Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest

Mission of Saint Therese in Mouila

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Advent & Christmas News
He came first in humility; He comes again in glory.

Dear Friends of the Mission,

"Montes et colles", "the mountains and the hills shall break forth before God into singing, and all the trees of the wood shall clap their hands for the Lord the Ruler comes, and He shall reign forever and ever. Alleluia, Alleluia."

This beautiful antiphon for the Second Sunday of Advent resonates particularly in Gabon. The majesty of nature surrounding the mission is as impressive as the power of the rains combined with the strength of the sun. It is easy, from Mouila, to embrace the desire for peace and reconciliation; the expectation of a Peacemaking Messiah touches each of us.

As Advent draws to a close, let us strive to cultivate our desire for holiness, remembering that our hearts are made for that which is greater than the universe.

Thank you so much for your prayers and support; we truly need it, as the rainy season is always trying, and the roads and houses suffer from the constant onslaught of water and humidity. The children's smiles remain our joy, and they join me in wishing you a beautiful Christmas season!

God bless,

Canon Rouquayrol

Abbé Zachary Reflects Upon His Time at the Missions

On behalf of the Province of Gabon of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, I wish you a most blessed Solemnity of the Nativity of Our Lord, Jesus Christ! Merry Christmas!

My name is Abbé Zachary Hamar.  I am a fourth-year seminarian, assigned to Mouila, Gabon, for a year of apostolic service, originally from Connecticut.  It’s about two months since I have been here. On the occasion of this beautiful feast, which is also the patronal feast of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, I thought I would take the opportunity to share with you a little bit of my experience as an American coming to Africa and to our missions for the first time.

Arrival

When I learned I would be assigned to Gabon, I was first of all surprised, having never expected to be chosen for this apostolate.  There was naturally a bit of apprehension—for an American having grown up in the suburbs, Africa seems rather different from my experience—but I was excited, too.  Since I had learned that the Institute had missions in Africa, the thought of becoming a missionary had occurred to me.  It’s a beautiful vocation, but as it is also a difficult one, I told myself that I wouldn’t volunteer (not knowing if I could support the difficulties), but that I would certainly go if God wanted me to, i.e., if I was assigned there by the superiors.

I wanted to prepare myself mentally for a style of life which would be rather different from what I was accustomed to, but I since I would not be able to imagine what life would be like in Africa, I contented myself with the advice of my superiors and fellow seminarians who had already been in Africa. And so, after having gotten my immigration papers, seen to my medical status (medication against malaria and the vaccine for yellow fever, strictly obligatory for Gabon), and ordered a white cassock (it’s hot in Africa), I was off to the airport of Florence for a 6 am flight to Paris, whence I would depart for the capital of Gabon, Libreville, the Paris-Libreville leg being about 8 hours.

It was evening when I arrived, so I couldn’t see much as the plane descended.  After I passed immigration and received my temporary visa (by an expedited process, thanks to an agreement between the State and the Catholic Church), I was met by Canon Mirko Perucchini, an Italian priest assigned to Libreville.  We met with the Provincial of the Institute in Gabon, Canon Bertrand Bergerot, for dinner, and then went to our parish in Libreville, where, despite a power outage, I was able to find my room and rest after a long day of traveling.

Libreville and Bissobilam

I spent a few days in Libreville at our mission, which is on a hill overlooking the city.  In addition to our church, not yet completed but with a beautiful facade, we have a well, and the locals often go to draw water.  Very soon after my arrival, however, it was time to set out again, because we had to go to a celebration in a village called Bissobilam, two hours distant…by boat.  With Canon Bergerot and a group of young people from the parish, we loaded a boat with food, decoration, and liturgical affairs, and pushed off from the dock.  After passing from the large Estuary of Gabon into a river, we traveled through virgin forest with nary a sign of human habitation, until we saw first a dock, then a storage tank, and finally the cabins and flagpole of the village.  The cabins are built with wood boards, on concrete foundations with corrugated steel roofs; curtains often fill the role of doors.  However rustic the buildings may be, there is at the same time electricity, with lights set up throughout the village for the evening.

We came to the village for the inauguration of a chapel, which we had built.  Our missionaries had come for some time already to say Mass in the village, but had to use the building that serves for community events.  With the help of a group of young people from the parish in Libreville, some of whom travelled with us, as well as some locals, we were able to build a dedicated chapel, complete with its little bell tower. We had a delightful little ceremony of inauguration, with the blessing of the chapel, the cutting of the ribbon in the presence of the delegate for the region (something like a county executive) and the chief of the village, followed by a Mass and a festive luncheon (where I had the experience of tasting monkey meat for the first time—it’s really quite good!).  It was a moment of joy and community, centered around the faith, and as such, both a consolation for the Catholics of the village and a moment of evangelization for the Protestants and the non-Christians, of whom there are great numbers in Gabon.

On to Mouila

After the weekend in Bissobilam and our return to Libreville, I set out for Mouila by bus, a journey of 6 hours or so.  We would call the buses ‘vans’ in the United States, and normally every seat is full, so it’s a rather intimate experience.  Except for a city or two, the road is through a largely undeveloped forest, though there are cabins and villages often on the sides of the road, sometimes with little tables set in front where you can buy things from the villagers: bananas, mangos, the carcasses of gazelles or monkeys, etc. The trip also begins in the northern hemisphere and finishes in the southern hemisphere, which is interesting…though it turns out the world doesn’t turn upside down when you pass the equator.

At the bus station in Mouila, it is evident that the provincial capital is rather different than Libreville.  It is much less built-up, there are fewer people, it seems somewhat cleaner, etc.  Canon Maximilien Vulysteke picked me up and drove me to the Mission Sainte-Thérèse de l’Enfant Jésus, where I will spend the year, and where I encountered the prior, Canon Alexis Rouquayrol, and was reunited with a fellow seminarian, Abbé Raphael Schiavon, a Brazilian.  The mission is composed of the chapel, the residence for the priests, a restaurant, a nursery, a carpentry shop, a sewing shop, a bread bakery, and the school Saint-François-de-Sales, founded by our dear Canon Henrique Fragelli, RIP.  The school, which is K-12, is a major part of the life of the Mission: not only do we give catechism classes, serve the Masses, and help maintain discipline, but also some of the students are boarders, and so are very present at the Mission.  For my duties, I teach catechism to the 3rd and 4th graders at the school and to youths of 12-17 years at the mission, I help Canon Rouqualrol direct the choir, and I assist in the bursar’s office; and of course, I have my studies, as well.

Reflections

What strikes me first of all about these two months in Africa is that life here is not so different from life in Europe or in America.  Of course, many external things are different, and here I live in a house of our Institute, so there are many similarities as a result, but all that aside, at the end of the day, people are people, and the occupations of daily life are the same.  Everyone gets up, the children go to school, the adults have work, everyone eats lunch and dinner, and everyone goes to bed.  At the school, one has to do their best to educate the children, keep them entertained while learning at the same time, and not lose patience, etc.  During work, you have a job to do, which you do better or worse.  To make dinner, you use pots and pans and oil.  The essential is the same, even if externals are sometimes different—the roads, for example, are not always paved.

But even the externals are often the same.  Here they have air conditioning, electricity, cars, internet, frozen pizza, etc., etc. (though not, it seems, Amazon, to my immense astonishment).  With respect to the Church, there are dioceses here, with bishops and local clergy.  It’s really not at all the image one might form for himself of ‘missionary in Africa’, of a desert where he must hunt for food or trade with a caravan, where he is the only priest for 400 miles, and where no one has ever heard of Christianity—this image being so much less accurate for the fact that Gabon is more of a rainforest than a desert.  In the past, no doubt life was much harder, even as recently as for the first priests of the Institute who were here, but now it is more or less life as we know it in the West.

With respect to the Gabonese themselves, they are very friendly, and those who frequent the Mission are respectful of the cassock and the clergy.  If I have some difficulty understanding their accent, I think that’s normal, so much the more so as they also have difficulty understanding me sometimes, my French being spoken with an American accent.

On the other hand, they think about things differently than we, i.e., Europeans and Americans, do.  Our western culture has been around a long time and is heavily influenced by Christian morality and doctrine, and we learn many Christian and civic habits simply by our daily lives: respect for oneself, a certain modesty, respect for the truth and one’s word, the necessity of a healthy habit of work, financial responsibility, etc.  Here, where the faith has been present for less than 200 years, the civilizing work of Christianity is necessarily less advanced.  This is nothing against the Gabonese, just as the good conduct that we imbibe in our culture is not something we can attribute to our own personal, racial, or national excellence.  Rather, it is the excellence of the Christian faith, with its insistence on doing one’s best for the glory of God and on the consequences of doing what is bad, which favors this cultural progress.

All that to say, sometimes there are misunderstandings, where the Gabonese do not understand why we think a certain way, or vice versa.  But patience gaineth all things, as Saint Teresa would have it, and where there is goodwill, there is always a solution.

To Participate in the Work of Christ

What is sure, dear friends, is that there is much work to be done here, for the good of souls and the glory of God.  Whatever might be said about the positive contribution of Christianity to civilization, we are not here to ‘civilize’ Gabon.  Missionaries come to spread the reign of Christ and to bring souls to His Love: that is their sole aim.  If this work of charity has a positive effect on civilization, as it normally does, so much the better, but we pursue eternal goals rather than temporal ones.  It is, as you well know, thanks to your support, both material and temporal, that we can carry on our work here.  Please continue to pray for the missions, above all: it is only the grace of God which can touch hearts and bring about their conversion, and it is only by prayer and good works that we can merit this grace.  Secondly, I invite you to consider supporting the missions materially.  If we are missionaries for the spiritual alone, here on earth, the spiritual is never detached from the material.  And so your gift will help us to continue to spread the word of the reign of Christ the King.

Assuring you of the prayers and gratitude of the Province of Gabon for your support and friendship, and in particular of remembrance at the altar by our priests, I will once again, a very blessed Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord.

In Christ the King,

Abbé Zachary Hamar

Updates from the Missions

Interview with the Oliver Family

Give the Gift of Canon Fragelli’s
Book this Christmas Season!

For meaningful gift-giving this Advent season, consider purchasing a copy of Joyful Memories from a Missionary in Africa, the book that documents the life’s work of the late Canon Henrique Fragelli that he himself wrote from his hospital bed.

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