A Comboni Missionary from the Karamoja region of Uganda said: ‘Over the last three years, my experience as a priest has been one of great fulfilment and realisation.’
My name is Fr Gabriel Angella and I am a Comboni missionary from Karamoja in Uganda. I was ordained as a priest on 23 April 2022 in my home parish of Namalu. It was a day of great joy for me and the people of the Namalu parish in the Moroto diocese in the Karamoja sub-region, as I was the first priest from my home parish, the first Comboni missionary from the Moroto diocese, and the third from the Karamoja region as a whole.
Why do I say this? After three years as a priest, I realise that on several occasions during my daily endeavours and struggles, the memory of my ordination day and the joy it brought to people from different backgrounds and walks of life has been a source of strength and encouragement for me. I was the reason for their joy!
I think the core of my priesthood is to bring joy to others! To bring joy to a world weighed down by countless reasons to be sad, such as conflicts, poverty, hopelessness, corruption and injustice. Looking back three years, I would say that this has been the ‘agenda’ of my priesthood: sharing the joy that Christ gave me with others.
Following my ordination, my superiors assigned me to work at the Mary Mother of God Kanawat Parish in the Kotido diocese of Karamoja. As a missionary, I should have been sent to work outside my own region, or even my own country. Nevertheless, I was happy to be assigned to my own region, among the Karimojong people: a Karimojong evangelising the Karimojong. This is similar to what St. Daniel Comboni said many years ago when he talked of saving Africa with Africa.
Over the last three years, my experience as a priest has been one of great fulfilment and realisation. I was able to settle into the pastoral context of Kanawat Parish very easily, as I did not encounter the usual initial challenges of language and culture that missionaries face when arriving in a new mission.
I used my knowledge of the language to ensure that I preached the Word of God effectively. At the back of my mind, I knew that it’s one thing to be preached to by someone who has just learnt the language, and another to be preached to by someone who actually speaks your language and understands your culture. This alone brought about a significant change among our people.
People were thirsting for the Word of God every day, so it was unsurprising that the number of Christians attending Holy Mass on Sundays doubled. I later realised that this was because they felt God was speaking to them through the preaching.
Although there is still much to be done when it comes to translating the Gospel message into daily life, I am happy to note that many of them have tried to align their lives with the Gospel message. Many of them are now enthusiastic and beginning to live a sacramental life. In my three years as a priest in this parish, I have celebrated 18 weddings. This is a miracle because 18 weddings would normally take more than 10 years to achieve. We are in Karamoja. People here treasure polygamy!
In Karamoja, a priest is not just seen as a holy man of God, but also as a wealthy man who is there to help everyone. This perception of priests stems from previous encounters with missionaries from Europe. They found desperate situations of abject poverty in Karamoja. This prompted them to find ways of helping the people there. They built schools, hospitals and churches. They fed the hungry and treated the sick.
They clothed the naked and built houses for the homeless. They sponsored the education of many people. They have done and continue to do countless good things for the people of Karamoja. The missionaries (priests and sisters) can fulfil all of the people’s basic needs at the mission. However, this mentality did not encourage our people to take responsibility for their own church and priests. They felt that it was the priests’ responsibility to take care of them, not the other way around.
When I once told a group of men with many children that it was their responsibility to raise and educate them, they responded that their job was simply to have lots of children, and that as a priest, it was my job to take care of them, send them to school, and treat them when they were ill.
When I first started working in this parish, people would come to me asking for money to pay for transport to visit relatives living in other cities.
I must admit that this is a challenge for me. I am a missionary from Karamoja, working in Karamoja. How can I access the same resources as my European colleagues to continue supporting our people and helping them to achieve great things? I never considered this to be a problem, though, but rather a challenge. The first thing I did was begin working with people educated by the Church to change the mentality of the population.
I told them that our church is our collective responsibility. The poor are our collective responsibility, too. I am Karimojong like them, and therefore poor like them. We need to come together, take care of one another, and look after our church. This is a message that I still preach today. Some have understood and are supportive. Others understand but cannot support us due to poverty.
Others simply do not believe in the message. Every year, I take a group of my parishioners to my home in Namalu to show them that my background is not so different from their own. This has helped them to understand that priests are not rich, but ordinary people who need support and care. Some progress has already been made, but I am aware that it will take time.
I am very happy with my experience as a missionary here in Karamoja. This experience is providing me with a foundation for future missionary work outside my own region.