PODCAST: Bishop Deeley's Trip to Cameroon

Transcript:

Molly: All right, hello, my name is Molly DiLorenzo. I'm the Director of Communications for the Diocese of Portland. Today, we are launching an interview series as part of the new Maine Catholic podcast by speaking with Bishop Emeritus Robert Dealey, who served as the 12th Bishop of Portland for a decade. In April, Bishop Dealey traveled to the Diocese of Combo in Cameroon, and we're excited to learn more about his experience. Thank you for joining us, Bishop Dealey.

Bishop Deeley: It's my pleasure. It's a joy to be here with you.

Molly: Great. Before we hear about your trip, can you share with us a little bit about the Diocese of Portland's relationship with the Diocese of Combo and why it's so important?

Bishop Deeley: Sure, thank you.  Some nine years ago, George Nkuo, who is the bishop of Kumbo in Cameroon, was here in the diocese. He was making a mission trip for the  the propagation of the faith collections that different mission groups take up during, particularly during the summer in our diocese. And he was here and he liked what he saw in the diocese. And he approached the vicar general at the time and asked him if it would be possible for him to send some priests here because he thought it would be a good experience for them to appreciate the way in which  churches done in another country. He himself had had an experience as a young priest of studying in Ireland and had drawn a lot of good things from that for himself, good insights, so he thought it would be good for some of his priests.  At first we said we would talk to him and so on. We had already begun having international priests through some religious institutes, which was our preference at the time to deal with religious institutes because in terms of assignment and in terms of  coordination and all the rest of that, it's a little bit easier when you're dealing with an entity rather than individuals. So we really had not had diocesan priests from the international community come here to help us. But after the bishop assured us that he would do whatever the religious institutes do, then we were fine and started.  And he sent us two priests eight years ago. We're both very fine priests. Father Hyacinth Fonkwa is presently the pastor in Kennebunk and Wells.  and is returning to Cameroon now his two four-year terms are finished and it is time for him to go back to Cameroon. And Father Antanasius Wursi is the other priest who came at the beginning.  He represents the bishop to us in the diocese and so he's going to remain for a little bit longer time. But we're very blessed in those two men and then we continue to have others. Now we have 12. Oh wow, wow. So we have 12 priests in the diocese and we have, along the way the bishop also asked me if I would help  educate a couple of seminarians because he has many seminarians in Cameroon. So we have two seminarians, two of his men are seminarians in Baltimore at St. Mary's Seminary and we help to sponsor them, support them in their preparation for priesthood. They will be ordained deacons  in June of this year and priests please God next year. And they too will work here for probably four or six years before they return to Cameroon and be priests of the diocese there. So it's important, it seems to me,  for two reasons. First of all, I think Bishop George's insight that he gained an awful lot from being in another place, another country, was good for him and his priesthood. It's also good for these men to see a different way in which churches lived here in America. My experience in Cameroon showed me what a beautiful, beautiful  church they have and their experience of church is mighty. The faith is grand and is so strongly lived in Cameroon, but it's good to have another experience of another church and see how things are done.  And it's also good for our people to have an experience of people from other countries and who can speak to their own experiences. I know that one of the things that happens with the international priests wherever they come from, whether it be India or Africa, in our case, oftentimes their preaching is longer than  what people are used to because they come from places in which masses last a lot longer. And so those are cultural things that get worked out over time. But also just an appreciation for the kinds of things that are happening in those countries. And it's helpful to an international understanding and our appreciation of the cultures which make up our world.

Molly: Yeah, absolutely, and it sounds like we've really built a wonderful relationship.

Bishop Deeley: We have. Bishop George has been out to America a couple of times. I can recall two in the last couple of years. He was here most recently for Bishop Rugieri's ordination and installation as the  my successor. He was here one other time. He had been in the United States for some reason, and he came here for a weekend or something. He'd been very involved and very engaged, and he and I talk on the phone fairly regularly. He keeps in touch with his men. They call him regularly, and he's very interested in what's happening in their lives.

Molly: Yeah. And in turn, you got to do your first visit to Cameroon, and luckily, Father Anthanasius was able to accompany you.

Bishop Deeley: Yes, yes. Bishop George had been asking me to come to Cameroon because he felt that it would help to bring the peoples together, the peoples from Maine and the people from  Cameron, I think he understood in a very real way that the people in Cameron needed a little, in his diocese, needed a little  encouragement for who they were and having somebody from outside come and admire their way of living, their faith, life in the parishes that they have constructed would be helpful to the people.  And so it was important to him that I do that. Because of unrest in the country, I hesitated at first to do it. But now that I'm retired and have less commitments at that time of year in the spring, I agreed that this was a good time to do it. And in fact, it was.

Molly: Yeah, and can you tell us a little bit of how long the journey was?

Bishop Deeley: Oh, it was, you know, once you, it's long, and we were 16 hours or something like that on the plane, and then when we got to Cameroon, we were another eight hours in the car driving to the diocese. The diocese of Cumbo is in the southwest part of  of the country, and so it's a good distance. Of course, there's no 95. The roads are often times dirt roads and not very well maintained, so it's a little slower than going distances than it is here in this country.

Molly: Yeah, and you sort of alluded to it that the country has had a long history of civil unrest. Did you hear much about that during your travels or observe?

Bishop Deeley: It's a very interesting situation. It's so much tied up in the colonization, which was the mark of Africa in the 1900s.  For a long time, Cameroon was a German colony from the middle 1800s until after the First World War. At the end of the First World War, Germany, of course, having lost that war, gave up all of its colonies as such.  Cameroon was split—the territory which is Cameroon was split into a French part and an English-speaking part, which were run by England and France. Eighty percent of the country was in the French section and 20 percent of the country.  was in the English section and so the language of the people apart from the some 150 languages or something, tribal languages which are part of the country, but the language of commerce and so on became French in the 80% and English in the 20%.  And when they became one country again, Cameroon, a modern free country with its own government and so on, they agreed that there would be two languages, French and English. And not long after,  they were formed, the eighty percent decided they thought it would be better if they were just French-speaking. So there was unrest around that, and that dates from  really for the last fifty years and it became very intense with new rules in like 2017 and actually a civil war broke out with real casualties, real pain in the lives of the people involved.  I'm not a statesman. I'm not a politician. I'm not involved in that. So I did learn something about it when I was in Cameroon. But my purpose there was to encourage the people in the living of their faith. And so I didn't really get involved. But I did meet  a woman who had been kidnapped and held for a week by the rebels, who are the English-speaking section, which is of course where Kumbo is, where the diocese is, that is our partner.  Somewhat delicate, the questions, but the pain that people have suffered and the hardships it has visited on the people is great.  The president has been president for 40 years. He's an elderly man now. He pretty much is able to, everything is under his control. There is a legislature which makes laws, but they make the laws that he tells them to make. And as well, the judges are subject to his decisions and so on.  The priests were telling me that there is an election in October or November or something, but they don't even know if anyone's going to run against them. It's not a very positive political situation. It's the struggle of many African nations. Independence was only the beginning of their development into the nations that they want to become.  and the politics that they would like to live. It's a very difficult process in all of these countries.

Molly: Yeah, I bet. And you were there really to ordain two priests for the Diocese of Combo, and that really must have been quite an honor.

Bishop Deeley: It really wasn't that the bishop would ask me to do it, and he was particularly keen on me doing it last year because he had seven priests, and this time around there were two. But they were wonderful men. I had a chance to spend some time with them on the day before the ordination and talk with them.  They had been well formed for priesthood. I was honored that the bishop would ask me to do that. He saw it as a way of me  kind of putting a seal on the importance of the church in Kumbo. And as he said to me along the way, these may be among those that eventually come out to America and help you out somewhere along the way. So that would certainly be nice because the 12 who are here aren't going to stay forever. They're here only for a term to help. So it was a real honor to do that.

Molly: Can you tell us a little bit about what the celebration of the mass was like after the mass? We've seen some videos and it looked quite vibrant and celebratory.

Bishop Deeley: It's a whole different world.  When people travel to church in Cameroon, they travel. It's not easy to get there. So when they get there, they're going to stay there. So ceremonies which last for hours are part of the reality.  The priests here will tell you that if they preached as short as they do here at home, the bishop would be getting letters from the people saying, it's not worth our while to go to church if you can't preach for longer than 15 minutes. So it's a completely different  reality. So in the morning the ordination was at nine o'clock and so the bishop told me that we would be going over when we would be going over and he would take me over because he wanted to greet me. So when I got near the church, near the cathedral,  people all came out of the church and down the stairs and down the driveway and then basically with music and instruments and tom-toms and feathers and costumes of all kinds led me into the church. It welcomed me with great smiles and great happiness and great joy for this very special day.  That's also a mark of what they do, because when I went to a parish on Sunday, the exact same thing happened. They greet you with dancing and cymbals and tom-toms and all the rest of that. It was really quite moving. And they really show their exuberance at the fact that you're there to pray with them and to celebrate mass with them.  The ceremony started on time, and it lasted just shy of five hours, which is a little bit longer than here. I mean, we had an ordination here in the diocese last week.  that took about two hours and 15 minutes. And we had three seminarians, and they had two, and it took Josiah five hours. So that's the difference. But it was, you know, everything is sung.  And with every song, there's movement. Sometimes the people stay in the pew, but their bodies are involved in their prayer. So movement is important, and so they're moving.  And then the offertory procession, the gospel procession, the offertory procession are lengthy things. They carry the book of the gospels into the church in a procession with a group of people and then they bring the book of the gospels to the deacon who then takes it to the pulpit and reads the gospel.  So it's a very respectful reality. So it's not chaos or anything like that. It's very organized and it's very, very beautiful because the hymns are very beautiful and everyone in the church sings. They're all gathered in their particular  costume of their setality or their organizations. They sit together and then they, so they're there, they're together enough that they know the hymns, they know the singing, they know the parts of the mass, and they sing the whole mass.

Molly: Yeah, wow, sounds like the experience of a lifetime.

Bishop Deeley: It's truly a beautiful faith experience, and it's obvious that most of these people are, as it says in the books, most of the people in this part of Cameroon are subsistence farmers.  from my driving around, my city background, but it looked like a very rich soil. It looked like the weather is such that the corn, for example, as we went through fields, was already knee high and it's only, that was in April, I was in April. They probably have at least two crops a year.  the things that we would have won. So it's very rich and the climate is very helpful to that. So that's the principal industry of that particular area. And so church becomes a very special thing. But their faith is very deep and their trust in God is remarkable. And so they celebrate that on Sunday. But they also celebrate that  in there because you can't hop in a car and drive down to church. It just doesn't work. The roads aren't good. The fuel is expensive.  In their village, they have a gathering place. Sometimes it's someone's house. For instance, I visited with Father Anthony's father while I was there, who was an older man. And for many years, Father Anthony was telling me the neighborhood would  village there would gather in their living room and they would reflect on the readings that were coming for the following Sunday and pray together and prepare themselves middle of the week for Mass on Sunday. That was a way in which they strengthened their faith of each other by their discussions and by their  Now they have built a little round building outside the house on the land that is his father's, where they can come together in a space which belongs to the community and makes it possible for them to do that. And that's the case in the villages around. And so the parish priest then makes  He moves around and says mass in one of these little villages. He does them during the week so that there's also mass in those places. But faith is very, very important to the people. It's deep, it's communal, and it's fervent.  It's quite a joy to be with the people in their celebrations. There's nothing down about the whole thing. It's very exciting.

Molly: Were there any other things you did on your visit that you want to share with us?

BD: Well, what they tried to do was they wanted me to visit a couple of different institutions and stuff. The church, in this civil unrest which is going on,  One of the things which those who instigated the civil unrest wanted to see is they wanted a collapse of the culture so that the society wouldn't be able to run. And the first thing they did was they attacked the schools. So they wanted the schools shut down. Now, Bishop George is an educator. He studied education. And so he said, "My schools will not close." One school I visited, one of the things I did was to visit this school as 500 kids, 500 young people between the ages of 11 and 19. It would be middle school through secondary school.  500 young people. Actually, before all the civil unrest, there were closer to 1,000 young people in this school. When I got there, the young people all came down the driveway to greet me with their school uniforms and their musical instruments.  costumes of their tribes and all of these kinds of things. Singing and dancing bring me into school and into the church. And then we had mass, which took three and a half, four hours, something like that.  So when you do one of those every day, you don't have an awful lot of time to do other things. And it's not like you're going to go sightseeing anyway. Generally, I didn't go out wandering on my own or anything like that because there is still the unrest. And there are still people around setting up roadblocks and things of that nature. 

So what I did was I went to the school, and then the next day we traveled to another part of the diocese, visited a few parishes on the way, because I guess the diocese, there are two counties, or what we would call counties, that are in the diocese. And so Bishop George wanted me to visit the other part of the diocese.  We went to that village of Comber Town, and we had mass there on Sunday morning. One day was taken up going from Combo to this other town. Then the mass on Sunday was pretty much the whole morning and part of the afternoon.  Then that night, when we came back to Kumbo, I had the opportunity to visit a hospital which was run by an order of African sisters, which was really quite interesting. They run the hospital, but they are the hospital.  They introduced me to the nun who was the head heart doctor and the administrator of the hospital and so on and so forth. A tremendous hospital, which is one of the few cardiac places in that part of Africa, not only in Cameroon, but in that part of Africa.  So the contributions the Church makes to the life of the community is great. I visited also, there was a Polish group of sisters, there's one Polish sister there, who runs kind of the novitiate formation center for the sisters who are wanting to become members of the community.  I visited there on a Sunday night as well to encourage them and their work as well. During the unrest, in their case, they had to close the convent for some three years because it was too dangerous for them to stay open. They have reopened now about a year and a half ago.  things are definitely on the better side of things. But there's just tremendous work being done by the Church to educate and to give a future to the people of that country because there's nothing else happening. Some of the schools have reopened, but  People are afraid to go. Obviously, if they were kidnapping teachers, it's hard to get the teachers to go back and so on. So the Catholic schools are doing the education and the institutions and the socialization and everything else that is important in the lives of people in that territory.

Molly: Wonderful. Just to conclude, is there anything else you'd like to share or key takeaways that you want everyone to know about this wonderful country and our wonderful relationship?

BD: It's a wonderful relationship for us, and we are so blessed by the priests who have come out. When Bishop George had spoken to me, when he first spoke, he told me he would give me his best priests.  has given us good priests. There are many good priests in his diocese and I had the opportunity to live with them and for those 10 days I was there and they  They're doing tremendous work and strengthening the faith of the people so they can deal with the issues that they have, and they bring a happy face to the realities that they're living in, and they find great joy in what they're doing.  So that's infectious and helpful to the people too. It gives them hope. It assures them of God's love for them and care for them. And it was just a very, very beautiful experience to be able to see that and to be with the people in those situations. Great admiration for Bishop George and the leadership that he gives in the diocese.  and the strengthening of the faith he does for the people that are there.

Molly: Well, thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to learn more and to share that throughout the Diocese of Portland, and we're certainly thrilled that you're still here in Maine with us, and I suspect this won't be our last time that we'll have a conversation with you. So thank you so much.

BD: Oh, you're welcome. I'm happy to be here.