Cyril Axelrod is a most unique priest and Redemptorist. Born Jewish
and still proud of it, born deaf and now totally blind as well, fluent
in Braille, fluent in several international sign languages, as well as
fluent in English, Afrikaans and Cantonese, Cyril is the recipient of
many global awards, an honorary doctorate (in 2001), and now the OBE,
having been mentioned on Queen Elizabeth's birthday list of 2013. He has
published his autobiography entitled And the Journey Begins.As a young Jewish boy, Cyril had wanted to become a rabbi but later changed his mind and after school started a career as an accountant. But God had other plans for him, planting the seed of a call to priesthood in the Catholic Church. Yet there were obstacles to overcome.
The story is told of how Cyril applied to Bishop Green of Port Elizabeth for admittance as a candidate for ordination. The bishop, a supporter of the deaf apostolate, was delighted at the prospect and started filling in the forms. He asked: 'Your father's religion?' Cyril replied: 'Jewish.' The bishop went on: 'So your mother must be a Catholic then?' 'No,' said Cyril, 'she's also Jewish.' 'Then you are a convert?' 'No,' Cyril replied, 'I have not been baptised yet.' 'Well,' concluded the bishop, 'that will be your first step on the road to your ordination.'
And so, after his reception into the Church on 15 August 1965, Cyril was sent by Bishop Green to do his philosophy at Gallaudet University in Washington DC, the only academic university for the deaf in the USA (and probably in the world). He returned to South Africa in 1967 to complete his theology, and was ordained by Bishop Green for the Diocese of Port Elizabeth on 28 November 1970. At that time Cyril was only the second born-deaf person in the world to be ordained.
But equally remarkable was that Cyril's mother attended the event. Most of us would take that for granted. But as a strict Orthodox Jewess, Cyril's mother had decided that she could not be present at a Christian priestly ordination of her only child, having struggled enough as it was to accept his conversion from Judaism. Cyril did not expect to see her sitting in the front pew as the procession entered the sanctuary. With tears in both their eyes, she vested her son in the priest's chasuble after the laying on of hands by the bishop.
Cyril's priestly ministry as a deaf person has assumed universal proportions. He has been school chaplain in deaf schools (having been himself a pupil at St Vincent's School for the Deaf, Johannesburg); he has conducted missions and retreats for the deaf all over South Africa in several languages, and he established a nursery school for the deaf in Soweto and a hostel for the Black deaf north of Pretoria.
Mainly Cyril was much in demand as an international missionary, preaching missions to the deaf in Italy, Ireland, UK, Holland, USA, France, Singapore, and Australia. It was while in Singapore that Cyril discovered a severe lack of pastoral care for the deaf in the Far East. It seemed God was calling him to distant mission fields. Cyril started studying Cantonese, mastering 4000 Chinese characters, and after two years felt he was ready to take up the offer of a ministry to the deaf in Hong Kong and Macau, where he moved in 1988.
Suffering from retinitis pigmentosa Cyril became progressively blind. After almost 15 years of deaf apostolate in the Far East, through total blindness he was forced to retire, moved to 'Deafblind UK', in Peterborough, England, where he has studied Braille, and also qualified as a physiotherapist (his sense of touch is his main source of communication now). Cyril is now based in London as the most central ‘hub' for his international apostolate which takes him to China twice a year, and regularly to Malta, Slovakia, Korea, Singapore, Japan, Australia, Canada and, at least once a year, to his home country of South Africa.
I was with Cyril when his progressive blindness was originally diagnosed. With complete conviction, inner peace and courage Cyril simply said to me: 'God has used my deafness in his work. Perhaps he will be able to use my blindness too.'
Cyril's computer/smart phone transposes ordinary text into Braille for him. Email is his main source of communication with the world outside that of his own deaf-blind one, and now he also uses the smartphone messaging application ‘whatsapp'!