The Missionaries of Africa  

The Missionaries of Africa are also known under their pseudonym of “White Fathers”. They received this name in the very first year of their foundation, in 1868, because they adopted the gandoura and bournous, the dress of the local Berber people among whom they lived in Algeria. The priests of the Algerian Church – at that time Algeria was still a French Department – wore black. Their founder, Archbishop Charles Lavigerie, had recently been appointed the archbishop of Algiers. When he arrived to take up his new post, Algeria was in the midst of a famine due to an epidemic of cholera. There was great sickness and many people were dying. Orphans abounded. The French colonial church had little to do with the local population whom generally they despised. Archbishop Lavigerie refused the orders of the Governor of the day and set about caring for the people. He needed personnel, men and women, who would join him in this immense task. This was the beginning of the Society of Missionaries of Africa.

Lavigerie told his helpers – men and women from the seminaries of France and from the villages of Brittany – to dress like the people, eat their food, learn their language. He wanted them to be different from the other French people who occupied Algeria. He wanted them to identify with the people to whom they were sent. Instead of despising them, they would grow in love of them.

It is this same spirit that inspires modern-day Missionaries of Africa. We do what we can to adapt to the life-style of the people to whom we are sent. We do our best to respect their culture and language so that they will inculturate the Gospel we bring.

Cardinal Charles Martial LAVIGERIE 

 (31 October 1825 – 26 November 1892)

A Catholic priest from Bayonne, France, he bacame Bishop of Nancy in 1863. He was noted for the reforms he introduced in the life of the clergy and their formation. In 1867, he accepted an appointment as Archbishop of Algiers, where he worked with great generosity to ease the plight of the local population. He campaigned for the abolition of slavery and travelled across Europe to expose the cruelties of this practice. The Societies of men and women he founded took this work to heart and continue in his name today. 

He expressed his love for Africa and for its people in these words: 

“I have loved everything about our Africa; its past, its future, its mountains, its clear sky, its sun, the great lines of its desert, the blue waves which bathe its shores”.