Africana Plus
No56 May 2003.4
Centenary
The Missionary Sisters of our Lady of Africa
The
Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa,
better known as the White Sisters, are celebrating this year
their arrival on Canadian soil on 26 October 1903. The first
community consisted of three French Sisters and one Canadian.
They settled in 47 rue des Remparts in Quebec, their aim being to
make Africa known and to invite young women to give their lives
to Jesus Christ as apostoles and educators. We offer here some
reflections on this Congregation and on its place in the world
today, and especially in the world of Quebec.
A Little
History
In 1867 Charles
Lavigerie left the diocese of Nancy to become Bishop of Algiers,
in North Africa, which he saw as a door onto a continent of 200
million souls to whom the Catholic mission was to be directed. He
did not run a one-man show but in 1868 established, with many
difficulties, the Society of White Fathers, missionaries of
Africa. A year later he laid the foundations of a Congregation of
Women Apostles, saying that only women could approach women. He
had in view the evangelization of the whole African continent.
In his view the
missionaries were like shock-troops who would launch the mission
but would train Africans to be responsible for their own progress.
The missionaries would be only initiators; the lasting work would
be carried out by Christian African apostles. Lavigerie wished to
be above all political and racial quarrels, and he told the
missionaries to respect the language, the culture and the customs
of the people to whom they were sent. It was they who had to
adapt to the Africans, and not the other way round. He laid
special emphasis on learning the people's language, for one could
only belong to a people when one could speak to them in their own
tongue.
He demanded
that those who presented themselves for work in the African
mission should give the whole of their life to extending the
Kingdom of God. He spoke of heroic virtues and of "visas for
martyrdom", for the harvest of souls demanded sweat and
blood. These severe demands, far from putting off the young
candidates, only stimulated their ardor. The first White Fathers
were former French seminarists, and the first White Sisters came
from Brittany.
Missionary
Zeal in Canada
This apostolic
zeal for Africa very quickly crossed the Atlantic with the
handful of missionaries who came to beg for their work, while the
publications read in the churches, like the letter of Pope Leo
XIII on the abolition of slavery, sowed the missionary seed in
this good earth. Our continent had its own history of faith,
transmitted by evangelizers from France, England and Spain. The
stories of Catherine of St-Augustine and Mary of the Incarnation,
of Jean de Brébeuf and Lallemand, were told at the fireside and
enkindled the zeal of generous souls.
The First White Sister Vocations
The summons to
Africa fell on the cold air of Canada like a whiff of coffee or
spice in the tropical night. Adelaïde Morin, from St Norbert of
Arthabaska, was the first French-language Canadian to enter the
White Sisters. She died in Africa in 1934 after a life partly
devoted to raise the dignity of women in Algeria by teaching them
Canadian techniques in weaving. The first Canadian White Father
was John Forbes, who went to Algiers in 1896 with four Canadian
women, of whom two persevered: Mélanie Picard, of St-Antonin of
Rivière-du-Loup, and Marie Bourque, of Quebec. The last-named
was one of the founders of the Quebec Postulate in 1903. Léda Bégin
d'Héberville was a member of the first caravan to Kenya as the
movement continued.
The Gift of American Christian Families
to America
During these
hundred years between 1903 and 2003, 464 Canadian women and 93
Americans made the missionary commitment. In other words, 557
families from the American continent saw their daughters leave
for Africa with the White Sisters. We may remember that in the
nineteenth century, one girl in eight entered the religious life,
and that in 1960 there were 6,000 Canadian missionaries serving
abroad. We have now been at Morelia, in Mexico, for thirteen
years, and we are offering the same message as that of the Pope
during his visit to that country: America, rouse yourself, the
time has come to share your faith. The response has not been
sensational, but it is gradually making itself felt in generous
hearts ready to risk their life, as suggested by Teresa of Avila.
An International Congregation
Our
Congregation reached its highest number in 1966 when it had 2,163
members, of different nationalities. Today we have 1050 members
from twenty-nine countries. The members of the Council which
governs the Congregation come from Congo, Germany and Spain. The
Superior General, Marie McDonald, is Scottish. The youngest of
the 235 Sisters working in Africa are for the most part
themselves African. We have international communities in
different parts of Africa: in Algeria, Tunisia and Mauretania in
the Maghreb; in Mali, Burkina, Ghana and Chad in West Africa; in
Congo, Rwanda, Burundi around the Great Lakes; in Kenya, Uganda,
Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique in East Africa.
African Vocations
Diminishing
vocations in the Western world and increasing vocations elsewhere
means that our center of gravity is shifting. Huguette Le Blanc,
National Secretary of the Pontifical Work of St Peter the
Apostle, in her Letter of Christmas 2002, invites us to
contemplate the immense spread of the missionary Church in
Africa, Asia, Oceania and South America. The love which finds
expression in the call of the Church knows no distinction of race
or culture. We all see today that there is mission in reverse.
The whole ofthe Western world has become mission territory. One
of the finest achievements of our Congregation has been our
collaboration with the Bishops of eleven African countries in the
establishment of 21 Congregations of African Sisters and one
Secular Institute. It was of course the Spirit of God who,
operating in the hearts of African women, led us into this work.
Even before they could read, these African girls felt the
call to give themselves to God. They received the strength to
meet all kinds of opposition within a culture which saw women
exclusively as mothers. 95 Canadian Sisters and 10 Americans have
been members of international teams involved in this eminently
apostolic work of training African religious Sisters, who have
been so influential in educating and transforming their people.
We rejoice when these Congregations achieve autonomy and
thank us, saying, "You have made us your equals."
In the Muslim
countries of the Maghreb, our approach has always been the
daily dialogue of life and heart. Lavigerie had indeed forbidden
us to baptize in order not to arouse Muslim hostility but to
content ourselves with gradually penetrating mentalities with the
values of the Gospel.
If you educate
a woman, you educate a nation, said the proverb. Each of us,
in our own small areas of competence, is rather like that midwife
in Mali who said: "When I trust the women, their bring me
their sick children to be treated, and then their uncle and their
husband, their mother and their aunts. In the end, I am in touch
with the whole population. "We know that women may not at
present aspire to become priests, but while the latter use their
power to consecrate the bread and wine, the women have always the
power to wash people's feet and provide food. "Do this in
memory of me" in this sense also. So it is that missionary
Sisters find their rightful place in the camps of refugees from
this endless war, in touch with the misery of desperate
populations. The progress of medicine has enabled us to close
down our leprosy hospitals, but now we have the AIDS victims to
care for. The sexual commerce in women and children is another
challenge to which we seek to respond by establishing a world-wide
network including Sisters and all human beings of goodwill. This
was the promise made by Major Superiors of Women's Congregations
in Rome in May 2001.One of our American Sisters is working full-time
in Ghana to establish the network there in union with our Sisters
in Holland and Germany.
Knowing when to Continue and when to
Leave.
Our first
missionaries died prematurely, but improvements in both medicine
and transport have changed that. Nowadays we eventually find
ourselves back home from Africa, having successfully survived
epidemics, malaria, wars, and natural catastrophes. It can be
quite a shock.
At present
there are 140 Canadian Sisters and 12 Americans who have returned
to their respective countries after an average stay of thirty
years in Africa. We try to meet the challenges of what has become
for us a new world. We care for elderly and marginalized people,
we help immigrants to become integrated in society, we go out to
encounter Muslims, which is our original charism. We participate
in the culture of non-violence, making petitions and going on
marches against wars and campaigning for more justice and
fairness in the world. The work involved in caring for our
elderly Sisters also absorbs much of our energy, until, that is,
our turn comes to be cared for. We believe that the offering we
make of our life in old age constitutes a light for our world.
We left long
ago the first house we occupied in Quebec in 1903 in the rue des
Remparts. It was in many ways a prophetic spot. It is situated on
the banks of the St Lawrence from which the great ships left for
Europe and Africa; It is opposite the Ile-d'Orléans, the point
of entry to the American continent; it is in the shadow of
the City Hospital where the Augustinian Sisters, who preceded us
by two hundred years, trained us as nurses; and it is in the
Latin Quarter, home of new ideas. In the last hundred years, we
have opened many houses in both French- and English-speaking
Canada, in the United States, and now in Mexico. We have of
course shed our habit, and we have taken down the notices outside
our houses, and to that extent we have become invisible. We have
often turned into nomads, living in other people's houses. But we
still know that through the Congregation we belong to a reality
greater than ourselves and our gaze is still turned towards
Africa.
What are We
Going to Celebrate in this Centenary Year?
In the first
place, the tender love of God for each of us, for he has admitted
us into intimacy with himself. I no longer call you servants, but
friends. (John 15, 15) We celebrate also the gift which Africa
has been for each one of us and for our Congregation as a whole,
for Africa has fashioned us and has become a kind of seal on our
soul. But we cannot forget the state of Africa today, torn by
wars, pillaged by international companies, excluded from the
great debates. It is another heart of humanity, as Césaire put
it, a heart in reserve, waiting to be used. Meanwhile Africa's
sons and daughters spread their human warmth and their love of
life, their sense that life has a meaning and is to be celebrated
in song and dance. We celebrate in this year also the generosity
of all those benefactors behind us. We think of our parent sand
friends, of all those who provided us with discreet but
indispensable support. We think of the Bishops who have welcomed
us into their dioceses, other Congregations who have given us
their hospitality, the missionary groups, the Non-government
organizations. Our thanks will find expression in our prayer.
Mission
today is more of a partnership and a co-existence, a mutual
path of conversion and growth in dialogue, from which one cannot
expect to emerge unscathed, as the Superior General of the White
Fathers, François Richard, expressed it. He adds: "Our
dream is to see the Africa of tomorrow playing a leading role in
the world by bringing forth a culture of constructive and
peaceful inter-religious co-existence."
Emergence of a Missionary Laity
We receive more
and more requests from lay people who wish to give Africa the
benefit of their youth, their experience or their professional
competence. They feel a need to meet the other and to share
with her. They feel the same wind of the Spirit which moved the
first apostles, and they ask us to pray for them and prepare them.
We have been engaged in this kind of work for five years. We do
what we can, and we find ourselves surrounded by people who want
to share our charism in prayer, in communal living and working,
ready to live the "All things to All Men" of St Paul,
the Charitas of Cardinal Lavigerie. These Associates, or "Kizitos",
are paralleled by other groups of people who have returned from
Africa, and by people who simply seek spiritual nourishment from
what we have to offer.
Pierrette
Pelletier, MSOLA