Jackson advocate. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1939-current, 1961-06-24

S~S, ShSy SCuL SilciT olCk CuliuICii
to mission clinics instead of. witch
doctors. They former coffee CO.
operatives to get better prices fol
their only cash crop.
On his battered motorbike-you
should have met him then!-he Of
ten travelled 80 miles a week across
dusty bush roads, swollen rivers
and swampy fields.
Hard at his priestly duties, but
thoroughly at home as a missionary
among his own, Father Rugambwa
was shaken when his bishop or
dered him to Rome to study canon
law.
AT 36 he never had been more
than 70 miles from home, had never
been on the Lake Victoria steamer,
had never seen an airplane, much
less flown. Now he was to live
for three years in a land Of white
men whose language he had never
heard, and become accustomed to
things he had never seen: traffic,
telephone, running water, electric
lights, paved streets, buildings over
two stories high! But he took it in
stride.
A few days before Christmas, in
1851, having completed his studies
he was back at the old mission
work. That Christmas eve he re-
ceived his first telegram. 1t was
from Rome. He had been appointed
vicar apostolic of the region in
which he had grown up. A few
weeks later he was consecrated at
Rutabo, a new diocese formed by
cutting 1000 square miles off the
diocese of Bukoba, where Bishop
Alfred Lanctot, Canadian White
Father Missionary, remained in
charge. The following year, GER
tain restrictions were removed and
Bishop Rugambwa became auton-
omous ecclesiastical ruler Of Ru-
tabo. The White Fathers with
drew, turning over to him all they
had built in 70 years. Not long
ago, they again withdrew, as Ru-
tabo was rejoined with the diocese
OF BukOba under Cardinal Rug
ambwa.
The new bishop set himself three
goals-the family, schools and hos
pitfalls. The White Fathers had left
him IL elementary schools, and in
the next 10 years he put up 20
more, two junior high schools, a
trade school for boys and a domes-
tic science school for girls. He
has started a congregation of At
rican nuns and society of African
lay brothers.
He built a hospital, obtaining
Italian nuns to run it, and induced
a society of Dutch nuns to put up
hospital they now run.
He has worked to raise the status
of women. Polygamy had reduced
them to chattel. Even in one-wife
Christian families she was little
but servant. By preaching and
writing, he opened centers to teach
better child rearing, sewing and
housekeeping. By degrees women
have acquired new dignity. AS he
once said:
"The good Christians are those
whose married life is in order.
What must be done is to search
into the, traditional background,
which is mainly the family back
ground, to lift the veil from the
clan system and from the funda-
mentals of local culture, so as to
see the way to the solid conversion
and religious stability, not only of
individuals, but of the vast tribes
of the African continent called TO
snare the fulness of the gospel of
Christ"
The African prince has had lit
tie money with which to work.
His people are poor-very poor
by western standards. Once when
a delegation from remote village
asked him to give them a church,
he said:
81 can't afford it. But what we
cannot do with our purse we must
do with our palms."
He agreed that if they would
build the church, he would give
them priest. For six months they
toiled, making clay bricks, hewing
wood, pulverizing rock and hauling
sand. He gave them their priest
the man who had been his secre-
tary-and thereafter handled his
own heavy correspondence on a
venerable portable typewriter.
He admits that his hand is out