Speaking to ciNews from Bagamoyo in Tanzania ahead of his arrival in Ireland this week, 60-year-old Irishman, Fr John Fogarty, CSSp, said representatives from the 60 countries where the Spiritans’ 2,800 priests, brothers and professed students serve, had negotiated a new vision for Spiritan education globally at the congregation’s general chapter.
“We have never had a policy on education and so this represents a significant step forward for us,” he said.
The former provincial of the newly merged US province of the congregation, who had just been re-elected provincial for a second three-year term in June before his election as Superior General, explained that the commitment to education is, “being driven,” by the African members of the congregation, who now make up over fifty per cent of the membership.
He explained that many of the African members had seen governments in sub-Saharan Africa actually ask the Church to get involved again in education, since the quality had gone down post nationalisation of schools in the wake of independence.
Within the congregation there has also been a shift towards re-engaging with education according to the Dublin-born congregational leader.
Prior to 1998, he explained, “education was downplayed in our congregation,” because over the three hundred years of the order’s existence, “little by little a number of the schools we were involved in were no longer directly serving the poor. There was a tendency to say we need to let go of these educational establishments, as they are no longer directly serving our purpose. So we gave them to somebody else.”
However, there has been a, “growing sense that education is really a very important aspect of empowering poorer people to take responsibility for their future in society and for shaping their own society. So this renewed emphasis is a reclaiming of that. A recognition of education as a tool of liberation for the poor.”
The gathering in Tanzania was the 20th General Chapter in the order’s 309-year history and the first to take place on the continent of Africa.
According to Dublin-born Fr Fogarty, for the first time, the new CSSp general council, which will be based in Rome for the next eight years, has three African members, including Fr Alain Mayama from Congo Brazzaville, the first representative of French speaking Africa.
“Our involvement in education is expanding in Africa in a significant way,” Fr Fogarty explained.
“In Tanzania we have opened up several new schools in recent years, as well as in Ghana and Nigeria, where there is a new university being built at the moment in Ibo land in the Delta region of south eastern Nigeria.”
The university is intended to offer third level education to those who mightn’t otherwise have an opportunity to obtain it.
The Spiritans are not only involved in institutional education, but also run education projects for street children, as well as literacy programs in refugee camps.
“One of the big challenges for us is that we are so diverse as a congregation. We are in over 60 countries worldwide and we have somewhere in the region of 800 students in formation around the world,” Fr Fogarty told ciNews.
The CSSp chapter also approved a standardised guide for training new members, even in those provinces where, “they are working with really minimal resources in terms of finance and trained personnel to ensure that those who join us are committed to what we are committed to: it is not just about becoming a priest, it is about a particular service within the Church and a particular charism.”
Fr Fogarty, who served as a missionary for ten years in Ghana, and was formerly on the congregational council in Rome as well as working at the Spiritan University in Duquesne, Pittsburgh, said the congregation’s two educational establishments in the US, Duquesne and the Holy Ghost Preparatory School in Philadelphia are both actively engaged with the issue of maintaining their ethos and commitment to the Spiritan charism and identity.
“Duquesne is very much to the forefront with this and is a leader for us worldwide in terms of articulating a strategic plan on how the Spiritan ethos and identity can be enhanced and promoted.”
The Pittsburgh University is also lending its expertise to academics in Nigeria on the issue of inter-religious dialogue, which was the other major issue stressed at the general chapter.
The Spiritans themselves have a long and distinguished commitment to countries such as Pakistan and Nigeria where inter-religious tensions have been fraught in recent years, as well as beginning new missions in India, Vietnam and Taiwan.
The general chapter in Bagamoyo in Tanzania was chosen because it is where the Spiritans first started out in East Africa in 1860 when they bought slaves from local Arab traders in order to free them.
The CSSp then established a village in Bagamoyo, which lies 45m from the coastline, before establishing other missions further inland.
According to Fr Fogarty, who is only the second Irishman to ever lead the congregation founded in France, it was Holy Ghost priests who introduced coffee to this part of Africa, bringing it there from their mission in Mauritius.