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| | | | "The love of Christ compels us" | | | | Welcome to Kiltegan, Co. Wicklow, Ireland - the home of St. Patrick's Missionary Society. | | | | We are a Society of Catholic priests whose particular aim is to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the world. The Society was founded in 1932 by Father P.J. Whitney, who had worked in Nigeria with Bishop Joseph Shanahan C.S.Sp. in the 1920's. | | | | We now have 307 priests and volunteer priests from Ireland, Scotland and England working in nine African countries, in Brazil, in Grenada in the West Indies as well as in Ireland, the United States, England, Scotland, Wales and Rome. | | | | We believe that all peoples have the right to know the riches of Christ, and we want to help them find these riches. In the countries where we work, we try to build up an awareness of this we invite young people to join us in this work. Why? The answer is our motto taken from St. Paul. | | | | OUR STORY |
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| | | | |  | | | MONSIGNOR
PATRICK J. WHITNEY
(1894 - 1942) |
| | St. Patrick's Missionary Society had its origins in Nigeria, before 1920 where Bishop Joseph Shanahan, a member of the Holy Ghost Order, was running a huge diocese of 8 million people.The Bishop had only 23 priests to help him, so he decided to appeal to students about to be ordained in Maynooth to give the first five years of their priesthood to Nigeria. At the time, it was normal for newly ordained priests to go to England or America for a few years but none had, so far, gone to Africa. The first student to volunteer was Fr. PJ. Whitney from Ardagh Diocese. He was ordained in June 1920 and, later that year, he accompanied Bishop Shanahan to Nigeria. | | | | A Dublin priest, Fr. Thomas Ronayne, who had been ordained in Maynooth seven years earlier had also volunteered and he went to Nigeria on the same boat. In the 1920's, ten more Irish diocesan priests joined them - and worked alongside the Holy Ghost Fathers in an area where people were very anxious to enter the Church and where missionary work was exhausting but very satisfying. As the years went by, the diocesan priests came to believe that what was needed in the Nigerian Mission was a permanent commitment. In due course they decided to set up a society of secular priests who would be full-time missionaries. Fr. PJ Whitney was chosen to lead the Society. |
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| | | | In March 1930, St. Patrick's Missionary Society was set up on a trial basis with Fr. PJ Whitney as Superior. A headquarters was established at Kiltegan, Co. Wicklow where a tea-merchant named John Hughes had given an old house and 20 acres of land for that purpose. Kiltegan became a place in which the diocesan priests working in Nigeria could spend their holidays and also a base from which the emerging Society could be organised. Fr. PJ Whitney appealed in Maynooth, as Bishop Shanahan had done, and by the end of 1930 seven more diocesan priests had gone to Nigeria. He also travelled Ireland, speaking of the needs of Southern Nigeria and seeking the support he needed to establish the Society as a permanent missionary body within the Church. He was very successful at this and, in 1932, the time was ripe for the official establishment of the Society. | | |
| | |  | | | | KILTEGAN |
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| The first three members were:
Fr. PJ Whitney, who was appointed Superior General, his cousin Fr. Patrick Francis Whitney, who had worked in Nigeria and Fr. Francis Hickey, a priest who had spent some time in Australia. They took the oath of membership on St. Patrick's Day, 1932, the day that Ireland was celebrating the 1,500th Anniversary of the coming of St. Patrick to Ireland. |
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| | | | | | |  | | | | Father Seán McGrath and friends |
| | EARLY GROWTH | | | | Six months after the foundation of St. Patrick's Society, 10 young men arrived in Kiltegan. They came to offer themselves as candidates for full-time missionary work in Southern Nigeria. And every year since then, young men have come to Kiltegan to begin their training for the missionary priesthood. | | | From the beginning the students took an active part in taming the landscape. Their accommodation was poor and over-crowded but that too, was improved as time went by, mainly through the generosity of the Irish people. Even in the great depression of the 1930's and the hardship of World War II, they were extraordinarily open-handed to the Society.
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| | Their sacrifices bore fruit. The Society's first priests arrived in Africa in 1939 and they were followed in the next decade by another 60 Kiltegan missionaries. These worked in either Calabar or Ogoja, the two parts of Southern Nigeria that had been assigned to St. Patrick's Society. There were corners of Calabar and Ogoja in which the Good News of Jesus Christ was preached for the first time by these Kiltegan missionaries. Throughout the territory their religious and lay missionary partners carried out pioneering work in education and in medicine (notably in the treatment of leprosy). As for the new Christians, themselves - they played leading roles in Church life, as catechists, local committee members or members of Catholic associations such as the Legion of Mary. By the end of the 1940's they were so firmly rooted in the Faith that they were producing priests of their own; the young Church had come of age. |
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| | | | BEYOND SOUTHERN NIGERIA | | | | 1951 was a watershed year in the Kiltegan story: it was the year St. Patrick's Missionaries looked beyond the narrow limits of Southern Nigeria. For 19 years, the Society had worked only in Nigeria where there was still more than enough work for its priests. However, there were greater needs elsewhere and, at Rome's request, a new mission was undertaken in Kenya on the opposite side of the African continent. The first Society priests left for Kenya in December 1951, to work with the Mill Hill Fathers in the Great Rift Valley among both nomadic and settled peoples. | | |
| | |  | | | Kenya group: Frs. Gerry Roche, Mick Kane,
Martin Barry & P.J. McCamphill |
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|  | | | | Happy Smiling Faces! |
| | Their territory stretched from the barren Turkana Desert through the farmlands and forests of the White Highlands to the wide plains of Central Kenya, and in due course the area was divided into the three dioceses of Lodwar, Eldoret and Nakuru. In 1956 Kiltegan accepted responsibility for Kitui, another Kenya mission, taking over from the Holy Ghost Fathers. | | | | The number of vocations in Ireland was so great in the 1950's, that it was decided to build a new college in Kiltegan and to expand the Society's House of Studies in Cork. The two building projects - vital for the training of St. Patrick's Missionaries - were eventually completed, thanks to the generosity of old friends in Ireland and new friends in the United States. And by the end of the 1950's there were nearly 200 Kiltegan priests in Africa. |
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| | | | BEYOND AFRICA | | | | The 1960's saw Kiltegan Missionaries take on their first assignment outside Africa: they went to Brazil, to a people with a long tradition of Christianity but a short supply of priests. In response to Pope John XXIII's pleas for priests in Latin America, the Kiltegan priests went to assist in Sao Paulo (then the world's fastest-growing city and still the world's most populous diocese) and later in other Brazilian dioceses. Their primary work was with the lonely, poverty-stricken people of the shanty towns; firm bonds of friendship were soon forged in a land where community action is a feature of Christian living. | | | | In Nigeria, Kiltegan missionaries took on a much different type of assignment when they accepted responsibility for Minna, a largely Muslim area in the North of the country. |
|  | | | | The joys of learning - Brazil |
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| | | | Meanwhile there were big changes in the number of vocations at Kiltegan. In the early 1960's there was an all time high but by the close of the decade this had dropped considerably. Yet, there was every reason for hope: in Buchlyvie the House of Studies for Late Vocations had got off to a promising start and there were 300 priests in the Society. Most important of all though, was the fact that there was an ever-increasing number of vocations in Nigeria and Kenya; this meant that some priests might be spared to serve in places where needs were greater. |
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| | NEW TERRITORIES | | | | The Kiltegan Fathers went to Grenada, in the West Indies, in 1970. The beautiful Island-country is one of the worlds smallest nations in terms of area and population. In this land of Christian traditions but only a handful of priests, the priorities were the apostolate of the family, the training of lay leaders and the forming of young Christians. |
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| | |  | | | | How about a swim, or a dance! (Malawi) |
| | | | Also in 1970, Kiltegan priests went to Malawi, in Central Africa. And three years later the Society was able to accept the invitation to serve in neighbouring Zambia. The work in these two countries was similar to that in Nigeria and Kenya. In some places it meant a first-time presentation of Jesus Christ and the Church; it meant ministering in many sub-parishes and small Christian communities; it meant teaching; it meant involvement in practical social matters and a hundred-and-one other things. | | | | There had always been diocesan volunteer priests working in partnership with St. Patrick's missionaries. Their 'movement' received a welcome boost in 1970's when some Irish dioceses committed themselves officially to sending a certain number of priests "on mission". |
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| Kiltegan priests no longer able to work abroad now had new opportunities of offering useful service to the Church - they were accommodated on the home front, some of them in exchange for the diocesan priests "on mission".
In 1983, as the number of priests in Sudan continued to decline, Kiltegan undertook a new mission in the country's southern region. |
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| | |  | | | | Fr. Jim Brady |
| | The Society continued to receive requests from various dioceses throughout the world where priests were in short supply. In January 1989, Kiltegan priests began work in three more countries. Three went to Cameroon, four to Zimbabwe and six to South Africa. These commitments brought to ten the number of countries St. Patrick's priests and students work. The Society has travelled a long way from the Southern Nigeria of Fr. Pat Whitney and his companions. Yet, each new venture has been undertaken in the spirit of the 1932 mission to Southern Nigeria. | | | | Following the decision to become International, in September 1997 St Patrick's opened two Formation Houses - one in Ijebu-Ode Diocese in Nigeria and the other in Nakuru Diocese in Kenya. The total initial intake was 11 students. |
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| In January 2000 these students began their Philosophy studies at St Joseph's Institute in Cedara in South Africa. In January 2002 another Formation House was opened in the Archdiocese of Lusaka, Zambia. In August 2002, 8 students began their Theology studies at Nairobi, Kenya.
The first ordinations of our African members took place in 2007. African priests, diocesan and missionary are helping in the formation programmes. At present we have over 60 students in training. Vocation promotion is also taking place in Brazil. Our students and those who will follow them will join our present members and become missionaries into the 21st century.
St Patrick's Missionary Society is being renewed by the new members coming from the different countries in Africa where we have worked. |
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