Baba Simon. CAMERÚN

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A SAINTLY PRIEST FOR AFRICA AND THE WORLD
BABA SIMON THE BAREFOOTED MISSIONARY

We want through this paper, to present to you Father Simon Mpeke, a Cameroonian priest whose Beatification process is currently being looked into in Rome, after having being validly accepted by the Diocese.

BabaSimon-02BabaSimon-03BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF BABA SIMON

MPEKE was born around the year 1906, in Batombé (Edéa) in Cameroon, of non-Christian agricultural parents.

In 1914, while schooling in the school taken care of by the German Pallutine Fathers, he asked to be baptised. His wish came to be realised and he was baptised on 14th August 1918, after the First World War, by the French, Holy Ghost Missionaries in Edéa, with Simon as his Christian name.

He took as job Head Teacher, in the primary schools found in the remote areas in Edéa and later in the main mission in Edéa.

It is here, that in 1921, he will get to know that “a Black could become a priest.” He did not hesitate one bit.

He therefore, turned down his wedding arrangements with a young girl, to whom he was betrothed and began studying Latin with a small group of friends. In August 1924, he gained admission into the Seminary at Yaoundé, which opened its doors in July 1923.

There, he left a rich memory of himself as an excellent, serious, very pious and peaceful Seminarian.

Moreover, he is part of the first batch of 8 priests to be ordained in Cameroon on the 08th of December 1935.

Right from the Seminary, he was accustomed to the practise of Contemplation, and had begun a small project with others, of an active and contemplative congregation.

In the year 1936, he was nominated vicar of a remote mission, where he was remembered as a priest full of zeal, very supernatural, one who did incredible things and who gave of his time without reserve.

Again, being highly influenced by the Theology of his era, he decided to stand out rightly against the Religious Traditional practises of this area.

He was recognized as a priest of great value and this made him to be appointed in 1947 to the large parish of New-Bell in Douala, where he became the Parish priest by the end of the year.

He gave all he had as skills in the parish, by developing various congregations and brotherhoods, in supporting also, the different Catholic Action groups and schools and he was very much available and his generosity for his flock knew no bounds.

Again, during the early years of 1950, the institution of the fraternities of the Brothers and Sisters of Jesus, in his parish, made him discover the Spirituality of Charles de Foucauld.
In 1953, he joined the secular institute of the Brothers of Jesus and asked for a Sabbatical year in order to do his “novitiate” in Algeria.

He will later become one of the founders at the international level of the Union Sacerdotale Jesus-Caritas and its first head in Cameroon and in Africa.

Also, given his love and influence among God’s people, he was even nominated alongside two others for the post of the Auxiliary Bishop to his Bishop.

Towards the year 1954, he had the feeling of a call to evangelise the peoples of North Cameroon who were considered “pagans.” After due prayer and reflection, and filled with the dynamic missionary spirit of the Encyclical “Fidei Donum,” he became, in 1959, the first Cameroonian secular missionary priest in his own country.

After a brief stay in the community of the Brothers of Jesus, he took residence in Tokombéré, where we have the present Diocese of Maroua-Mokolo.

Living alone and in complete destitution, the “barefooted missionary” spent his life fighting misery which, according to a wise Muslim, he saw in it an “enemy of God.”

His intense prayer life and his contagious joy served as luminous testimony of God’s love even in the remotest villages in his large parish.

Through his creation of schools, sanitary structures, undertakings against injustice, setups to cater for the youth and the call for universal brotherhood, he allowed for a real promotion of the population until it became contemptible. His worry of permanent dialogue with the leaders of Religious Traditions and his encounter with the Muslims made him the prophetic precursor of Inter-religious dialogue, which was further reemphasized by Vatican II and gained for him the nickname “Baba Simon” (Father Simon), which is still very much used, even 40 years after his death, by both Christians and non-Christians.

It is on the 13th of August 1975 that he passed away, exhausted, with a life completely dedicated to the service of God and men.

We recommend that you pray therefore, for this cause of Beatification as well as, for our dear Region of the Far-North of Cameroon, still exposed to threats from the terrorist group of Boko-Haram. Through the intercession of Baba Simon, may Christians know how to be at peace and to continue in his footsteps to testify to “the Good News of the Divine Filiation of every human being” (Benedict XVI, Africae Munus, n° 8)

BabaSimon-04BabaSimon-05POSTULATION FOR THE CAUSE OF BABA SIMON
P.0. BOX: 74 MAROUA CAMEROUN
2016

PDF: Baba Simon, EN

(Español) Nazaret, el mensaje de fraternidad universal de Carlos de FOUCAULD. Aurelio SANZ BAEZA, Semana de Teologia, PUC SÂO PAULO, junio 2016

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NAZARETH :

THE MESSAGE OF UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD
OF CHARLES DE FOUCAULD TODAY

Aurelio SANZ BAEZA

PUC SÂO PAULO, Theology Week, June 2016

“”Our whole life, however silent it be, the life of Nazareth, the life of the desert, the same as our public life, should be a preaching of the Gospel by example, our whole existence, our whole being must proclaim the Gospel from the rooftops, our whole person must breathe Jesus […] Our whole being must be a living preaching, a reflection of Jesus, a perfume of Jesus, something that cries out to Jesus, that makes one see Jesus, that shines like an image of Jesus”[Charles de FOUCAULD (Meditation on the Gospel – OS p395)

TO WHERE DOES THE SPIRIT OF NAZARETH LEAD US

  • To become embodied in the realities we are living.
  • to live friendship with Jesus in adoration, contemplation and the encounter with people (fraternity, neighbours, work companions the excluded…)
  • To change to become human beings that need others and Jesus.
  • To accompany people in a simple manner, learning from them, from the least and poorest.
  • To see the world through the eyes of Jesus: he who does not judge, he who listens, he who forgives, he who concerns himself that wine and bread not be lacking, he who multiiplies the loaves and fish of our interior for the good of others.
  • To be ready to denounce injustices that affect others.
  • Not to flee from problems, from without or within, and to respond as honest men and women.
  • To allow God seek us and invite us to the banquet of joy.
  • To have fraternal encounter with those who do not believe, or do not believe as we do, or who are of another culture or language.
  • To not judge or live with prejudice.

”God, the infinite Being, the Almighty, becoming man, the last of men”

HOW TO LIVE NAZARETH TODAY

  • With the style of Nazareth: as Jesus lived the greater part of his life among his neighbours. It is to be with, not in order to proselytise.
  • In brotherhood.
  • Opting for those who are last
  • Being conscious of our limits as far as we can.
  • Not to flee from ourselves or from others.
  • Being embodied in the culture where we are living, yet without abandoning a critical attitude when it is opposed to the Gospel.

“I am eager to finally live the life I have been seeking for more than seven years, which I have glimpsed, guessed at, walking the streets which the feet of our Lord trod, in Nazareth; a poor craftsman lost in abasement and obscurity”.

WHAT THE MESSAGE OF BROTHER CHARLES SAYS TO TODAY’S CHURCH

  • It does not fit in with the profile of a saint that we are used to
  • It opens a space for contemplation within a system where all is organised
  • A new meaning to mission from being making Jesus present in different realities.
  • It puts us in the place where we are called by vocation, not where we would like to be.
  • It seeks the last place among the most abandoned, on the periphery, where one lives with poor resources, without dazzling anyone.
  • It helps one fight for the Human Rights of excluded peoples and persons, of those who suffer.

“For me, to always search for the last in the last of places, to be as small as my Master, to walk with Him, step by step, as a faithful disciple, to live with my God who so lived all his life and gives me this example from his birth”

HOW POPE FRANCIS RECOGNIZES HIS INTUITIONS

  • The joy that springs from meeting Jesus
  • The missionary impulse that involves friendship and familiarity with the people entrusted to us (with reference to having “the smell of the sheep”)
  • The desire for a Church capable of “going out to the geographical and existential peripheries”
  • The proposal of “a Church of and for the poor”
  • The importance of mercy towards all those wounded by life

“You must be filled with the Gospel of Jesus to the point of being capable, with total independence, of affirming, faced with the powers and ideologies of this world, the values that truly are indispensable in order to guarantee the transcendence and essential rights of the human person. You cannot silence for men what Christ would say to them if he could speak through your mouth and give witness through your attitudes. For this I have chosen and called you”.(René VOILLAUME, “Gospel, Politics and Violence”)

HIS MESSAGE OF UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD

  • Respect for other cultures, religions, and ways of life…
  • To live amid what is difficult and in situations of risk
  • To give meaning to one’s personal and community life
  • To learn using the poorest and simplest of means to be with the neediest
  • To be a missionary and [Good} Samaritan Church, in need of the Spirit and of renewal (Pope Francis)
  • To allow others read our hearts as we read theirs and help each other mutually to grow interiorly
  • A social and political appeal not to become set in fixed opinions
  • To live the Gospel in small ways and human details, without insisting that everyone must enter where we like to be or believe is best

Nazareth helps us to to live without judging, to live in contemplation of our own personal spaces and the spaces of others: the heart, hopes, and life. The spirit of Nazareth, then, urges us to review life contemplating it, to love one’s life and that of others as a great loving gift from God, while we feel free. We are only in Nazareth when we don’t idealise it and we accept Jesus as our neighbour or house mate, [sharing] our time and our future, as the co-pilot of our vehicle or as our companion on our visits and in our meetings.

Basically, Nazareth is to “BE WITH”, like Jesus, like Charles de FOUCAULD.

aurelio-junio-2016Aurelio SANZ BAEZA,
brother responsible of the Iesus Caritas Priestly Fraternity

PDF: Nazareth, the message of universal brotherhood of Charles de FOUCAULD today