ioneer of the mission field

"I WANT to he a country parish priest."
Such was the ambition of Charles Lavigerie. who was to become Archbishop of Algiers, apostolic delegate of the Sahara and the Sudan. apostolic administrator of Tunisia, cardinal and primate of all Africa and perhaps best known as the founder of the Missionaries of Africa (the White Fathers) and of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa (the White Sisters).
On November 26 1892, 100 years ago, Charles Lavigerie gave up his ardent soul to God, worn out as he was from his unremitting labours for justice and the spread of the gospel His constant pain and ill-health, the bitter incriminations he suffered as a result of his obedience to Pope Leo XIII, hastened his death, which can truthfully be called a martyrdom.
This great man was born in Bayonne, France, in 1825, of broad-minded and upright Catholic parents. At an early age he revealed both his missionary ardour and his forthright highhandedness: he led some Jewish boys forcibly to the village pump, where he baptised them willynilly!
Desiring to be a priest he insisted on going to the seminary. He succeeded so well in his studies that, after ordination, he was appointed lecturer in church history at the Sorbonne in Paris. The words of two missionary bishops. one from Manchuria, the other from Algeria, had already stirred deep chords in young Charles heart, but his definite call came in 1860 when he was sent to bring relief to the victims of an appalling massacre of Christians in Lebanon.
A few years later Lavigerie was appointed Bishop of Nancy, one of the most important dioceses of France. In 1866 the Governor of Algeria, then a French colony, offered him the unattractive see of Algiers, where a minority of expatriate Catholics lived among a wide-spread population of Arab Moslems.
He accepted. There was no delay. He wrote: "I was following the imperative attraction of my youth for the apostolate and I responded to God's will."
He came to a land of famine. Cholera and drought had decimated the population. Thousands of Arabs children and young people mostly managed to walk to the city to find food from the Christians. Lavigerie brought many to his own residence, then swiftly organised relief camps, served mainly by his French clergy and religious sisters. Once the crisis was over, these returned to their normal duties among their compatriots living in Algeria. Lavigerie saw how much he needed men and women who would be dedicated to the peoples of Africa the Arabs in the north and the black Africans of the vast interior of the continent.
So it was that in 1868 he opened the first novitiate of
)oung men to become the Missionaries of Africa. A year later eight girls from Brittany, responding to an appeal to dedicate their lives to God and to the peoples of Africa, travelled to Algiers and were the first novices of the Missionary Sisters.
As the two young societies grew, he fired them with his own zeal, guided them with prudence along the austere paths of abnegation and generous selfgiving, while revealing the secret of missionary life: "What Our Lord asks above all of his apostles is to love him, and to love everything in him or for him, especially the souls to whom he sends them..." Before his life was over I.avigerie saw his sons and daughters carry the light of the gospel far and wide on the African continent.
By far the most terrible of the sufferings of the Africans, witnessed by explorers and missionaries, was the cruel scourge of the Arab slave-trade.
At the age of 60, weakened by sickness and burdened by a thousand pastoral cares and with crucial political issues to deal with, Lavigerie summoned all his strength to throw himself into a Europe-wide anti-slavery campaign. He succeeded in arousing great popular support and raising large sums of money wherever he went.
Earlier in this article, reference was made to Lavigerie's obedience to the Pope. Apostolic obedience was a virtue strongly instilled into his sons and daughters, and obedience to his one and only superior, the Holy Father, hastened his own death.
It was a question of the relationship between France and the papacy. Ever since the bloodshed of the French Revolution of 1789. the majority of leading Catholics, especially in the armed forces. were strongly royalist. In 1870 a republic had been established, and later the seizure of power by the extreme left and their anti-religious laws had only hardened the conviction of Catholics that altar and throne were inseparably linked.
However, by 1890. Leo XIII thought the time had come for the reconciliation of church and state. He asked Lavigerie, as a prominent French churchman, to pave the way. in giving public recognition to the lawfully elected republic. Lavigerie took the occasion of a banquet in his episcopal residence in Algiers, in honour of the French navy.
He raised a toast to the republic! It was a bombshell which let loose volley after volley of abuse and ridicule from French royalists, bishops and laity alike. Cut to the quick, the cardinal waited for sonic word from Rome to exonerate him. That word was long in coming 15 months and Lavigerie felt betrayed. However, in 1892 Pope Leo XIII wrote an encyclical to the bishops of France which completely justified Lavigerie. Nine months later "the giant of a man" was dead. Leo said: "I loved him like a brother. as Peter loved Andrew".