Fr Pat Murphy is out of Africa and back where his vocation started, writes Anne Keeling
Fr Pat Murphy grew up near Portmagee on the South-West Kerry coast, departure point for the boats to Skellig Michael – cradle of Christianity in the first millennium. He went to school at the Christian Brothers in Cahersiveen where Daniel O’Connell the Liberator was born.
Despite being sea-sick during his two visits to Skellig Michael, he describes the ancient monastic site as “a spiritual powerhouse” and part of a “Golden Age of missionary endeavour” and, as a young man, perhaps his imagination was fed by thoughts of the comings and goings of missionary monks like St Columba and his ilk.
Missionary
“I wanted to help people basically,” Fr Pat says when asked why he became a missionary. He joined St Patrick’s Missionary Society (the Kiltegan Fathers) in 1980. The Kiltegans have priests in eight African countries as well as Brazil and Grenada and Fr Pat after his ordination in 1990 was sent to Nigeria in West Africa, to its former capital city of Lagos.
Lagos is the biggest city in Africa with a population estimated at between 15 and 21 million. Thanks to the efforts of missionaries like Fr Pat, there was substantial growth in the Catholic parishes in which they developed and ministered in. Over a 20-year period Fr Pat observed one outstation church with a congregation of 50 people grow to a thriving parish at which three Masses held on a Sunday were attended by congregations of 2,000 people each.
Population growth, local efforts and the work of organisations like the Legion of Mary and St Vincent de Paul contributed to this expansion.
But Nigeria is a country with a corrupt police force and government, causing injustice, inequality and poverty. Fr Pat witnessed the suffering of poor people in his work as chaplain at the largest prison complex in West Africa, Kirikiri.
“The real criminals never go to prison because they get off,” he says, “they pay their way. When you are poor you have no money to pay the police to bring you to court, so many prisoners die of hunger and disease.”
The priests and the SVP helped as best they could with food and medical aid for prisoners who were malnourished and contracted diseases like scabies. “It was a drop in the ocean.”
They also provided transport to court for prisoners where a merciful judge might strike out their case (for which they may already have served three times their time anyway) and then they would help pay for their transport back to their village. Their crime could have been simply coming to the city to try and sell food to survive.
Fr Pat also ministered to prisoners on death row. “When you’re at a distance, you see them as prisoners, maybe as criminals, but when you meet people face to face they’re just human beings like ourselves and when you develop that relationship they’re just Femi or Ikenna.”
Condemned man
One execution day, Fr Pat recalls he was waiting outside the prison when the condemned men were brought out in a Black Maria police vehicle with tiny windows at the top.
“One of them shouted out ‘Father Patrick! Father Patrick!’ I thought it’s good to be here for this man. And for the rest.” Hard as it must have been, the work was also “affirming”.
After his prison chaplaincy work, Fr Pat began work in the formation of young seminarians for missionary priesthood. Deepening the students’ prayer life, assisting their human and physical development and brushing up on English were the key elements of the training.
In 2008 along with Kildare man Fr Tommy Hayden, they formed the Society’s Regional Leadership team for West Africa, which takes in Nigeria and Cameroon. Their term ended in November of 2014.
Speaking about the impact of terrorist group Boko Haram, which holds sway in Northern Nigeria, Fr Pat says that the society works ecumenically with the Muslim community there to “build bridges and to establish trust” between Muslims and Christians because “when violence breaks out people separate and then people condemn and tend to look on the other side as bad”.
Back in Ireland for now, Fr Pat is not planning on retiring. “We won’t go on the dole yet! Too much to be done.” He is on sabbatical whilst also studying conflict resolution and mediation in Dublin.
The Kiltegan Fathers have achieved a lot in Africa. “What we’re doing now is we’re handing over to the young African priests in our society. So they can take up the mantle.”
Fr Pat was honoured at The Best of the South-West awards ceremony last month at the Ring of Kerry Hotel in Cahersiveen for local achievers.
He described it as “a very nice event” and commented on the youthful organisers, “it’s nice that a younger generation also sees the value of missionary work and appreciates what we as missionaries are doing”.