Missionary priest shares African culture with students

ROCKAWAY  “Togetherness is the heart of African culture,” Maryknoll Father Joseph Healey, an African missionary for the past 54 years, told 1st–8th-graders during a visit to Divine Mercy Academy (DMA) here on Oct. 6.

To illustrate his point, Father Healey, who teaches at the Catholic university in Nairobi, Kenya, asked five students to get up and form a line. He identified the student in front and the one in back. Then, Father Healey asked them to face each other and hold hands in a circle — a part of his talk about his missionary work in eastern Africa.

“In a circle, nobody is first or last. Everyone is equal. The most important things to Africans are family and community,” said Father Healey, 84. He noted that this need for togetherness feeds the success of the 180,000 Small Christian Communities [SCCs] started throughout eastern Africa.

A $2,200 grant from the Missionary Cooperative Plan of the diocese has helped Father Healey promote SCCs and the participation of the faithful there in the Synod on Synodality. It is a two-year process throughout the universal Church of listening and dialogue, which will conclude next year. Through the Mission Office, the diocese partners each year with eight foreign missionaries, including Father Healey — most of whom grew up in the Church of Paterson and now belong to religious communities, the Mission Office stated.

“Now they are in foreign lands to propagate our faith in the remotest areas of the world, where water, food, and shelter are lacking and where war, disease, and other calamities are experienced,” the Mission Office stated. “Through the plan, “our bishop sends each of them a Christmas check as an appreciation and support to their foreign missions,” the office stated.

The SCCs in eastern Africa consist of 15 people each and meet in the middle of the day in person or via video-conferencing. They sit in a circle and read the Gospel “and connect it with their daily lives,” said Father Healey, who teaches about SCCs at the Catholic university in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, and has written extensively on the subject.

Meanwhile, the grant also helped Father Healey and other missionaries promote the synodal process in the local archdiocese in Kenya. Faithful have filled out a questionnaire about their experience in the Church. The results will be processed up through the Vatican level — just like in the Diocese of Paterson, Father Healey said.

“These [SCCs and the synodal process] are ways to get grass-roots people involved. We are here because we believe what the Church says about God, Jesus, and our mission. Pope Francis says we are all missionary disciples,” Father Healey told DMA students.

Other grant recipients this year are Sister Lois Ann Richardi of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth in Australia, Benedictine Father Peter Blue in South Africa, Benedictine Father Damien Milliken in Tanzania; Salesian Father Henry Bonetti in Korea, Holy Cross Father Andrew Healey in the Philippines, Sister of Charity Margaret Ann O’Neill in El Salvador, and Sister Virginia Bickford in Kenya, according to the Mission Office.

Grant recipients will be highlighted on Sun., Oct. 23, at the annual World Mission Sunday Mass at 11:30 a.m. with Bishop Kevin J. Sweeney in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Paterson. Father Healey will stay with his brother Tom of the Church of Christ the King in New Vernon, in time for the Mass, before returning to Kenya, he said.

On Oct. 6, DMA students crowded into the cafeteria to listen to Father Healey, who wore a bright African shirt. He showed the two countries where he missioned — Tanzania and Kenya — on a map of the continent. He taught them words in the local language of Swahili, such as “jambo,” which means “hello.” The priest also spoke about native animals, such as warthogs, monkeys, and elephants.

At the end of his talk, Father Healey asked the students to urge their families to buy “fair-trade goods.” These are usually agricultural products, such as coffee or chocolate, traded at fair prices to benefit poor farmers in developing nations and are environmentally sustainable, Father Healey said.

Afterward, Katelyn Marmara, a DMA seventh-grader and student vice president, told The Beacon that DMA collects money for the missions each month with a donor who matches the funds collected.

“I love Father Healey’s Swahili words. He inspired me to want to get more involved in charity work, maybe with Africa,” Marmara said.