 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||
On 1 March 1866, Herbert Vaughan settled with one student at Holcombe House, Mill Hill, London. There he intended to begin to fulfil the missionary obligations of the Catholic English-speaking world. Britain had become heir to an empire. Catholics must
ensure that the true voice of the Gospel did not remain dumb throughout that empire. It seemed indeed a foolhardy task. The Church in England and Scotland had barely emerged from the background of the national life. The Irish were strong in numbers, but poor. Irish immigration would prove itself a boon to English and Scottish Catholicism. In 1866, it was felt to be more of a burden than a benefit. Vaughan approached the Cardinal of Westminster and suggested that he might establish an English missionary college. Even he was surprised at the Cardinal’s reaction. As a newly appointed bishop, Cardinal Wiseman had been tortured with doubts and uncertainties. In his distress he sought the advice of Father Vincent Pallotti. This venerable old priest advised him: “The Church in England will not flourish until it send priests to the foreign missions”.
Vaughan’s plan to establish a missionary college did not seem foolhardy to Cardinal Wiseman. It seemed instead the answer to a prayer. The Mill Hill Missionaries have always regarded their own progress as a measure of God’s blessing on the Church in England. At the same time they have never regarded themselves as purely English, or even British. Their founder had been educated in Belgium and had a profound regard for the Flemish. His journeys in Austria, previous to teaching at Ware, gave him a deep respect for the Austrians as well. It was not surprising, therefore, that he sought recruits not only in England, Ireland, Scotland and North America, but also in Flanders, the Netherlands and Tyrol.
Despite the early difficulties, the number of students grew. In 1869, Vaughan realised that Holcombe House would soon by far too small to accommodate them. He decided, therefore, to begin the new, permanent college buildings. On the feast of SS Peter and Paul, 29 June 1869, a quiet ceremony was performed by Archbishop Manning and the community. The foundation stone of the college was laid. By the end of February 1871, the college, though not complete, was ready to be occupied. The community moved in on 28 February. On Sunday, 19 March, the laying of the foundation stone of the church took place. The first Mass was celebrated in the church on the feast of St. Francis Xavier, 3 December 1873. The official opening was celebrated on the feast of St. Joseph, 1873. The consecration of the church and its dedication as the national shrine to St. Joseph had to await the full clearance of all its debts. This was achieved in March 1874. On 31 March, therefore, the church was consecrated. By special indult of Pope Pius IX, Cardinal Manning was permitted to crown the statue of St. Joseph. This ceremony was performed in the presence of the hierarchy of England and Wales on 13 April 1874.
When Herbert Vaughan first established St. Joseph’s College, what did he have in mind? It is evident that a number of models influenced him. He looked at non-catholic missionary societies such as the SPG (Society for the Propagation of the Gospel), the CMS (Church Missionary Society) and the LMS (London Missionary Society). He was
aware of the Irish initiatives taken by Maynooth College and Fr. Hon Hand’s All Hallows College. He saw in all of these much that was admirable. Yet his first instinct was to hitch his wagon to the Parish Foreign Missions., the Spiritans or the Lazarists. Between 1869 and 1875, his public statements seem to suggest that he was going in all sorts of directions at once. Yet he did have a not too precise idea of what he was trying to do, The lay society mentioned above was on the CMS model and was established first. This was constituted in such a way as to embrace the clerical members. By 1875, the clerical missionary society had become a separate entity. This was formulated in its first General Chapter, at Baltimore, in February 1875.
At first, this fellowship was understood as purely clerical. The lay society and the clerical society were seen to follow parallel, but different paths. The freshman student of St. Joseph’s College was known as a postulant. After between six months and a year, he would be invited to join the Society. His application was then submitted to the vote of the members. If the vote was favourable, he was admitted to temporary membership. The temporary member, just before being eligible for major orders, had to apply for perpetual membership. If the vote of the community granted him permission to take perpetual membership, he could then be accepted an advanced to holy orders.
It was not until later that it became clear that there was scope in the society for non-priest missionaries. The first such candidate was accepted in 1882. The 1884 General Chapter requested that this 1882 initiative be sanctioned, that lay brothers be admitted into the Society and that a special rule be written for them. Vaughan provided this in 1885. They were seen, however, as extensions and auxiliaries to the priest members. The Society’s clerical ideal remained dominant. The admission of lay brothers demanded that the college provide training for them.
The involvement of Sisters in the Society was initiated early, but took longer to develop. There were two groups involved. The first was a group of Anglican nuns whom Vaughan had received into the Church at Hammersmith. When Holcombe House became redundant to the college’s needs, he offered it to these Sisters. They accepted. Vaughan’s private agenda in this was that they might take charge of the college’s domestic needs. Their reaction to this proposal was point-blank refusal. Later, they did agree to become involved in the overseas work of the Society. They worked alongside the Mill Hill Missionaries, first in Baltimore and then in Uganda.
The involvement of the second group of Sisters came about in a much more indirect manner. In 1872, Vaughan was nominated Bishop of Salford. This appointment caused him serious personal distress. He wrote to Pope Pius IX, begging release. He cited his responsibilities at St. Joseph’s as the main reason for his being passed over. The Pope instructed him to remain superior, but appoint a vicar for day-to-day affairs. He obeyed and invited Peter Benoit, Canon Provost of Salford, to be his vicar at Mill Hill. Benoit agreed, joined the Society and remained rector of the college from 1872 until his death in August 1892.
In the Diocese of Salford, a group of ladies under the leadership of Alice Ingham, had been trying to establish themselves as a religious congregation. Vaughan helped them achieve this aim, and they became known as the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of St. Joseph. In 1883, Vaughan persuaded Alice Ingham to bring her Sisters to St. Joseph’s and to take care of the domestic needs of the college. In 1884, Mgr. Jackson persuaded her to send some Sisters to the Borneo mission. Thus began the close association of the MHM and the FMSJ, which survives to this day.
For years the Archbishop of Baltimore had been appealing to Rome to consider the needs of the millions of people then being released from slavery and had more recently made his appeal to Herbert Vaughan. Vaughan continued to petition the Pope for a mission field, mentioning, though not volunteering for, the African-American apostolate. The matter was settled when he read the words of the missionary founder, Francois Libermann, that the salvation of African people depended on priests filled with the Spirit of the Lord.
In the autumn of 1871, Pius IX assigned Vaughan’s missionaries to Baltimore in Maryland and granted the founder and his men the title of “Apostolic Mis-
sionaries’. The pioneers were Cornelius Dowling, James Noonan, Joseph Gore and Charles Vigneront. On 5 December they arrived in Baltimore, Maryland and were received officially by the Archbishop Martin John Spalding some days later at St. Francis Xavier Church which was to be their home. As the new year began, Vaughan consecrated the mission to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and named his missionaries ‘Josephites’. Father Dowling was appointed the first American provincial of the Josephite mission, and pastor of St. Francis Xavier church. The church was originally bought by Michael O'Connor (a former bishop of Pittsburgh and Erie) to serve the African-American community. The building was owned by the Jesuits, which ultimately led to a conflict. The church was heavily in debt supporting, in addition, an orphanage, school, and African-American sisterhood. The Jesuits agreed to permit the Josephites to assume management of everything including the debt. Moreover, the former would retain the right to reclaim and sell the property without conditions. This state of affairs was highly unsatisfactory to Vaughan, and, unfortunately, Bishop Spalding died in February 1872, before anything could be resolved.
When Vaughan set sail for England in June 1872, in Baltimore there was already a chapel, a school, a home for the aged poor, the beginnings of an industrial school and an inter-racial brotherhood. The death of the well-disposed Archbishop Spalding shortly after the missionaries’ arrival had been a setback, though less serious than the loss of the leader Cornelius Dowling from typhoid fever after seven months on the mission. Father Dowling was to die of typhoid in August 1872. Vaughan then appointed James Noonan as his successor. Never happy with this commitment, Noonan was to endure as the mission's second provincial until October 1877, when Vaughan finally granted his release.
Vaughan would make a second visit to the U.S. in January 1875, bringing with him a group of new priests, including Canon Benoit, William Hooman, Frederick Schmitz, John Greene, and Richard Gore, brother of James Gore, as well as Brother Edward Murphy. At this time, Vaughan consolidated connections between the American mission and Mill Hill by drawing up official rules for the Josephite missionaries to live and work by.
Vaughan recommended his missionaries to look to the Baptists for inspiration in their work. They decided on a very emotional approach, building on the Afro-American flair for lively song and dance. They met some difficulties in this. These followed from their commission to dedicate themselves exclusively to the care of the Afro-Americans. The missions were initially considered to be a segregated part of the Church. The first difficulty arose from the success of their emotional approach. The liturgies in their churches were so lively that they attracted many whites as well. This led to friction with the white parishes. Catholic groups who objected to the Mill Hill approaches nick-named them ‘those Nigger Priests’. The second difficulty arose from the missionaries’ perception of what must be their ultimate aim- the integration of the white and black communities in the Church.
At first, they addressed this latter difficulty head-on. They tried to establish an interracial brotherhood. This experiment proved a disaster. So they turned their attention to recruiting Afro-American clergy who would be integrated into the Society. To achieve this aim, they sent a number of young lads to be educated at St. Peter’s Apostolic School in Liverpool, England. Unhappily, only one persevered, Fr. Charles Uncles, the first Afro-American Mill Hill priest.
A constant problem with the mission was its financial support. It had to be established on a sound, economic, local footing. This was achieved in the 1880s when the American Hierarchy was persuaded to make the Afro- and native-American missions a national responsibility.
Another factor that militated against the achievement of stability in the American missions was the expansion of the Society’s involvement in India and the Far East. Friction had arisen between the American section and the Society headquarters when members were withdrawn from America to meet the Society’s obligations in other parts of the world. In 1884, Fr. John F. Slattery wrote to Vaughan suggesting a way out of this difficulty. Separate Society training facilities should be established in America. This would bring an increase in the number of members and insure more stability of personnel on the individual missions. As an outcome of this, Epiphany Apostolic School and St. Joseph’s Major Seminary were opened in Baltimore in 1888 and 1889. Despite these efforts, tensions were not relieved. In 1892, Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore offered to accept the missionaries who wished to be released from Mill Hill, and the following year, 1893, Vaughan gave his consent. John Slattery became the superior of the independent St. Joseph’s Society of the Sacred Heart, or ‘Josephites’, dedicated to the service of African-Americans. The Mill Hill Missionaries withdrew and was not to return to America until after the Second World War. Between 1893 and 1948, they were involved in some very specific tasks. Thus they provided some assistance towards the establishment of the Maryknoll Fathers. For some years, they acted as stop-gaps to the Josephite mission in the Caribbean.
By 1890, however, Vaughan had recognized that Slattery’s memorandum applied to Europe as well as America. So, he assigned two priests to start European expansions. Fr. John Aelen was assigned to establish a Society seminary at Roosendaal in the Netherlands. Fr. Joseph Kleinschneider was given a similar task in Brixen, then in Austrian Tyrol. As the new Roosendaal and Brixen candidates began to filter through the system, and incidentally, training of lay brothers expanded, extra accommodation at Mill Hill became necessary. This led to the building in 1896 of what is now known as the Superiors’ Wing. These arrangements meant that St. Joseph’s Mill hill concentrated on theological formation. The Dutch and Austrian institutions catered for Philosophy. It brought too a major alteration in student training. British and Irish students were required to study philosophy in the Netherlands. This insured that each candidate for the Society, before being accepted, had had experience of living and working in a culture foreign to his own. It also sifted out those candidates who lacked the ability to cope with foreign languages.
After the First World War, a number of new pressures began to be exerted on the college. The church introduced a programme of draconian reforms of discipline and teaching in seminaries in response to Modernism. Studies were extended from five to six years. On the political front, German missionaries in French and British colonial territories were expelled en masse. The missionaries from other lands had to pick up the slack. This means a sudden increase in the obligations of societies like the Mill Hill Missionaries.
The extension of the seminary course by one year, and the changes brought earlier in respect of the Roosendaal/Mill Hill cooperation meant that St. Joseph’s College required 25% more accommodation for students. To meet this need an extra wing, the C-Wing, was completed in 1926. Between 1918 and 1924, recruitment to the Mill Hill Missionaries was at an all-time low. The 1924 General Chapter addressed this problem and chose to respond to it be beginning recruitment at an earlier age. Thus, in the 1920s and 1930s, seven more minor seminaries were established as recruitment grounds. The effects of this approach were such that the C-Wing was hardly opened when further increase in accommodation was demanded. A new wing, known as the D-Wing, was ready for occupation in 1932. It gave the college the capacity to handle up to 150 students. Recruitment between 1930 and 1965 justified this accommodation. The annual ordination classes seldom numbered less than 25, and in 1938, 46 new priests were ordained. Membership of the Mill Hill Missionaries expanded to more than 1200 persons.
The training of the lay brothers had, by this time, been moved out of Mill Hill to Vrijland in the Netherlands. This meant that the college returned to its original function of being strictly a training ground for missionary priests. Another political factor of the 1920s brought an important change in the training programme. This came as a result of a number of reports commissioned by the Colonial Office. The most important of these, in respect of the Mill Hill Missionaries, were the Phelpes-Stokes report on East Africa and the Simon Report on India. These reports recommended that the colonial government place greater stress on education. It was also recommended that there should be a partnership with the missionaries in achieving this. To take advantage o this, many young priests, after ordination, were not sent straight away to the missions. Instead they went on to university to gain secular degrees. Thus a steady stream of Mill Hill priests attended the Universities of Cambridge, Liverpool, Durham, Glasgow, Rome and Nijmegen. During this period, life at St. Joseph’s was steady, but not very eventful.
The Mill Hill Missionaries first arrived in South Asia in 1875 and continues to work there today. They came at the invitation of the Maynooth mission to Madras. The Mill Hill Missionaries were originally to take responsibility for the Madras missions to the Telegu people in Andra Pradesh. Their involvement in the mission has at times been wider and at times narrower.
In 1879, the Mill Hill Missionaries were asked by the Holy See to provide military chaplains for the Third Afghan War. Depending on the outcome of this war, they were to be offered Afghanistan as a new missionary territory. Circumstances led to the closure of this mission n 1881. In 1884, however, they returned to take charge of the mission to Kashmir and what was known then as Kafiristan. The Kafiristan section of the mission embraced part of the Northern Punjab and what was later known as the North West Frontier.
The first missionaries to Madras were forced almost immediately with the challenge of an epidemic. Their task was to care for the sick and help in the distribution of emergency aid. One of their number was a Fr. Forbes, a qualified doctor. He helped to give greater effectiveness to their work. The epidemic had the sad, but effective result that the missionaries were joined in common and sympathetic suffering with the local people.
Once they had begun to find their feet, the missionaries chose two important priorities in their work. The first arose from their understanding of the position of women in Indian society. They recognized that no true, lasting Christian community could be established without the help and support of the women. The priests themselves could not actually instruct the women. Local taboos forbade this. So the energies of the mission were directed to the foundation of congregations of local Sisters who could undertake this task. There were three such foundations: one to reach out to Telegu women of caste, one to meet the needs of Telegu women of non-caste, and another to deal with the requirements of Tamil women of non-caste. The second priority was to train local priests. Within nine years of their arrival, the Mill Hill Missionaries wee able to set up a programme for priest training at Nellore. This achieved significant success. In the early 1900s, however, the programme had to be discontinued for lack of finance. In 1922, it was re-started. From then until the beginning of the 1980s Mill Hill involvement in the training of local clergy was substantial, first at Nellore and later at Hyderabad. By the 1990s almost all the Mill Hill missionaries involved in parochial work had been replaced by local priests.
In the north, the Mill Hill Missionaries were aced with different demands. An immediate concern was the care of the troops. A pressing need was the provision of decent recreational facilities. Little was provided by the army and many soldiers sought release and recreation in the stews that thrived in the bazaars. There was a demand for decent, sober relaxation. Those soldiers who took local wives were also in need of special care. Not the least part of this work involved the orphans of soldiers who had died on campaign. A great deal of energy was expended in providing this care.
Looking beyond such daily pressing needs, the missionary recognized too a special problem in the matter of the medical care of women. Local taboos made it impossible for male doctors to give them adequate attention. So an appeal was made to Europe for lady doctors who would take up this work. The Victorian feminist, Dr. Agnes McLaren responded to this cause. She joined the missionaries in a movement that had two aims, the immediate aim was to establish hospitals where women doctors would care for women patients, the second aim was to achieve a reform in church law that would permit religious to be more directly involved in medical care., this was a cause that Agnes McLaren and her successor, Anna Dengel, took up. By the 1930s they had achieved this second aim. The way was opened to a world-wide change in the Church’s medical apostolate.
With this movement under way, the missionaries were able to turn to other problems. The military orphans were only now part of a much wider problems. The number of children orphaned as a result of famine and pestilence in India was truly enormous. The Punjab was considered to be the bread-basket of India, and it was there that solutions to the orphan problem were sought. This job was not completed simply by feeding and educating these children up to the age of sixteen. In India’s highly structured society, such young people would find it impossible to find employment. They had to be provided with the means of earning a living. The Capuchin missions had done this by establishing Christian villages that were agricultural colonies. The Mill Hill Missionaries took a similar approach. They established a village populated by market gardeners and artisans. These and education were the dominant concerns of the missions until the Second World War.
Indian independence and partition was achieved at the cost of great national trauma. One of the problems that was a side-blow of this trauma was a huge increase in the numbers of orphans and displaced children. Many of these came into the care of the mission. Part of the missionaries’ solution to the problems involved was the establishment of two Christian villages on the Capuchin model. These could not be the only solution. At this time, a new factor had entered the equation. The introduction of new technology brought about a movement of people from the country-side into the towns. There were three responses to the difficulties that this movement occasioned. The first was the provision of Catholic bastis or housing colonies. This device had been used effectively by the Goan missions in Karachi. The second was the establishment of an Institute of Technology to equip young people in towns to earn more competitively. The third was aimed at both town and country. Its aim was to free people from the clutches of the chettyar or money lenders. The device used for this was the establishment of credit unions. On top of these were introduced the principles of the Co-operative Movement. It was thus possible for these credit unions to combine and provide some basic banking facilities.
A special case of people ground down by debt-slavery was the plight of the tribal peoples in the vicinity of Hyderabad, Sindh. In the 1970s, the Mill Hill Missionaries were invited to work among them. Since that time, they have shared this work with the Columban and Spiritan missionaries. The work among these is perhaps more basic. It may be a long time before devices such as credit unions will be of much benefit to them.
The medical work of Mother Dengel’s group continued. It was recognized, however, that hospitals were only part of public health. The thrust of the mission’ medical work, during the post-independence period, changed direction. The priority became the establishment of local and village dispensaries.
During this time, the missions in the South saw similar initiatives, but not quite as structured as they were n the North. A big difference was that the attempts to introduce the principles of the Co-operative Movement did not have as successful a passage. There was more stress on formal education.
A major problem faced by the missions in the South was that of poverty. Poverty of some sort exists everywhere. What marked Indian poverty out was its severity and its sheer scale. Much of the mission’s energies had to be expended on its relief. Similar methods were used as have just been described in the North. The experience of the missionaries in the South was, however, heart breaking. They were faced with the realization that they must not only work to relieve poverty. They must themselves embrace it.
The first South East Asian Mission was to Sarawak and Sabah. In 1870, plans for this mission were under discussion. These plans did not come to fruition until 1881, when the first Mill Hill Missionaries were established there. Expectations of these missions differed somewhat. In Sarawak, the White Rajah, Brooke, hoped that the mission would be a stabilizing influence on the Iban population. The first efforts in Sabah aimed at re-establishing the stations first started by the Spaniard, Don Carlos Cuarteron. The island of Labuan was a British naval station. The British government hoped that the Catholic mission would provide some care for passing British mariners. The terrain in Borneo was one of special difficulty and hardship. Progress was very slow for the first sixty years. After the Second World War, there was a sudden time of expansion. In the 1970s, the Muslim-dominated government of Malaysia tried to crush the Church. Their efforts to do this were, however, frustrated. Today, Catholics number about 15% of the population of the Borneo states. They make up an ecclesiastical province in the Church, with an archdiocese, three suffragan sees and a Vicariate Apostolic.
As part of the persecution of the 1970s, many Mill Hill missionaries were expelled from the states. A team of these was then sent to Indonesia to work alongside the capuchin missionaries in the Pontianak area of Borneo. It was hoped that the Mill Hill methods might be grafted on to these Indonesia missions so as to bring about the same successes that had been achieved in Malaysian Borneo. On completion of this task, the remaining Mill Hill Missionaries moved on to Irian Jaya.
In 1895, the Mill Hill Missionaries were invited to share with the Marist Missionaries the mission to the Maoris of New Zealand. This mission was similar to that already undertaken to the freed slaves of the United States of America. The difference was that the Maoris were not an oppressed people. Their rights had been guaranteed by a series of treaties with the British government. The aim of the Mill Hill mission was to provide a pastoral care that was consistent with Maori customs and culture. This was a painstaking kind of work. It was carried out without much fanfare or flourish. It contributed to the nurturing of a self-reliant and self-respecting Maori Catholic community, proud of its heritage. They were at the same time quite capable of integrating with the rest of New Zealand’s Catholic citizens.
Further expansion into Oceania, that is into Australia, was to wait until the 1970s. This was partially a result of the expulsions from the Borneo states. A number of Mill Hill Missionaries settled then in Australia. The Society hoped that it might sometime have an opportunity to work among the Aborigines. In the late 1970s, an opportunity to do this came in the form of an invitation to work in the Western Australian Diocese of Geraldton. The last Mill Hill Missionary left in 2003.
The Philippines Missions were started in very different circumstances altogether. The Mill Hill Missionaries in 1906, came to a country that was already 80% Catholic. It did not belong to the lands that the Church then described as Mission Lands. Why should missionary intervention be at all necessary?
This came about as a result of a train of circumstances that began in 1898 in Cuba. American public opinion was then roused to anger by the destruction of an American Navy ship, ‘The Maine’, in Havana harbour, this was a prelude to the start of the Spanish American War. It was a short war, as wars go. It started officially on 25 April 1898 ad came to its conclusion at the Treaty of Paris in December.
American conduct of the war concentrated on the destruction of the Spanish fleets in South America and the Far East. In July Admiral Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet at Manila and took possession of the city. There had been a vigorous revolutionary movement active in the Philippines since 1862, seeking independence from Spain. The revolutionaries saw Dewey’s arrival as a liberation. They got a shock when Dewey barred their entrance into the city of Manila. In December, the Treaty of Paris granted the USA sovereignty over the Philippines. This treaty was ratified by the American Congress in 1899. What followed then was a guerilla war between the Nationalists and the American administration. This lasted until July 1901, when Howard Taft became the first American Governor of the Philippines.
Taft immediately decreed a separation of Church and State. This played into the hands of the anti-clericals, brought about a secularization of the previously Church-controlled education system and opened the country to a stream of American evangelical missionaries. Taft recognized also that land reform was an immediate priority. To find the land to achieve this, he negotiated through the Vatican the sale of all the lands owned by the Spanish Friar missionaries. Part of the deal was that all the Spanish Friars had to go. The Friars had had a poor record in the training and promotion of the indigenous clergy. So, at one fell swoop, the Church in the Philippines was impoverished both in material and spiritual resources. A worldwide call went out for the services of other missionaries. As part of this movement, what is now known as the Province of Antique was assigned to the Mill Hill Missionaries. It is said that they were given this territory because it was a hotbed of the followers of the Aglipayan schism. The task of the Mill Hill Missionaries was therefore one of reconciliation and rebuilding of resources. It was not achieved overnight. After the Second World War there were opportunities to harness local radio to the work, much was done also towards arousing social consciousness among the faithful. Work to develop local diocesan clergy was also successful. More recently in 1990, the Society began to recruit Filipino men to join and a Formation House for the First Cycle was started in Iloilo. Filipino Mill Hill Missionaries are now working in Africa.
A curious factor in the Mill Hill Missionaries’ assignments to Africa is the influence that politics and diplomacy had on them. This is evident in the Uganda assignment which came in 1895. Previous to the arrival of the Mill Hill Missionaries, Catholic missions in Uganda had been pioneered by the French White Fathers (known today as the Missionaries of Africa). Both the catholic and the Protestant missions had flourished. There was little love lost between them. In the popular mind, the Protestants were of the British mission (Bangareza). The Catholic missions were seen as the French mission (Bafransa). Such was the rivalry between these two groups that, in the early 1890s, civil war broke out between them.
By the end of the civil war, the Church had begun to realize that something must be done to prevent such political misconceptions. The Catholic Church must cease to be seen as an instrument of White equatorial African interests. The Mill Hill missionaries, as a British Society, was invited to correct the balance in Uganda. The first team arrived in 1895. It was tacitly agreed that the Missionaries of Africa should concentrate on missions to the west of Kampala and that the Mill Hill Missionaries direct their attentions to the east. That is why over the years, the Mill Hill Missions expanded towards Nairobi in Kenya.
This movement was a slow process. Eventually the territories stretching from Uganda to the African coast at Mombasa were seen as three sections. West of Kampala was the territory of the Missionaries of Africa. Nairobi to the east coast was the responsibility of the Holy Ghost Fathers (now known as the Spiritans). The territory from Kampala to the Nairobi escarpment was considered a Mill Hill sphere of influence. The arrival of the Italian Consolata Missionaries in the 1920s altered this balance somewhat.
The next political upheaval came at the turn of the 20th century and concerned the Belgian territory of Congo. Belgian colonial administration was more than draconian. Indeed it is likely that no African territory suffered such a brutal colonial policy as was visited upon the natives of the Congo. At the turn of the century, the journalist, Morrell, and the Irish diplomat, Roger Casement, instituted a campaign to inform the world of these Belgian brutalities. Their efforts roused international revulsion. Belgium had to cave in to international pressure and institute reforms. Part of the whole set of these reforms was an invitation to the Mill Hill Missionaries to set up missions in the Congo. The first team arrived in 1905.
After the First World War Germany was stripped of her African colonies. They were parceled out to other European nations. Among those granted to Great Britain was the then Southern Cameroon. The position of the German missionaries who had staffed the missions in Cameroon became untenable. The new colonial masters demanded their departure. This was a result of a wave of anti-German feeling that came in the wake of the war. To provide a legal basis for the expulsion of the German missionaries, the British government looked at a piece of legislation which had been passed in 1916 by the Government of the Straits Settlements. This was known as the Alien Missionaries Registration (1916). The Colonial Office extended this to the whole of the British Empire. The German missionaries had to go. In 1922, the Mill Hill Missionaries were sent to replace them in Cameroon.
The last politically motivated Mill Hill assignment in Africa came in the latter half of the 1930s. Until that time, the missions in Sudan had been the responsibility of the Italian Comboni Missionaries, formally known as the Verona Fathers. When Mussolini’s forces invaded Somalia and Eritrea, the British administration of the Protectorate of Sudan became very nervous. They feared that Mussolini had designs also on Sudan. Contemporary military wisdom was of the view that, if his forces invaded Sudan, they would come through the territory of Kodok and Malakal. The administration demanded therefore that the Italian missionaries in these areas should be replaced by British. For this reason, the Mill Hill Missionaries were assigned to Sudan.
The main areas, therefore, where the Mill Hill Missionaries have been at work are Cameroon, Congo, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda. Of very recent occurrence is the opening of one mission in Kroonstad, South Africa. This latter mission has no political overtones. It is a response to a cry for help from a South African township.
In its East African beginnings, the Mill Hill Missionaries concentrated on four general concerns: training of catechists, catechumenates, care of the sick and elementary schools. The care of the sick was a special problem. Current Canon Law forbade priests and religious to engage in medical work other than simple nursing. There were two approaches to this embargo. Some missionaries simply ignored Canon Law. At a practical level, candidates for Mill Hill were given basic training in first aid. Some were encouraged to become sufficiently skilled to practise homoeopathic medicine. There was a very sound cultural reason why some sort of position had to be taken on medical care. Generally, the Asian and African mind sees on essential connection between the holy man and the healer. To be effective the missionary had to be some sort of healer. The reforms achieved by Anna Dengel’s group in the 1930s changed all this. It gave the kickstart to an expansion of medical work in Catholic missions throughout the world.
The elementary schools never, in the early days, had any very general impact. From the missionaries’ point of view, a basic educational infra-structure was a necessary preparation for the training of catechists and, eventually, the education of local priests. This approach was to remain predominant until the 1920s.
The 1920s change in attitudes to education came as a result of a change in British colonial policy. The government in London realised then that it must look towards self-government in the colonies. To achieve this, local people must be trained to take up the reins of government. A number of reports were commissioned. Almost all of them recommended that the achievement of the required educational standards demanded on alliance with Christian missions. The Mill Hill and other missions began then to look seriously towards the provision of secondary and tertiary educational facilities. It is from this time that cadres of missionaries began to take the necessary training to be able to provide such training.
Similar work was also undertaken in Congo. Cameroon was a special case. Between 1920 and 1930, its first priority was the re-opening of the former German stations. Educational development had to wait, therefore, until the 1930s. From that time, Cameroon, followed the same pattern as in East Africa. The resources available to do this were not quite so generous. Sudan was a special case. During the first years of Mill Hill involvement, it took on the aspect of a holding mission. After the achievement of independence by Sudan, tensions between the north and south of the country made any sort of organized educational and medical work very difficult.
After the Second World War, there was a great expansion of missionary work in East and West Africa. The old areas of influence changed. New missionary societies and congregations began to share the work. Development of the diocesan clergy proceeded apace and soon the role of the missionaries was to change fundamentally. This released missionaries to become involved in wholly new sets of concerns.
The administrative change came to a head in 1936. This was the culmination of a set of problems which began to show themselves in 1928. It was at this time that the APF (Association for the Propagation of the Faith) began to be active in England and Wales. This organization had difficulty getting off the ground. For control of English/Welsh financial support for the foreign missions had been effectively cornered by three organisations: the Mill Hill Missionaries, the Redemptorists and the Jesuits. The APF found it difficult to gain a foothold. With the cooperation of all parties concerned, a compromise was reached in 1936. This meant the amalgamation of the APF and the lay section of the St. Joseph’s Foreign Missionary Society. Thus was formed a new Society, known as the APF-Mill Hill. The Mill Hill Missionaries were to staff this organization. They, the Jesuits and the Redemptorists would share a percentage of the financial contributions. This event might have made little recognizable impact on the students’ daily lives. It brought about, nevertheless, a fundamental change in the relationship of the college and the Society with the Church in England and Wales.
St. Joseph’s College during the Second World War
The Second World War brought the college a number of problems. The Dutch students were no longer able to travel to London. Most of the German-speaking students were drafted into the Wehrmacht. The British and Irish students were left to rattle in a pod of a college that was far too big for them. In November 1941, it was decided to evacuate the college to Lochwinnoch in Scotland. The war ministry then requisitioned part of the buildings for the use of the civil service. So, the college at Mill Mill was effectively closed for the duration of the war.
When the war in Europe ended, this did not mean the automatic reopening of the college. It was to be sometime before ordinary travel in Europe was again possible. It was also some time before the civil requisition of part of the buildings could be ended. By 1945 it was possible for the British and Irish students to return from Lochwinnoch. It would be another year before the Dutch and German-speaking students would be able to join them. It looked at first as though they would have a repeat of their 1940’s experience. They were too few to fill the building. The 1945 re-occupation was to be eased by the companionship of Scottish refugees. The Archdiocese of Glasgow had decided that then was the time to perform overdue repairs to its old major seminary at Bearsden. The St. Joseph’s misfortune was their opportunity. For the duration of the repairs at Bearsden, the Glasgow seminary was transferred to Mill Hill. The Scots had hoped that their stay among the Sassenachs would last but a few months. As the Bearsden repairs neared completion, however, a terrible accident occurred. A careless workman caused a fire that engulfed the whole building. A new seminary had to be built for Glasgow at Cardoss. This extended the Scots visit to one year. When the Scots departed, students from the continent began to return. The college returned to the even tenor of its old ways.
In the 1960s, Pope John XXIII issued a challenge to missionary societies to become involved in South America. In the 1970s, this led to Mill Hill Missionaries’ involvement in Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Brazil and Ecuador. The general thrust of these South American missions was the provision of teams to respond to specific local problems. Once these problems were under control, the Mill Hill teams withdrew and handed the missions over to local clergy. At present, the Mill Hill Missionaries are active only in Brazil and Ecuador.
In the 1950s, tensions arose between the British government and Argentina. As a result, the Mill Hill Missionaries were assigned responsibility for the Falkland Islands, St. Helena, Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic. These are, generally speaking, holding missions without great prospects of expansion.
After Vatican II, Pope Paul VI’s request for cooperation and interdependence prompted some very grandiose plans that brought lots of excitement, but perhaps too quixotic to be implemented. The initiatives that were to have some immediately tangible effect were those that were taken at local level. One of these had surprising results and was the brainchild of Frs. Patrick Fitzgerald and James Cowan, the current rectors of St. Edward’s and St. Joseph’s respectively. St. Edward’s was the missionary college that had been started at Totteridge in1958 by the Missionaries of Africa (otherwise known as the White Fathers). These two priests realized in 1966 that, if the staffs of these two colleges could be combined, excellent economies could be made. They managed to start the amalgamation of the two staffs in January 1967.
The other missionary societies active in the United Kingdom at the time recognized the good sense of this move. In 1968, the Consolate Fathers, the Comboni Missionaries, the Divine Word Missionaries and the Society of African Missions joined. The following year, the Spiritans also joined. This grouping of missionaries became known as the M.I.L. (Missionary Institute of London). In 1972, it became affiliated to the Catholic University of Louvain. In 1995, it was affiliated to the University of Middlesex.
In the beginning St. Joseph’s and St. Edward’s provided the basic educational facilities. The other missionary societies had to set up their own halls of residence. While they were doing this, St. Joseph’s and St. Edward’s provided them a place to stay. In 1977, Holcombe House came on the market. The M.I.L. acquired the property and built up these the present M.I.L. It acquired thus the status and independence which it now enjoys.
The establishment of the M.I.L. separated part of the training and placed it outside the direct control of the college. This involved the academic courses and part of the pastoral training. The college became directly responsible for spiritual and pastoral formation.
With the second cycle of training of many of these missionary societies being carried out elsewhere, it had become more and more difficult to keep the Missionary Institute going. Plans are now being undertaken to close and to vacate the building by June 2007.
In 1970, the Mill Hill Missionaries commissioned a firm of London business consultants, McKinsey and Company, to make an efficiency study of the Society. As a result of this study, the government of the Society was remodeled into four main directorates. This was to gain more efficiency in promoting the work of the Society throughout the world. The McKinsey concept has been maintained though the definition of directorates has changed from time to time. The result of each refinement of this approach has been greater cohesion in the worldwide activities of the Society. The role of the College has changed to become the hub from which all these activities area facilitated.
The seminary role of St. Joseph’s College has changed considerably in the past thirty-five years. The College’s role is no longer restricted to being a pre-ordination training centre. In the post-Vatican II period, it has proved necessary to provide training and updating for missionaries who were ordained many years ago. This brings it to a whole complex of activities which come under the heading of Renewal. The processes and programmes of Renewal in the Society are also coordinated and facilitated from St. Joseph’s College.
Over the years, St. Joseph’s College has also opened its doors to lay people who were willing to become missionaries for a short time. After a period of training at St. Joseph’s, they become lay associates after signing a contract for a particular length of time.
The 1980s saw a steady decline in the number of candidates for the missionary life from the West. The 1982 Chapter opened the door for the Society to recruit candidates from countries where Mill Hill Missionaries have worked. Formation centres were established in countries like India, Africa and the Philippines for the first cycle of formation and these candidates would proceed on to St. Joseph’s College for the second cycle. With no more candidates coming from the West and due to spiraling costs, it became more feasible and logical to continue with the second cycle elsewhere. It was decided therefore that the second cycle would be in Nairobi. A suitable location was discerned and the students started moving into rented properties consisting of two houses for the students and one for the staff at Otiende in August 2004. The formation of the students now would take place among the people they were going to work with. The last student from St. Joseph’s left in 2005. The students in India continue with the Second Cycle in the Regional Seminary at Hyderabad.
The Sale of St. Joseph’s College
From as early as 1997, the General Council had already begun the process of discerning the possible future of St. Joseph’s College. The Society engaged John Gould & Co. to carry out a valuation of the College. In May 2004, the General Council decided to embark on a different approach, coming up with an “enabling development” plan. The idea was that in and around the site of the farm buildings, permission would be sought to build houses and apartments which would pay for the refurbishment of the College, including some demolition and new buildings. Form early on it was clear that Barnet Council Planning Development and the Mill Hill preservation society were against the idea, as from their perception it infringed on the Green Belt. The Society’s plans were dismissed in a meeting of the Barnet Planning Committee. A more conciliatory approach was pursued with the appointment of a liaison person to act on the Society’s behalf. After many meetings with eight consultors and developers, three options were put forward: sell and vacate with an “overage” agreement, meaning that the Society would share some of the profits a developer might make, sell and stay with an “overage” agreement, allowing the society to hold on to a corner of the property and stay and develop, meaning that the Society would enter into a business arrangement with a developer to seek planning permission to either sell or lease the College to another institution or for apartments. Chapter 2005 would have to decide between these options.
With the departure of the last student from St. Joseph’s College and the centre of training moved to Nairobi, the inevitable had to happen. Considering the huge expense in maintaining an empty College, the 2005 Chapter made a clear decision to sell St. Joseph’s College. The decision to sell and vacate St. Joseph’s College was not only a pragmatic response to changing circumstances. Contained within it was the willingness to let go of an icon of the past. On Saturday 1 July 2006, at the official celebration marking the closure of the college, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor led a celebration of Mission: Past, Present and Future in the College Chapel with friends and well-wishers along with representatives of groups which were part of the history of St. Joseph’s College to give thanks for the tremendous impact the College had made through training and sending missionaries all over the world for the last 135 years. At the end of the celebration, the General Superior, Tony Chantry declared the college officially closed.
The task to vacate the college got underway as soon as it was decided that the college would be sold. This arduous task involved dispersal of sacred items and disposal of movables. New homes were sought for many of the items including the pipe organ and the side altars. The library books were distributed among the formation houses and the Archives were transferred to Freshfield.
On 29th November at the offices of Trowers and Hamlins (Lawyers) Tower Hill, London, St. Joseph’s Missionary Society exchanged contracts with Matterhorn Capital St. Joseph’s Two, associated with the Matterhorn group of development companies which has bought St. Joseph’s College with the expressed intention of converting it into a care home for the elderly.
0n 20 December 2006, the doors of St. Joseph’s College were closed for the last time to the Mill Hill Missionaries. However, this does not signal the end of her mission. With the headquarters now located at Maidenhead in a cluster of twelve houses, the Mill Hill Missionaries continue to carry out her mission.
 |
||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||||