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FIG. 4 (above): Father
Léonard Allaire (1870–1947)
standing among freed slaves.
Brazzaville, Congo. C. 1890.
© CSSp.
FIG. 5 (below): Father Mathurin
Le Mailloux (1878–1945) in the
launch of the Musuko Mission.
Angola. Early 20th century.
© CSSp.
FIG. 1 (top left): Artist unknown.
Mission Notre-Dame
de Bagamoyo, Tanzania,
founded by the Spiritans in
1868. This is probably how it
looked in the 1870s.
Gouache on paper.
© Congrégation du Saint-Esprit (CSSp).
FIG. 2 (bottom left): Penetration
by the Spiritans into West
Africa (1844–1894).
From Henry J. Koren, Les Spiritains.
Trois siècles d’histoire religieuse et
missionnaire, Paris, Beauchesne, 1982,
p. 369.
FIG. 3 (top): Father Camille
Laagel (1880–1956) alongside a
“fetisher.” Angola.
Early 20th century.
© CSSp.
I. THE SPIRITANS IN AFRICA:
A LONG HISTORY
There had been predecessors to the Spiritans in
Africa. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
Jesuit, Capuchin, and Dominican missionaries had
succeeded in establishing churches and dioceses in
the Congo, Mozambique, on the Gold Coast,1 and
along the Gulf of Guinea. However, high mortality
rates, the weakening of the Portuguese religious
orders, and the ravages of slavery ultimately destroyed
these structures. By the beginning of the
nineteenth century, the only apostolic prefecture
that remained in Africa was Senegal, and it was
staffed by two or three priests at most.
In 1842, the Holy See accepted the creation of the
Apostolic Vicariate of Two Guineas, which extended
across more than an 8,000-kilometer stretch of
the West African coast, from Senegal to South Africa.
Monsignor Edward Barron, appointed bishop
of this vast territory, began searching for recruits.
Candidates for apostolic work in Africa were few
and far between. The Jesuits and the Dominicans
had recused themselves, so it was with Libermann
and his future Spiritans that Monsignor Barron
found his men.
That same year the Spiritan expansion in Africa
got underway in earnest, and it opened a new
phase of evangelization on the continent. An initial
contingent of missionaries was sent from Gorée in
Senegal to Cape Palmas, a strategic harbor further
south between what are now Liberia and Côte
d’Ivoire. All indications were that the men were well
prepared. They had trained in France by going on
daily seventy-kilometer marches, and they brought
twenty tons of supplies with them. However, these
preparations did not prevent the experience from
quickly turning into a disaster. Though presumed
dead, three individuals escaped and continued to
look for a better base further south, reaching Gabon
in 1844. There they established their fi rst mission
at Sainte-Marie, near what is today Libreville.
In short, despite careful planning, the progressive
implantation of the Spiritans in Africa cannot be considered
to be due to a well-defi ned strategy. The high
mortality rate among the fi rst missionaries,2 the absence
of fi nancial resources, the sometimes diffi cult
cohabitation with local peoples, and the defense by
European nations of their areas of infl uence were all
factors that forced the Congregation to keep its projects
fl exible and to move forward pragmatically.