| Mission Report: Mali: July 2010 |
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Missionary Trip to Mali—Reported by Joseph Meaney, July 2010.Human Life International works in many different cultural settings around the world. Our most recent HLI Seminarian Summer Institute (SSI) was
I had a unique experience on this trip. Normally I do not get to see much in the way of wildlife on my African trips. This time, however, I was taking in the beauty of the Niger river that flows by the seminary land when a Cobra slithered up to say hello! I managed to snap a picture of it, and fortunately it retreated before I had to. The seminary keeps a pet crocodile, but I was assured that no one has been eaten by it yet!
Archbishop Jean Zerbo of Bamako, the capital city, welcomed HLI and the seminarians from throughout French-speaking Africa for our Seminarians for Life gathering. Our opening ceremonies concluded with a press conference that was a spectacular success. The national TV news came and ran an extended segment that night. Radio, newspaper and magazine reporters from both the Catholic and secular media attended in much larger numbers than at any previous HLI seminarian’s training institute. I even did a long distance radio interview with Radio Maria in Togo!
Fr. Clement Lonah, the rector of St. Augustine Seminary, said he was flooded with calls from well-wishers who learned of the HLI event from the media. We even had individuals from the community at large asking to sit in on the lectures! They heard had about the SSI through TV and radio coverage.
This session, our lineup of speakers included an especially brilliant expert:
Fr. Mika Mfitszche from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He may well be Africa’s foremost expert on the anti-life threats emanating from the “Reproductive Health” ideology. Indeed, Fr. Mika is a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life and a professor at the Catholic University of Kinshasa. He also teaches at several seminaries in the Congo and elsewhere for mini-courses. This was, however, his first trip to Mali, and the seminarians found his presentations fascinating.
One point that Fr. Mika made really resonated. The African nation of Ghana was economically more highly developed than South Korea 50 years ago. In fact, Asia was generally considered an economic failure that would never take off because of the massive number of inhabitants there. Today Africa, with far fewer people, is being told that economic develoment is dependent on population control through family planning. The response of the Congolese bishops was quite clever. “If having few children helped development, then the pygmies would be the most developed people in the Congo!” In fact, the pygmies limit their families to one or two children and have the economic development of a Stone Age culture.
In hosting the event, St. Augustine Seminary extended a very welcome to us. The rector and staff did everything in their power to make the event a big success. They placed their vehicles and buildings at our disposal and helped us negotiate bargain prices for the substantial amount of food needed for our hungry seminarians. The seminarians onsite even prepared a homemade banner to welcome us.
Among our speakers we also had two African nuns from the Daughters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This young congregation was founded in Mali and has a large number of religious vocations. Sr. Bernadette Diarra directs a Catholic school in Bamako and spoke to us about pro-life challenges in Mali. Sr. Esther Thera from the same religious community tackled the area of chastity. It was interesting to see that the celibacy of priests was one of the hot topics in Africa. Our seminarians for life defend this apostolic tradition of the Church with a great deal of zeal.
Seminarians Learn to Make 10-Week Baby Models
One of the highlights for the seminarians every year is the training session where they learn how to make plaster models of preborn children at ten weeks of pregnancy. Mr. Leo Kodjo from the HLI affiliate Pro-Life Togo is our African expert in model-making. His group has already produced tens of thousands of these miniature babies. Thanks to a very generous donor from Florida and a sculptor in Virginia who supply us, I was able to leave them with 45 different molds to take back to their seminaries and countries. HLI is steadily getting Africans across the continent to produce these pro-life educational tools. These fetal models have a big impact on school children and others who need to understand in a very tangible way the humanity of the baby prior to birth.
Another favorite moment of the seminarians is the chance they have to report on their pro-life activities in the last year. In Benin, both major
seminaries engage in massive pro-life outreach. They have a strong spiritual program that includes masses and rosaries for life. They go out in their communities to speak with young people in parishes and schools and also institutions like hospitals and clinics. On the intellectual level, they have pro-life lectures and discussion groups as well as a bioethics manual they are working on in Ouidah.
In Mali, a seminarian composed a series of pro-life poems. Many of the groups held special commemorations of the 25th of March, the Feast of the Annunciation. Perhaps the most recently founded seminary in Africa, only two years old, is in Guinea. They already have an HLI Seminarians for Life group! Their educational outreach has already touched many young persons outside the seminary. Togo’s seminarians go to the secular university with Catholic lay students and the chaplaincy to show films and have discussions. Burkina Faso is spreading the pro-life group to their different seminaries. Besides these, Ivory Coast, both Congos, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Gabon, Rwanda and Burundi all have an HLI presence in their seminaries. That only covers French-speaking countries. We are also in many English-speaking African nations, and Raymond de Souza has started planting us in Portuguese-speaking Africa.
Conclusion
This year the seminarians collaborated on a “Declaration of Bamako.” This brief document highlighted our conclusions and reaffirmed the commitment of these seminarians to the pastoral priority of defending life and family. They took inspiration from the documents of the Church, particularly Evangelium Vitae and Dignitas Personae, and from the pro-life leadership that so many African bishops have provided. Clearly the struggle against the evil of the culture of death is heavily dependent on prayer. Our means are insignificant when compared to God’s.
Prayer is at the heart of the HLI Seminarian Summer Institutes. We woke up every morning at 6:00 AM for morning prayer in the chapel before we began the pro-life talks and seminars. In the evening we had an hour of Eucharistic adoration after supper to conclude the day. It very good for us spiritually, and involved some sacrifice since the World Cup of soccer was in its final phase. The seminarians missed some quarter-final and semi-final matches in the evenings that conflicted with our prayer times. One has to see the enthusiasm of Africans crowding around TV-sets to watch soccer matches to understand how good it was to have them placing Our Lord first.
Mali is truly blessed to have a very fine archbishop in Bamako. He has stood up to those promoting condoms and population control. Archbishop Jean Zerbo told me that Mali has only had 151 priests in its entire history. Nine of these priests were ordained in 2010. We thank the Lord that He is sending workers into the vineyard. It is wonderful that so many of these young priests are strongly convinced of the need to preach the Gospel of Life.
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held in Mali, an African nation about twice the size of Texas. Much of Mali’s territory is in the Sahara Desert. As it happened, on the same day that I flew in, the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran arrived for a state visit. I was informed that the two closest allies of Mali are Libya and Iran; the country in fact is in majority Muslim, but the Christians are growing in number.
