ Zambezi mission a few years earlier. This book made a deep impression on Joseph, and at the end of the year 1883, he applied to be admitted as a novice to the Society of Jesus. Shortly afterwards he started his two-year novitiate in Drongen, Belgium. Already as a novice, no doubt with Trois Ans dans l’Afrique Australe in mind, he expressed an interest in being assigned to the Zambezi Mission.

This mission, which the Church had entrusted to the Jesuits, covered a large territory in Central Africa. Initially manned by an international group of Jesuits, in the 1880s the administration of the mission was given over to the Jesuits’ English Province (as it was then called). The vast region stretched from what today is the Democratic Republic of Congo, to south of the Limpopo river in the northern part of South Africa.

Mission to Africa

Shortly after the completion of his novitiate, and while still in his studies, Joseph’s wish was granted. A small group of Jesuits, consisting of one priest and five scholastics, was sent to South Africa and among them was Joseph Moreau. One can imagine the psychological challenge this journey must have presented for the six inexperienced Frenchmen. In the years before air travel, trips of this nature would take three or four weeks, during which contact with the outside world would become increasingly difficult. Entering a territory largely unknown to them, the places they travelled through must have appeared strange. While European knowledge of the African interior had improved following the missionary explorations of the Scottish Presbyterian, David Livingstone (1813–1873), in reality relatively little was known in the Europe of that time about this vast continent and its peoples.

In South Africa, Joseph studied philosophy at Dunbrody, on the Eastern Cape. This was followed, as part of his formation as a Jesuit, by three years’ teaching. During that period, in his spare time, Joseph studied Xhosa, a widely spoken language in that region. This was an important step, since Xhosa would give him a structure and framework for learning other languages in the Bantu group. With this foundation, he later mastered three other major languages, SiNdebele and ChiShona, spoken in what is now Zimbabwe, and Chitonga, spoken in the southern part of present-day Zambia.

After his years of teaching, Joseph was sent to study theology at St Buenos in Wales. He was ordained priest in 1896, and in the following year he made his Tertianship, the final phase of a Jesuit’s formation. Having completed this period of spiritual and apostolic renewal, Moreau returned to South Africa, leaving family, friends and homeland once again. From his letters, we know that he always maintained a keen interest in what was happening to his own country and people, especially during the two World Wars. Much later, when he was in his early sixties, he contemplated a visit back to France to see his family, but on reflection he felt that the journey would be too much for him. He also feared that the prospect of bidding his people farewell for the last time was something he could not face. So, like many missionaries of that era, he was never to set foot again in his home country.

A Treacherous Journey

After his return to Africa as a young priest, Joseph spent some time at Bulawayo, Gweru and Chishawasha, all in the region of Harare. He found himself restless, however, haunted by a desire to explore that part of Africa further north, and to extend the Jesuit mission beyond its then frontiers. Presumably he let these desires be known to his superiors, for he was sent in 1902 with an English Jesuit, Fr Peter Prestage, to prospect for a mission north of the river Zambezi. They were not the first Jesuits to undertake this dangerous task. There had been earlier Jesuit expeditions in this area that had been unsuccessful, mainly due to the devastating effects of malaria and blackwater fever, diseases which were almost impossible to remedy and which cost many lives.

Setting out towards the Victoria Falls – a trek of some 700 kilometres – Moreau and his companion sometimes travelled by ox wagon but most of it was done on foot. It was a treacherous journey through bush paths, negotiated with only the most basic instruments to keep them on track. At night, they slept in makeshift tents or under the clear, starry African sky. As the sun set, all noise died down, except for the mysterious sounds of life stirring in the dark shadows, the occasional crack of a branch, the rustle of feet or the swirl of water in a nearby stream. There was also the unwelcome interruption of buzzing mosquitoes and bellowing bush-buck, and occasionally the stomping of a curious elephant or the roar of a hungry lion. No doubt, all these creatures wondered what these invaders were up to, and danger was never too far away. If there was any compensation for the hardships Moreau and his companion endured, it was surely to be found in the beauty of the sky. There is no moon like an African moon: huge, glowing and alive; and there is no sky as magnificent as an African sky: velvet deep and eloquently silent.

From Victoria Falls to Monze

Eventually, Moreau and Prestage arrived at the Victoria Falls, no doubt overawed by the incredible cascade of water and the deafening roar it made as it plunged into the vast ravine below. They found that a bridge over the falls was under construction, connecting what was then Southern and Northern Rhodesia, but it had not yet been completed. To cross the enormous stretch of the Zambezi, Moreau and Prestage had to search for a sufficiently shallow spot in order to wade across in relative safety, hoping that they hadn’t been eyed by a hippopotamus or crocodile on the way.

After crossing the Zambezi, they set out north for Kalomo, about 140 kilometres away, where the British South Africa Company (BSAC), a private enterprise developed by Cecil Rhodes and the government of the territory, had its administrators. There they met the governor, Sir Robert Coryndon, and the chief administrator, Stephen Lanigan O’Keefe, both of whom welcomed the mission party and encouraged them to press on. Lanigan O’Keefe proposed a site for a mission station some fifty kilometres east of Kalomo, but Moreau and Prestage had their doubts about the location. They felt that it would be preferable to stay closer to the railway line that was being constructed at the time, and so the mission group decided to go further north, to Monze, which meant a further trek of about 150 kilometres.

On arrival in Monze, the two Jesuits were well received by the chief and elders. Chief Monze, who had met the great explorer David Livingstone when he had passed by in the 1840s, appeared to be an open kind of man, with his European shoes and clothes. With the help of an interpreter, whom they had brought with them from the Victoria Falls, the Jesuits explained their motive for coming and their hopes for the future. The chief was impressed by them and by what they were planning to do, and he agreed to allow four local boys, one of them his own son, to accompany them back to Southern Rhodesia to help them with their preparations for a permanent settlement in Monze. The boys, aged between eleven and seventeen, were Bbinya (the chief ’s son), Haatontola, Jojo and Jahaliso. Before they left, Moreau pegged out a site near Monze which he hoped would be the location of the future mission.

With great excitement, the party set out for Empandeni in Southern Rhodesia, where a Jesuit mission had already been established. In Empandeni, their plan was study Chitonga and become proficient in it, and to make plans for the future mission. And that is what they did. For the next three years, the boys taught Moreau their language while he taught them English, the basics of the faith, and some practical skills. They were baptised at Christmas 1904.

Preparing for the Mission

On 21 June 1905, three years after his first visit to Monze, Moreau and another French Jesuit, Jules Torrend, together with the Tonga boys, took the train to the Victoria Falls. This time, they were allowed to cross the bridge, although it was still unfinished and quite dangerous. As Moreau recalled: ‘The construction of the bridge started from both sides of the river at the same time, and the two parts of the bridge, like two giant men stretching across their long ponderous arms towards one another, had joined hands across the abyss. One could, if one liked and was allowed, walk over the awe-inspiring chasm.’ At their own risk, the party walked across the the unfinished structure, above the gorge into which the mile-wide Zambezi hurled its furious waters more than a hundred metres below. It seems that they made the crossing without incident.

From the Falls, they took the train towards Kalomo, along the newly built line, and then they hired a wagon and oxen that would take them to Monze, a ten-day journey. On reaching Monze, they were shocked to find that all was not well. The old chief, who had welcomed them so warmly on their earlier visit, was now in prison for some petty crime. This greatly saddened everyone, his son Bbyinya in particular. They also discovered that some days before their arrival, the site they had chosen for the mission had been handed over to another missionary group, the Seventh Day Adventists. They had to start all over again.

Moreau was undaunted, however. Being a man of deep faith, he reasoned that God did not always write in straight lines, and so he and Torrend set out confidently to find another site. After some days, they found a good spot some 12 kilometres away at the confluence of the Magoye and Chikuni rivers, in an area ruled by Chief Siantumbu. There, Moreau and his party pitched camp. ‘On the night of July 14, 1905,’ Moreau was later to write, ‘the Chikuni mission was born, not even in a stable but in the open air under a tall, unsheltering musekese tree’. It was the middle of the cold season, and the the night was chilly, but it marked the eve of a new day for the Catholic Church and for Tongaland.

Establishing the Mission

Moreau and his companions had arrived, but now they faced the challenge of setting up a mission station in the middle of the bush. Their first task was to build simple huts of clay and wattle in which to live. Not long afterwards, however, with the aid of builders from Bulawayo, they began to plan more substantial houses. The builders’ construction method, involving baked mud bricks and zinc roofs, amazed the local people, for whom this method was new. Among the many constructions started at this time, the church, completed in 1911, had pride of place. Regretably, only part of the bell tower still stands today, but it remains a notable landmark in the area.

This little oasis became the nucleus of Fr Moreau’s mission to the Tonga people, and very soon they were celebrating Mass regularly, especially on Sundays and Church feasts.

From such small beginnings, the mission station began to grow into what is today the diocese of Monze, with a Catholic population of about 400,000, consisting of twenty-two parishes, fifty-five priests and 121 sisters. The mission station itself now includes a parish church, a hospital, a secondary school for boys and another for girls, as well as a College of Education called after St Charles Lwanga.

A Revolution in Farming

Before any of that could happen, however, Moreau realised that he would have to ensure that the people had enough food and water to survive. The area had known many famines over the years, and people had very little food and only poor clothing. Early on, Moreau showed the way himself by growing vegetables and fruit, and especially maize, the staple diet of the people in that area.

Until then, the Monze people had only basic hoes with which to cultivate the soil. This meant that food production was slow and tedious, and could only cater for the family’s own needs, at best. As someone who had been reared on a farm, Moreau realised that a plough could change all that very quickly. Within months, he had brought one from Bulawayo, and in the following rainy season a huge audience of local people gathered to watch in amazement as Moreau himself started ploughing with oxen. Soon, local leaders started to send oxen to Moreau to be trained and then returned to their owners.

As the years went by and their skills in ploughing increased, many local farmers became quite prosperous, selling some of their surplus produce for cash. Selling for money had become necessary only recently, when the BSAC government started imposing a tax on households. This was designed to force the younger generation to abandon their farms in order to work in the various mines that were being developed in the region – copper to the north and diamonds and gold to the south. The new prosperity of the farmers, however, meant that many of them could now pay the tax, stay at home and avoid the misery of the mines.

A Patient Approach

At first sight, it may seem strange that Moreau initially preoccupied himself with ploughing instead of preparing people for baptism. Indeed, even Moreau’s superior rebuked him on one occasion for being primarily a farmer. Naturally, this irked Moreau, who defended himself by quoting the French proverb, ‘Ventre affamé n’a point d’oreilles’ – a hungry stomach has no ears.

Moreau viewed himself as first and foremost a missionary, with a commitment to building up a local Church community, but he was a practical man. He knew intuitively that he had to start where the people were, not where he might like them to be. He had to address the needs of the whole person, beginning with the most fundamental need of all, nutrition. Hence the importance of the plough.

Moreau also knew that he had to exercise patience in preaching the Gospel. He realised that, in bringing the Good News to Monze, the Tonga people might not at first see the need for this strange and confusing religion. After all, they had their own religious system, with which they felt comfortable. To establish the mission on a firm basis, Fr Moreau realised that, besides prayer, he needed the support and cooperation of the local people. To achieve this, he regularly visited the local chiefs, and it seems that he became good friends with several of them. Moreau also frequently visited the local people in their homes, making sure to greet them in their traditional ritualistic way. In this respect, his French sense of politeness and respect no doubt helped.

Over time, Moreau’s patient approach began to bear fruit. Most older people never did become Catholics. Those who were baptised were largely the young, who embraced the faith through a slow and complex process, inspired by the climate of trust and love which Moreau and his fellow missionaries radiated. The deepest impact on the younger generation often came through their experience of education in the schools.

The Importance of Education

Besides the personal contacts, which Moreau clearly recognised as essential, it was necessary also to build up a Church structure if the mission was to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword Patrick Carberry SJ
• Part One: Africa
• Part Two: Asia
• Part Three: Europe
• Part Four: North America
• Part Five: South America
• About the Authors