brottier

FOCUS ON AFRICA: The Spiritan Missionary Commitment to Africa as Exemplified in the Lives and Works of

Bishop Joseph Shanahan

and Blessed Daniel Brottier.

A Reflection by Ernest Munachi Ezeogu, C.S.Sp. as Part of the Spiritan Year Celebrations of the Province of Trans-Canada. Toronto, February 28, 2002.

1.INTRODUCTION

Many people find it hard to tell Daniel Brottier from Joseph Shanahan by their pictures. Both are big men with very large beards. Yet that is not the most important thing that these servants of God have in common. For divine Providence has given them a common Spiritan missionary vocation that led them both to the shores of Africa.

Joseph Shanahan was born in 1871 in County Tipperary, Ireland. Five years later in the diocese of Blois, northern France, Daniel Brottier was born. Shanahan was ordained a priest in 1900, one year after Brottier's ordination. Since Shanahan did his studies for the priesthood in France (1886-1897) one cannot but wonder whether they met each other. That is hard to say because Brottier was ordained a diocesan priest and only joined the Spiritans subsequently in 1902. Be that as it may, the similarities between Shanahan's and Brottier's approaches to mission are very striking. For one thing, both of them subscribed to the focus on Africa which was the hallmark of the Spiritan missionary charism. Shanahan set sail for Nigeria on the west coast of Africa in 1902, two years after his priestly ordination. Brottier followed suit, leaving for Senegal, also in West Africa in 1903, one year after joining the Spiritans.

In this refection I intend to look at the lives and works of these two great pioneer African missionaries with a view to articulating how they understood and lived out the focus on Africa component of their Spiritan missionary charism. In this way we can allow these servants of God who are on the way to being declared saints and models for the universal church to become models for us members of their own religious family as we grapple with the question of what focus on Africa can mean for us Spiritans today.

Focus on Africa has always been a centre-piece of the Spiritan missionary self-understanding. According to Libermann,

To bring the Good News to the poor, this is our general aim. Missions, however, are the main object of our focus, and in mission we have chosen the poorest and most abandoned souls. Divine Providence has carved out our work for us with the Blacks, either in Africa, or in the colonies. Up until now, these people have been without doubt the poorest and most abandoned. We would also love to work in France for the salvation of souls, but always having as principal aim the poor, without neglecting, however, those who aren't...

(Notes et Documents XIII,170 - my translation).

This every Spiritan knows as a principle. What it means in practice, however, is not always so evident. In this reflection, therefore, I am not going to dwell on the words and teachings of Shanahan and Brottier but on the example of their lives and works to see what these words meant for them in practice. Why do we need to rethink and clarify to ourselves the principle of focus on Africa? It is because the concept of Africa or Black has witnessed a tremendous transformation of meaning in our own day. Here is an illustration.

2.THE CONCEPT OF AFRICA

In March 2001, the American Ex-President Bill Clinton was honoured at the Congressional Black Caucus' annual awards dinner. There he made news by claiming that he was America's first Black president. "That's why I went to Harlem, because I think I am the first black president,'' he said, referring to plans to locate his office in the predominantly Black New York neighbourhood. Actually Clinton was only echoing the famous African-American writer, Toni Morrison. In the heat of the Monica Lewinsky affair in 1998, Toni Morrison told the New Yorker that it is the view of African-Americans that Clinton's prosecutions arose from the fact that he was "our first Black President." She went on to explain that Clinton is at least Blacker "than any actual person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of Blackness."

What are these tropes of Blackness that have made Clinton a Black man, his white skin notwithstanding? Someone has listed them as these: raised in a single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving, victim of profiling. Whatever may be the merits of Clinton's eligibility as Black or indeed as America's first Black president, the one point I want to make here is simply to show that the concept of Black is no longer tied to skin colour. Similarly, the concept of Africa has become more elastic and is no longer tied to geography.

3.THREE MODELS OF THE FOCUS ON AFRICA

There are three dimensions to being African today: native-geographical, ethno-historical, and socio-economic. Native-geographical refers simply to native Africans who make their home in African. Ethno-historical refers to people who are ethnic Africans but by design or by accident of history make their home outside continental Africa. This is the African Diaspora. Socio-economic refers to people who have no visible ethnic or historical links with Africa but who live lives of privation, powerlessness and violation characteristic of the African experience. These three modes of being African yield three models of the missionary focus on Africa: focus on continental Africa, focus on Diaspora Africa, and focus on Virtual Africa. We shall now look at the missionary lives of Shanahan and Brottier and see how their various missionary projects and engagements reflect these three focuses.

1.Focus on Continental Africa

This is the primary and most obvious field of the Spiritan missionary commitment to Africa. This is the vision which motivated countless European missionaries who saw work among Africans in their native land as an essential part of what it meant to be Spiritan. Both Shanahan and Brottier saw continental Africa as their primary mission field. Within two years of ordination Shanahan had set sail for Nigeria. Brottier was in Senegal already one year after joining the Spiritans. Once in Africa, both Shanahan and Brottier took seriously Libermann's injunction to his missionaries to leave Europe behind and become African with the Africans. Both of them had a holistic view of salvation as a liberation of the human spirit, mind and body. Their zeal to give the gospel to the people was only matched by their zeal to give them integral development and education.

The focus on Africa remained with Shanahan and Brottier even when they were no longer on African soil. Brottier was recalled to France in 1911 on account of ill health. Yet even while in France he was focussed on Africa. He threw himself into the task of raising fund to build a cathedral in Dakar. The cathedral was finished and consecrated in 1936. The same year Shanahan, now a Bishop, retired and went back to Ireland. In his retirement he kept on working for and promoting the African mission in Nigeria. Many later Irish Spiritans owe their missionary zeal to meeting Shanahan either visiting Ireland or in retirement and how he spoke with such passion and inspiration about the African mission. For Shanahan as well as for Brottier, the primary meaning of the Spiritan principle of focus on Africa was to work in Africa and, failing that, to work for Africa.

2.Focus on Diaspora Africa

According to Libermann's letter, "Divine Providence has carved out our work for us with the Blacks, either in Africa, or in the colonies." By the colonies he meant the African diaspora such as Haiti and Reunion or any country where there is a substantial Black population. We do not have much record on how either Shanahan or Brottier viewed mission to Black populations outside Africa. There were certainly sizeable populations of Blacks in Paris in Brottier's day. Did he ever consider working among them? The same question could be asked about Shanahan in Ireland. Though it is easy to imagine them being available for mission among African immigrants, I am not aware of any documentary evidence to that effect. This could as well be the blind spot in their focus on Africa.

3.Focus on Virtual Africa

Brottier made several attempts to go back to Africa which he saw as the primary milieu for the actualisation of his missionary vocation. Once he came to terms with the likelihood that he might never again see the shores of Africa, his eyes opened and he saw African in his own backyard. If it was his patriotism and love for adventure that led him to be a World War II army chaplain, it was his essential Spiritan love for the poor and the most abandoned that led him to be the director of the Orphan Apprentices of Auteuil. The needs of the orphans of Auteuil, like those of his mission in Africa, demanded all the spiritual, educational and developmental resources at his disposal. It could be said that once he got going with the Orphan Apprentices of Auteuil he did not miss Africa any more because he knew he had found Africa in Paris. His mission in Auteuil was virtually a mission to Africa. Shanahan spent all his missionary energies in the real Africa and so for him the question of mission to virtual Africa did not arise.

4.THE CHALLENGE OF SHANAHAN AND BROTTIER

In brief we can say that for Shanahan and Brottier the focus on Africa meant, (1) working in Africa or for Africa when physical presence in Africa was not possible; (2) working with and for people in situations akin to the African situation, e.g. orphans; and (3) working with Africans outside the African homeland was not a priority.

Would Shanahan and Brottier still view the missionary focus on Africa in the same way if they were alive today? This is a question for community discernment. It seems to me, however, that they would have paid more attention to African immigrants. The observation that in most cities in the developed world today the two segments of Diaspora Africa and Virtual Africa have, in fact, become one. It is often African immigrants and people of visible African descent who are at the bottom of the social ladder. They are poorer and more abandoned today than French orphans in Paris. That is why I suggest that Brottier and Shanahan would have paid more attention to them today. This remains a challenge for us Spiritans today as we strive for greater faithful to our common charism.