Mill Hill missionaries St. Joseph’s Missionary Society
St. Joseph’s Missionary Society 6 Colby Gardens Maidenhead Berks SL6 7GZ +441628673178 office@millhillmissionaries.com www.millhillmissionaries.com
ÉDITIONS DU SIGNE
St. Joseph’s Missionary Society
Who we are ‘To Love and To Serve’
In London, word came to Vaughan that the American archbishop in the city of Baltimore had been in search of a congregation of priests to help in e are disciples of of Jesus Christ, comTowards mis the pastoral care former slaves. sioned by the risen and ascended Lord to the end of 1871 the Founder himself andname fourtoMill be apostles, and to speak in his the Hill whole world. missionaries boarded ship for the United States. We belong to an apostolic fellowship of people from different continents and races, united by faith and by a solemn commitment to go wherever we are sent.
Who we are
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We believe that always and everywhere the Lord goes ahead of us, stays with us and works with us. We go out as part of the Church, the visible sign in history of the universal community made possible by Christ. We choose to be present most of all among the poor and wherever human society is fractured, and to act as channels of justice and reconciliation. We rely on prayer and on the guidance of the Holy Spirit to discover, with Jesus, how to be the real presence among people of God’s immense love. We receive with gratitude the hospi tality, the collaboration and the giftedness of the peoples we serve. We entrust our apostolic work of Love and Service to the prayers and generosity of our home churches.
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What we do The mission of the Mill Hill Society is lived out by its Members and Lay Associates in ways appropriate to the diverse environments in which they serve. In a spirit of collaboration with local churches, they strive in their various apostolates to reflect, in creative ways, the Society’s priorities as defined by its Constitutions and General Chapter: PRIMARY EVANGELIZATION
to speak of Jesus Christ among peoples untouched by the influence of the Gospel. INTERFAITH DIALOGUE
to foster understanding and respect for the religious cultures of peoples, to counteract extremism, and to build bridges of dialogue and cooperation. URBAN APOSTOLATE
to accompany the poor and migrants in their pursuit of a livelihood, to rehabilitate the casualties of urban life, and to invigorate faith within a secularised environment. SMALL ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES
to work for the formation within the local Church of grassroots communities committed to discovering and living out the Gospel of mutual love and service in their daily circumstances.
JUSTICE, PEACE & INTEGRITY OF CREATION
to encourage the least privileged to own their rights and responsibilities, to respect and defend the rights of others, and to protect the sustain- ability and beauty of their natural environment. RECONCILIATION
to act as agents of forgiveness and mutual understanding in societies fractured by conflict, prejudice and hostility. REVERSE MISSION
to enrich our churches of origin with the truth, goodness and beauty found among the nations. MISSION ANIMATION
to promote in our churches of origin, a greater awareness of the universal call to mission, and to encourage participation in the work of evangelization. FORMATION
to recruit and train candidates for the missionary priesthood and lay association in countries within the Society’s missionary scope.
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ithin a few years of his ordination Herbert Vaughan had become convinced of a personal calling to set up in London, right at the heart of the British Empire, a college to train foreign missionaries.
Our founder Cardinal
Herbert Vaughan In the mid-19th century the Catholic Church in Britain was poor, weak and in great need of priests. But Britain itself was the centre of a global empire, and the thoughts
With the blessing of Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, Vaughan embarked on a journey through Latin America begging funds from expatriate businessmen and from everyone he met. On his outward and homeward journeys, he had time to think. Catholics were a small minority of Britain’s population and so his ‘British’ college would be open to men from other countries where the Church was stronger. His future priests would be bound together by a common Rule and by a solemn undertaking to leave their own homelands for the sake of the Gospel. Back in London, Vaughan enlisted the help of St. Joseph to gain possession, from an uncooperative owner, of a temporary headquarters for his future missionaries in the London suburb of Mill Hill. On March 19th 1866, Holcombe House became, for the time being, St. Joseph’s Missionary College. The Founder meanwhile took every opportunity to publicise his message -that the work of foreign missionaries brings a great reward to the nation that sends them out -- and to appeal to young men at home, as well as in Holland, the Tyrol and other European countries, to join his international college. Wherever they went, he told his recruits, their final goal would be to make themselves dispensable by providing people with priests of their own language and culture. Within a few years he had attracted sufficient support for his enterprise to begin the construction of a great missionary college.
of one man began to turn outward, towards the great populations of unevangelized people in territories overseas.
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As Vaughan’s first disciples approached their ordination to the priesthood, and as their number increased, the whereabouts of their future mission-field remained an open question.
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MISSION IN AMERICA
Our Mission History In London, word came to Vaughan that the American archbishop in the city of Baltimore had been in search of a congregation of priests to help in the pastoral care of former slaves. Towards the end of 1871 the Founder himself and four Mill Hill missionaries boarded ship for the United States.
America
First Chapter at Baltimore 1875
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tour of the American south left Vaughan shocked and indignant at the deprivation and prejudice endured by black people. But it was Africa, and the thought that his men could prepare AfricanAmericans for the evangelization of their ancestral homelands, that most of all gripped his imagination. Vaughan’s dream would not be realised. On his return to London he was appointed bishop of Salford in the industrial north-west of England. The great distance between the Founder and his men in America, combined with his new diocesan responsibilities, left the Mill Hillers in need of more direct leadership. One of Vaughan’s American recruits, John Slattery, stepped into the role. His proposal that all American Mill Hillers should as a rule return as missionaries to their own homeland was one that Vaughan could never accept. While agreeing to the proposal that a Mill Hill seminary for the African-American apostolate should be established at Baltimore, he was still setting his sights on the evangelization of Africa itself. But foreign assignments for African-Americans were not on Fr. Slattery’s agenda. In the end an amicable separation was agreed; Slattery and his supporters became the founders of the independent Society known as the Josephites.
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Arrival at Baltimore
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MISSION IN ASIA
South India
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t the end of 1875, a group of Mill Hillers set out for India in answer to an appeal from the bishop in Madras for missionaries to work in the Telugu-speaking sector of his diocese. An immediate need to minister to the victims of epidemics and famine brought them into contact with relatively prosperous landowners and farmers many of whom were already Catholics, as well as with the un evangelized, socially segregated and most destitute members of Indian society. it was to the latter above all that the Mill Hillers felt called, but for the time being they had to serve the various needs of the diocese of Madras.
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Eventually a new Telugu diocese was created with a Mill Hill man as bishop. The time had finally come for a new missionary out reach to the poorest of the poor. Thousands of the region’s most disadvantaged people were taught the Christian faith and received baptism. A seminary was opened to prepare the Telugu priests of the future. Throughout the diocese Mill Hillers strove, with the help of local catechists, to preach the gospel, to promote literacy and to alleviate the poverty of their people. In time their apostolic work bore fruit in three new dioceses manned by Telugu bishops and priests. The loyalty of the Mill Hill society to the Telugu mission was acknowledged when its priests and Brothers were entrusted with the building, staffing and maintenance of a great seminary for the entire Telugu-speaking state of Andhra Pradesh.
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MISSION IN ASIA
North India
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ill Hill missionaries were sent by the Founder to the north of British India to serve as army chaplains during an invasion of Afghanistan. Soon after the end of that conflict the Society was entrusted by Rome with the pastoral care of Catholic troops in the Punjab and North West Frontier regions, and with the evangelization of the territory known as Kashmir & Kafiristan.
When an early attempt to establish a missionary foothold high in Ladakh was thwarted by the rigours of the mountain climate, a settlement was made in Kashmir on land granted by the maharajah. The school founded there by the Mill Hillers would later be counted among the best in north India.
Army chaplaincy at Murree
In the Punjab sector of their territory, efforts to bring a Christian community to birth were hampered by catastrophes beyond the missionaries’ control: an outbreak of famine, a reduction in their man power caused by the First World War, and the death toll of a flu pandemic. In the post-war years, however, new mission-stations were opened and schools were set up both in the Punjab and in the frontier region. A fruitful collaboration began between the Mill Hillers and the Medical Mission Sisters that provided an invaluable service to women and children. The expansion of the mission was interrupted once again by the Second World War, and after the war came the Partition of British India.
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First camp at Jhelum
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MISSION IN ASIA
Pa k i s t a n
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n 1947 British rule in the Indian sub continent came to an end, British India was divided and the Mill Hill mis sionaries in the north, except those in the disputed region of Kashmir, found them selves in the new country of Pakistan. While the work of evangelization and pastoral care continued among the country’s Punjabi inhabitants, among the Muslim majority the Mill Hill mission became increasingly one of witness, centred on education and the medical apostolate. In both fields the Society relied to a great degree on the dedication and professionalism of religious Sisters and lay collaborators.
Bishop Nicholas Hettinga
Mill Hill men in Pakistan became involved in inter-religious dialogue, while others were inspired to minister to the terminally ill and to men suffering from drug addiction. In the crises caused by periodic floods and conflicts with India, the missionaries were on hand as dependable channels of aid from charitable organisations. In the rural districts credit unions were promoted as a means of extricating the poor from lifelong bondage to money-lenders.
Peshawar town
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Fr. James Lavery
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MISSION IN ASIA
Kashmir
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he violent dispute over the Kashmir region that erupted at the time of Par tition left the Mill Hill mission there in a state of disarray. Within a few years of the creation of the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir, however, the Mill Hill school had been reopened and the Sisters had resumed their medical apostolate. In Jammu, the winter capital of the former maharajah, a new Catholic colony came into being among the socially and economically deprived Punjabi population.
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Fr. Peter Swinkels
Further development of the Jammu & Kashmir mission required an increase of manpower, and since foreign missionaries could no longer hope for residential permits, Indian-born clergy had to be found. Capuchin priests from southern India began to arrive and became sufficiently numerous for the Mill Hill territory to be transferred to their care. The Mill Hillers who had spent almost the whole of their missionary lives in Kashmir remained in India to give further years of service to the Church as hospital chaplains and in the ministry of charismatic renewal. Mgr. George Shanks
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MISSION IN ASIA
Malaysia
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n 1881 Herbert Vaughan assigned missionaries to the tropical island of Borneo. In spite of the challenging climate and the hazards of travel through rain forests and fast-slowing rivers, mission-stations and schools were established one by one among the indigenous population.
At the beginning of the 20th century an important new missionary prospect opened up with an influx of Chinese labourers for the exploitation of the island’s natural resources. The evangelization of Chinese immigrants, and the education provided for their children in Mill Hill schools, was of the greatest significance for the future growth of the Church in Borneo. The trauma of the occupation of the island by Japanese forces during the Second World War – in the course of which a number of Mill Hill Missionaries lost their lives – gave way to a period of remarkable progress at every level of Catholic life. Within a short time the Church was in the care of no less than three Mill Hill bishops.
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Father John Klijn
Borneo River
The post-independence expulsion of the mis sionaries from the north of the island was a crisis that revealed the maturity of the laity and marked the beginning of a change in the relationship between the Society and the Church in Borneo. Before long the Mill Hill bishops gave way to Borneo-born Chinese successors, and the Mill Hill Missionaries remained as partners in a fully-fledged local Church.
Dyak people of Sarawak
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MISSION IN ASIA
Philippines
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n 1905, the Mill Hill society was asked to send priests to the diocese of Jaro in the Philippine Islands, which were then under American control. The Church in this Catholic country had been torn apart by the activities of the schismatic priest Fr. Gregorio Aglipay and his followers. The Mill Hillers were destined for the poverty-stricken province of Antique, an Aglipayan stronghold on the Western Visayan island of Panay. Having learned the basics of the Visayan language, the missionaries won the hearts of the islanders by their dedication to the pastoral ministry, above all their ministry to the sick and dying. As parishes were recovered from schismatic control, they set about providing parochial schools and promoting Catholic life through instructional pamphlets and devotional literature. In due course, they published dictionaries, grammars, and even a New Testament in the Visayan language.
destroyed and six missionaries were killed, some by the Japanese, others by Filipino guerrillas. Undaunted, the Mill Hillers continued through the post-war years to facilitate the growth of a vibrant local church. The fruitfulness of their work was acknowledged when the province of Antique was given into the inde pendent care of a Mill Hill bishop.
In the first years of the Second World War, the islands were invaded by Japan. In the course of the occupation, churches and houses were
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The 1905 Pioneers
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MISSION IN AFRICA
Uganda
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erbert Vaughan was already a car dinal when his dream of a Mill Hill mission in Africa was fulfilled. In 1895 the first ‘caravan’ of Mill Hillers landed on the east African coast and began the long trek to their mission field in Uganda. It was the beginning of what would be a long collaborative effort on the part of the Society’s priests and Brothers, as well as religious Sisters, to evangelise the people of several different language groups, to train catechists and priests, to educate the young and to provide healthcare to all. The Uganda Pioneers
On Lake Victoria
Under a succession of Mill Hill bishops the Upper Nile mission as it was called grew from strength to strength. By the end of the Second World War the multiplication of flourishing parishes and institutions demanded that pastoral responsibility should be shared by two bishops, one at Kampala, the other at Tororo. In due course the territory would encompass two more dioceses centred on Jinja and Soroti. A great interruption in the flourishing of the Uganda mission occurred with the Idi Amin’s coup d’état and reign of terror in which more than fifty Mill Hillers were expelled from the country. Throughout years of insecurity and privation Mill Hill men continued their work of supporting the local Church. The commitment of the Society to the peoples of Uganda was reaffirmed in the 1990s by the acceptance of a new project of primary evangelization in the Kotido district of northern Uganda.
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MISSION IN AFRICA
Kenya
T Ojola exorcist circa 1905
he Upper Nile mission-field assigned to the Society in 1895 stretched from Uganda into present-day Kenya. Thirty years on, the territory in western Kenya became a separate mission area. Under Mill Hill bishops, the number of mission stations and schools multiplied in various tribal areas, and in the period following the Second World War the energy of more than a hundred Mill Hillers was invested in the work of evangelisation, education and the formation of priests. The task of educating girls and addressing the medical needs of the population fell to the Mill Hill Sisters and other religious congregations. In the work of primary evangelisation and community-building the missionaries relied totally on the talents and dedication of hundreds of catechists.
In 1959 the authorities in Rome appealed to the Mill Hill society to undertake a mission in the territory occupied by the nomadic Maasai people. A rich missionary harvest of the kind experienced elsewhere in western Kenya was a forlorn hope among this proud and conservative tribe. There, the cultivation of friendship, and the study and preservation of a vulnerable ancient culture became strong features of the Mill Hill presence. New ground was broken also in later years when Mill Hill priests, Brothers and lay Associates formed apostolic teams to live and work among poor and marginalised inhabitants of shanty areas and began learning the art of the urban apostolate. Eight flourishing Kenyan dioceses now occu py the territory into which the Mill Hill Mis sionaries ventured more than a century ago.
Catechumenate
Missionary on Safari
Leprosarium
Catechist
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MISSION IN AFRICA
Congo
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n 1905 the Belgian King Leopold II invited the Mill Hill society to send some of its men to work in the so-called Congo Free State, his personal domain in Africa. His hope was that Catholic missionaries from Britain would help to undo the damage inflicted on his international reputation through the reports of atrocities circulated by British Protestant missionaries. After several days journey up the Congo River and along one of its tributaries, the Mill Hillers reached their destination at Basankusu. The hazards of travel by canoe and of life in tropical rain forest had an immediate impact; some pioneers died of fever, others by drowning. The men who followed them carried on their painstaking effort to win the trust of the indigenous people and gather them into secure Christian settlements. For half a century and more the missionaries were able to persevere in relative peace, until the end of Belgian rule gave way to political
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Mass by the River
upheaval. During the uprising against the new independent govern足 ment in the 1960s, a number of Mill Hillers were among the foreign missionaries killed by the rebels. Throughout the next fifty years of never-ending political crisis and socio-economic collapse, Mill Hill priests, Brothers and Lay Associates, fewer and fewer in number, remained among their people -- sharing their insecurity and deprivation, reinforcing their faith, teaching the young, ministering to the sick and preparing priests for the future.
MISSION IN AFRICA
Cameroon
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n 1914 the German colony of Kamerun fell to the combined forces of Britain and its allies. All of the defeated power’s westAfrican conscripts were interned on the island of Fernando Po, and with them the German Pallottine missionaries. Fernando Po became, for the duration of the war, an extraordinary school for catechists. When the Mill Hill Missionaries arrived in 1922, they found flourishing Christian communities and an army of former soldiers preaching the Gospel far and wide.
En route to a new station
In the years up to and beyond the Second World War the Mill Hill priests and Sisters forged ahead with a programme of expansion and development; schools were opened in every mission-station, catechists were instructed and a project of teacher-training began. Mill Hill Brothers arrived to build and maintain mission-stations and to pass on their skills to young Cameroonians. The welfare of the wider Catholic community was enhanced through the creation of credit unions and cooperatives.
Missionary on trek
By the time of the Vatican Council a number of Cameroonians had been ordained to the priesthood, and the participation of lay people in the affairs of the Church was being promoted through parish councils, women’s associations and the development of a Catholic press. The diocese that had flourished under Mill Hill leadership eventually became three, each headed by a Cameroonian bishop; and, having seen the local Church come of age, Mill Hillers would go on serving it for another half-century and more.
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Building a mission
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MISSION IN AFRICA
Sudan
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s part of an effort to block the path, from Ethiopia into Sudan, of Mussolini’s colonial forces, British military authorities demanded that the Italian missionaries in Sudan’s Upper Nile province should be replaced by British counterparts. In 1938 Mill Hillers arrived to take charge of the mission-stations vacated by the Comboni Missionaries and to continue the work of evangelisation and education among the indigenous Shilluk and Nuer tribes. Sudan’s declaration of independence in the mid-1950s was followed by the enactment of a law placing strict limits on any form of missionary activity. In 1964 hundreds of foreign missionaries, including all the Mill Hillers, were charged with endangering the unity of the nation and expelled from the country. More than a decade after the expulsion, a limited number of Mill Hill priests and Brothers were allowed to return to support the long-suffering Christian community in the diocese of Malakal, and to take up a severely restricted apostolate under the suspicious eye of state security.
Exploring the territory
Mission on the Nile
Sudan’s long history of north-south tension and civil war led eventually to the involvement of Mill Hillers in a challenging ministry to displaced persons in camps around Khartoum and Omdurman and to the painstaking work of community-building and leadership-formation in the most precarious of circumstances.
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MISSION IN OCEANIA
New Zealand
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n 1883 the bishop of Auckland appealed to Cardinal Vaughan for help in revitalising the mission among the aboriginal Maori population. Three years later the first Mill Hillers arrived on New Zealand’s North Island and prepared for their ministry by learning the Maori language, their customs and etiquette. The pioneer missionaries travelled alone on foot and horseback, through bush and forest, making friends with long-neglected Maori Catholics and providing them with simple churches. Their obvious dedication won the hearts of the people and the number of mission-stations multiplied. In later years, various factors encouraged the drift of the rural population into towns and cities. Away from home, the people’s sense of Maori identity and community were in danger of being lost, and the dullness of Europeanstyle church services did little to attract them. The Mill Hillers adapted to the changed circumstances by appointing some of their number as ‘city missioners’. These men gathered the Maoris together for mass, visited them in their homes, organised retreats for men and women as well as camps for children, and promoted Catholic sodalities. The Mill Hill city mission finally took on a more stable and permanent form with the creation of urban versions of traditional meeting-houses, places where Maori Catholics could celebrate in a harmonious way both their faith and their ancestral culture.
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Missionary with Maori Catechists
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Australia
n 1985 the bishop of Geraldton in Western Australia petitioned the Society for priests to undertake a dedicated apostolate among the Aborigine population in his diocese, describing it as “a work of primary evangelisation of considerable difficulty”. And so it proved. The best efforts of the few Mill Hillers who volunteered for this ‘outback’ mission had little impact. Men who were used to getting results saw their well-meaning projects fail, became discouraged and moved on. The energy of others was absorbed in more general pastoral activities. In less than twenty years the Society’s effort to make missionary inroads among Australia’s oldest inhabitants came to an end.
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MISSION IN LATIN AMERICA
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n response to Pope John XXIII’s appeal to missionary societies to supply priests for the Church in Latin America, the Mill Hill society appointed some of its members to work in Chile where local priests were few. The task they undertook was the building of Basic Christian Communities among the residents of housing estates in the centre of Santiago. During the period of military dictatorship that followed the overthrow of the socialist President Salvador Allende, Mill Hill priests and lay Associates were closely involved in the struggle for civil rights. More than one missionary suffered arrest and physical abuse at the hands of the police. The military junta’s sustained onslaught on the Basic Christian Community movement, and the weakening of the progressive wing of the Chilean Church, caused stresses and strains that slowly brought the Mill Hill mission there to an end. The Society was also persuaded by the shortage of Latin Americanborn clergy to send a number of its members to serve in Peru. A decline in its own numbers, however, as well as new commitments elsewhere, made a long-term commitment to Peru impossible. The Mill Hill apostolate in Ecuador began with the provision of medical care and instruction to shanty dwellers on the outskirts of Guayaquil, the country’s most populous city. Later, at the request of the local archbishop, Mill Hillers accepted pastoral responsibility for the inhabitants of a settlement built on stilts over a former mangrove swamp. This challenging Ecuadorian mission emerged from one man’s concern for the physical and spiritual health of the poor, and continued for many years until his retirement. Brazil proved to be the most enduring of the Society’s outreaches in Latin America. Beginning in 1975 the Mill Hillers in various parts of the country became actively involved in pastoral service, in the cause of agrarian reform, in health-care schemes and in the formation of Christian community among the poor and dispossessed.
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MISSION IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC
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n 1952 the Vatican persuaded the Mill Hill society to assume responsibility for the pastoral care of the Catholic community in the Falkland Islands. For half a century Mill Hillers continued to minister in these islands as well as in the even more remote settlements of Ascension Island, St. Helena and Tristan da Cunha. In addition to their regular pastoral duties the Mill Hillers were involved in the Apostleship of the Sea and, after the end of the 1982 conflict between Britain and Argentina, with chaplaincy work among the British forces stationed in the Falklands. In 2002 this far-flung mission was taken under the wing of the bishops’ conference of England and Wales.
Mgr. Daniel Spraggon
Mgr. Agreiter & John Paul II
Port Stanley Church
Mgr. James Ireland, Prefect Apostolic
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MISSION IN AMERICA
Our Missionary Formation The mother-house, and the first major seminary for the training of men for Cardinal Vaughan’s missionary society, was St. Joseph’s College at Mill Hill. From the foundation of the Society until 2006 it was here that all candidates for the missionary priesthood, whatever their nationality, completed the final stage of their training.
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rom the beginning, the majority of Mill Hill candidates came from the Netherlands, and in 1890 another major seminary was established in the Dutch town of Roosendaal. In this mission-house Dutch British and Irish students came together to study Philosophy and to form an international fellowship before proceeding to the study of Theology at Mill Hill. Additional communities of major seminarians were later established at Brixen in the Tirol, as well in Dublin and in the United States. Towards the end of the 19th century the decision was taken to open apostolic schools or minor seminaries where missionary candidates could complete their secondary schooling under the Society’s auspices, in the hope that many would proceed to ordination. Apostolic schools were opened in England and the Tirol, and then in the Netherlands Scotland and Ireland. The minor seminary system was discontinued in the period of Church renewal that followed the Second Vatican Council. The work of promoting missionary vocations was then carried on in secondary schools and universities, as well as through Society publications and adverts in the Catholic press.
St. Joseph’s College
Early in the Society’s history, when the number of candidates for the Mill Hill Brotherhood increased, other centres of formation were established, in Holland and in England, where Brothers could learn the trades needed to maintain the Society’s institutions, to provide mission-stations with the necessary infrastructure, and to provide vocational training for indigenous youth. In its post-Vatican II process of renewal, the Society began to welcome into its ranks Lay Associates, qualified men and women ready to collaborate for a period of time in the Mill Hill mission. The year 1988 saw a major change in the Society’s recruitment policy. In all its mission areas, it had till then adhered to the principle of preparing men to serve as priests in their own dioceses rather than admitting them as Mill Hill candidates. Recognising that local Churches in Africa and Asia had already become sufficiently mature to engage in their own overseas missionary apostolate, the 1988 General Chapter opened the Society’s doors to members of those Churches who wished to become Mill Hill priests, Brothers and Associates. African and Asian candidates for membership in the Society, having completed programmes of basic and first-level formation in their own countries, continued to gather at St. Joseph’s College in Mill Hill for the final period of their training. By the time the College closed its doors in 2006, the present-day programmes of second-level formation had already been relocated to the students’ home continents. Mill Hill formation houses now exist in Uganda, Kenya, Cameroon, India and the Philippines.
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M I L L M I S S I O N T O D A Y
EUROPE & USA
Rome
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he Society maintains a base in Rome where its representative conducts official business with the Congregation of Propaganda Fide and other Vatican departments.
The Netherlands
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s the Society’s richest source of vocations to the priest hood and brotherhood, from the beginning of the Society till modern times, the Dutch Region is naturally home to the largest retirement community of Mill Hillers. Retired and semi-retired members living at the missiehuis in the town of Oosterbeek remain active in their support for their former missions, and often in the production of missionary memoirs and cultural studies. Some who have returned from overseas lend their services to pastoral teams responsible for parish liturgy and administration, and to the Apostleship of the Sea. Other Members and Associates live and work within urban communities of Portuguese and Spanishspeaking migrants. The Region maintains contact with its supporters through its quarterly Contaktblad, through annual get-togethers focused on a missionary theme or issue, and through fund-raising events.
Ireland
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he Society’s Irish Region includes the Republic and the northern counties and has its headquarters in Dublin. Mill Hillers who have returned from overseas can be found in rural parish ministry, in the pastoral care of prisoners and in the apostolate to pilgrims in the Marian shrine at Knock. In the North, a team of Mill Hill priests serves the needs of a Catholic community in Belfast’s inner city. As in Scotland, the Irish Region promotes missionary interest and support through its own version of St. Joseph’s Advocate. A Mill Hiller is appointed to serve as a liaison between the Society and the international development arm of the Irish government. The Society is a member of the Irish Missionary Union and raises funds through the preaching of parish mission appeals. With the help of the ‘Mill Hill Sisters’ and a dedicated lay staff, the Society provides in Dublin a house of retirement for its Irish members.
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M I L L M I S S I O N T O D A Y
EUROPE & USA
United Kingdom
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he Mill Hill General Superior and his Councillors reside in England. During their term of office they implement the policies and decisions of the General Chapter. From headquarters they conduct visitations of the Society’s mission areas and home regions. Britain, like the rest of Europe, has ceased to be a significant source of vocations to the Mill Hill missionary priesthood, brotherhood and lay association. In the country of its birth, nevertheless, the Society continues to make a contribution to the Church’s missionary outreach. In England & Wales a partnership has existed since 1937 between the Society and the Association for the Propagation of the Faith. APF-Mill Hill is a constituent part of Missio-England & Wales. Mill Hill Missionaries and their collaborators are responsible for preaching mission appeals and enrolling supporters who pray for the missions and donate funds, via the famous red collection boxes, for missionary projects around the world. Local secretaries and promoters visit homes to empty the red boxes and to distribute copies of Mission Today, the magazine that provides readers in England and Wales with missionary news. APF-Mill Hill supporters are invited to annual diocesan reunions to receive the Church’s thanks, and to learn of the good their generosity has accomplished. Mill Hill priests, Brothers and Associates are also involved in organising parish gatherings aimed at strengthening a missionary
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outlook in the local Church. Members who have returned from service overseas are also involved in the parish ministry, as well as in convent chaplaincies. Since 1985 the Institute of St. Anselm, founded by a Mill Hill Missionary in the seaside town of Margate, has been providing training courses in community and pastoral leadership, in an international setting, for members of religious congregations and lay people. Mill Hill priests form part of the institute’s staff. Members of the Society who hail from Britain, and who are elderly or infirm, live in community in a retirement home administered by the Society in collaboration with the Franciscan Missionaries of St. Joseph or ‘Mill Hill Sisters’. Retired members assist in parishes when requested, serve as chaplains to local convents and participate in local prayer groups. At the Society’s Central Archive work goes on to preserve its documentary and photographic history, and to serve when possible the interests of academic researchers as well as the relations of former missionaries. In Scotland, Mill Hill Missionaries are also involved in missionary preaching and fund-raising, on an equal footing with other missionary congregations. Additional support comes through events organised by the Friends of Mill Hill. The Glasgow Mill Hill community contribute to faith animation in the local church through retreats and recollection days, and by offering series of talks during the liturgical seasons. Awareness of the missionary vocation of all Christians, as well as prayer and active support for Mill Hill mission projects, is fostered through the distribution of St. Joseph’s Advocate, the Society’s Scottish publication, and by the hosting of an annual Mission Day. As in other regions of the Society, devotion to its ‘Father & Founder’ is fostered through an annual Novena to Saint Joseph.
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M I L L M I S S I O N T O D A Y
EUROPE & USA
The United States
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he generosity once shown to the Founder by the people of the United States continues in the present day. America might have provided relatively few Mill Hill Missionaries but its contribution to the work of the Society throughout its history had been far from small. The response of the American Catholic community to the annual appeals made by Mill Hillers in dioceses and parishes from state to state is an important factor in the Society’s ability to carry on its work.
German-speaking Region
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he Society has bases both in the Austrian and in the Italian Tyrol. One Mill Hill missionshaus is located at Absam near Innsbruck, and another in the town of Brixen. Both houses serve as a home for missionaries who have retired from active service and for Mill Hillers involved in the pastoral activities of the local church. The Region has an extensive network of supporters who are kept informed of activities and developments in the Society’s mission areas through the bi-monthly Missionsbote, a German-language publication. Annual gatherings of supporters are held on both sides of the border.
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Mill Hillers, for their part, have striven through the years to contribute effectively to the pastoral life of the Church in America through parish ministry in the city of New York and elsewhere. From their present headquarters in the suburbs of New York they continue to serve in the demanding work of hospital chaplaincy. In Arizona, one American-born Mill Hiller who has served in Pakistan is now involved in an apostolate to the Native American population. Another continues to dedicate his energy to research into different aspects of the Society’s history. The most recent development has been the appointment of a small inter national team of Mill Hillers to join in the archdiocese of New York’s outreach to the city’s Hispanic population.
M I L L M I S S I O N T O D A Y
ASIA
India
I
n 2013, the Society ventured across the border of its historic mission field in Andhra Pradesh into the recently created state of Chhatisgarh. Young Indian Mill Hillers rose to the challenge of the primary evangelization of poor marginalised aboriginal tribes settled among hills and forests. They have become responsible for the spread of the Gospel message in a large district assigned to them by the diocese of Ambikapur. From their simple mission-centres they reach out to villages within a hundred kilometre radius. The building of good relations with the general popu lation through attentiveness to people’s needs plays a vital role in overcoming suspicion and misunderstanding. The priority in most mission stations and out-stations is the provision of informal education, and eventually schools, in order to lay a foundation for the future of disadvantaged tribal children. A second major challenge is the need of primary healthcare in the face of high infant mortality and endemic diseases such as malaria. In these areas of missionary service the Mill Hillers are blessed with the collaboration of local Sisters who are no less indispensable in the apostolate among tribal women. The commitment of the missionaries to the people’s welfare slowly but surely opens their minds to the values of the Gospel and to the fullness of its message. The much-needed patience of the young Mill Hillers does not go unrewarded; men and women
Fr. Tim Greenway Vikarabad
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do begin to seek baptism for themselves and their children. A committed community of new Christians, nevertheless, grows slowly and the Mill Hill pioneers in Chhatisgarh remind themselves always of the truth that what they have sown others will reap. Over the state border in Andhra Pradesh, the project inaugurated in 1989 to train young Indians as Mill Hill Missionaries has flourished. Indian Mill Hillers are now serving abroad. In India itself they have become responsible for the recruitment and formation of their own countrymen as well as for new missionary outreaches, for example among the tribal Lambada people. Veteran Mill Hillers from Europe collaborate with their younger colleagues in training the Society’s new recruits and in the promotion of a lay support organisation, the Friends of the Society, in the dioceses and parishes from which they hail. Lay people also collaborate with veteran missionaries as ‘faith animators’ in small towns and rural villages. The ministry of physical and psychological healing offered to people of all religions gives rise to small groups of ‘sympathisers’ some of whom will later be enrolled in the process of adult Christian initiation.
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M I L L M I S S I O N T O D A Y
ASIA
Pakistan
I
n 1977 the Society’s long history in the territory of present-day Pakistan entered a new phase with an outreach to the nonMuslim tribal population of Sindh Province. An international team of Mill Hillers is at work in the diocese of Hyderabad among the Kohli people, mostly landless families bonded to feudal landlords. The parish teams are responsible for the evangelization and pastoral care of desperately poor tribal families in hundred of villages where the dominant culture puts pressure on their fragile faith. A main pillar of the Kohli apostolate is the provision of primary and secondary education and of boarding schools for both boys and girls. In education, as well as in the medical ministry and the uplift of tribal women, the Mill Hillers benefit from the dedicated collaboration of the Presentation Sisters and others. A central aspect of the mission in Sindh is to deepen the faith of the people, to encourage the emergence among them of Christian leaders and to foster local vocations to the priesthood. Towards the end of the 1980s, a Mill Hiller was inspired to found a new missionary community, the Missionary Sisters of St. Thomas, for ministry among the Punjabi people of Pakistan’s Northern Areas. From their mission-centre at Nowshera, they offer support to Christian communities in surrounding districts and, when possible, in the Swat Valley. In a territory familiar with unrest and violence, the missionaries and their people strive to witness to the gospel of love and reconciliation.
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Peshawar Rehabilitation Centre
In another part of the former North West Frontier Province, near Peshawar at the end of the Khyber Pass, the Society remains committed to the challenging ministry of drug rehabilitation among the male population of the frontier. The Peshawar centre is sometimes also pressed into service as a refuge for victims of violence and flood. In Mill Hill’s traditional Pakistani mission-field work goes on among the Punjabi population in the diocese of Islamabad-Rawalpindi. The land the Society provided for refugees during the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war has become Rawalpindi’s Satellite Town. There, as well as in some of the capital’s slum districts, Mill Hillers continue to devote themselves to the pastoral care and social uplift of the people. In the same diocese, the parish of Sargodha, an old Mill Hill centre, is now home to several thousand Catholic families. The Islamic character of religious instruction in public schools means that here a great share of missionary energy is devoted to the provision of Sunday Schools and instructors, and to ministry among Punjabi youth.
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M I L L M I S S I O N T O D A Y
ASIA
Philippines
T
he European veterans of the Philippines mission are happily being succeeded by men from India and Africa, and by locally-born Mill Hillers. The mission’s centenary in 2006 was marked by a new outreach to the Tagbanua people of Busuanga Island. The apostolate of the new mission at Turda and its out-stations is focused on the needs of disadvantaged families who struggle to gain a livelihood from fishing. The replacement of boats and the provision of relief in the wake of typhoons add another dimension to the missionary task. Efforts are also made to encourage the islanders to keep their traditional culture alive and well in an increasingly globalised world, and at the same time to live in harmony with settlers from neighbouring islands in the archipelago.
Fr. Sleevaraj on visitation Fr. Gustl Frenademetz and Friends
While the new missionary thrust goes on gaining strength, Mill Hillers in the Society’s historic parishes on the island of Panay go on reaching out in service to the poor in the most remote districts. At Iloilo, young men aspiring to the missionary priesthood in the Mill Hill society gather for a period of introductory formation after which they progress to philosophical studies at the city’s San Augustin University. For their theological studies and final stage of formation they join one of the Society’s international student communities in East Africa or India. The work of vocations promotion and formation, as well as the work of Filipino Mill Hill priests around the world, is supported by the Friends of Mill Hill in the Philippines.
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M I L L M I S S I O N T O D A Y
ASIA
China
F Fr. Mathews Olili
T
Malaysia
or more than a quarter of a century an Irish Mill Hiller lived a missionary life in Guizhou, China’s poorest province. After years of teaching English and Western culture to scientific researchers and to university and college students in subarctic Manchuria under the auspices of the China-British Friendship Society, the lone Mill Hiller founded the Asia-Bridge Development Association, an agency that continues to engage Chinese speakers from Malaysia and Singapore in the work of integral human development among the rural poor of the YunnanGuizhou high plateau.
he Society maintains a modest but increasingly young, energetic and international missionary presence in Malaysian Borneo.
In a country developed beyond recognition since the first arrival of Mill Hillers in the 19th century, the work of evangelisation and pastoral service still goes on in collaboration with the bishops and clergy of local dioceses. The attention of the missionaries is directed towards the Iban population, those who maintain a traditional lifestyle in remote longhouses and those who have chosen to carve out a different future in a more urban environment. In larger towns and cities the task consists in forming community among Christians of different tribal as well as Chinese origin. Mill Hillers are also involved in the apostolate of charismatic renewal. A recent initiative has been the foundation by a Mill Hiller from Brunei of the Missionary Community of Corpus Christi. The work of the foundation, which has its centre in the diocese of Sibu in Sarawak, is to promote awareness in local churches of the universal call to mission and to train lay missionaries to be sent abroad. The project is funded by local contributions and supported by Mill Hill animators from abroad. In Borneo, the Society has also begun to invite young men, whose forebears were evangelised by Mill Hill Missionaries, to represent the missionary dimension of their local church by joining in its international formation programme and in its apostolate around the world. At the same time, the Society continues to make a contribution to the formation of local clergy.
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M I L L M I S S I O N T O D A Y
AFRICA
Uganda
S
hortly before the start of the new millennium the Mill Hill Society undertook a fresh project in the new diocese of Kotido, a territory administered by the Comboni Missionaries in northern Uganda, south of the border with Sudan. They found the lives of the Karimojong people in this semi-desert region dominated by a violent internecine struggle for the possession of cattle, the principal means of survival. From a tender age, boys of the different Karimojong clans were trained as armed raiders. The Mill Hillers have encouraged the youth through discussion, and through song, dance and drama, to become agents of non-violence and reconciliation. Recent moves towards disarmament have opened the door to a wider evangelization. Karimojong youth are being initiated into the Church and trained as catechists. The catechumenate includes literacy and numeracy and, among women and girls, lessons in hygiene and childcare. The women’s development work initiated by Mill Hill AssoÂciates is now increasingly in the hands of local people. The Mill Hill Sisters continue to work in schools, health centres and in other
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social and pastoral activities. Effective leadership in the community is promoted through the training of facilitators who visit villages and schools to build awareness of health and environmental issues. In other parts of Uganda, where hundreds of Mill Hill Missionaries have worked in the past, the Society’s service to the local Church continues. In the diocese of Lugazi the pastoral ministry goes on expanding through the formation of Basic Christian Communities, while in Kampala and Jinja Mill Hillers are involved in retreat preaching and in the ministry of hospitality. A major development in recent decades has been the promotion of missionary vocations and the acceptance of Ugandan men as candidates for membership in the Mill Hill Society. After an introductory period of formation in Kenya, Ugandan and Kenyan candidates begin their studies at the Queen of Apostles Philosophy Centre in Jinja, and complete their theological course either in Kenya or in India. Ugandan Mill Hillers are now serving around the Mill Hill world.
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M I L L M I S S I O N T O D A Y
AFRICA
Kenya
I
n Kenya the Mill Hill ministry of primary evan gelization is being carried on principally on the eastern Coast province, in the diocese of Malindi. The largely Muslim population of the coast means that the work goes on in tandem with the building of cordial relationships and the interreligious ‘dialogue of life’.
Art School
Further inland, in the lakeside town of Kisumu, a traditional Mill Hill centre, a creative urban apostolate has taken shape. The programme includes opportunities for formal and informal education, a community-based healthcare project and a centre for the rehabilitation of street children. The art school, started by a Mill Hiller and a Notre Dame Sister, has equipped its graduates with the skills to become art teachers and to find employment as designers, printers and commercial artists.
In a slum area of Nairobi a similar urban mission has developed that began with the effort to form small Christian communities. Associations have grown up that address the concerns of women, youth interests, the needs of the urban poor and issues of justice and peace. Programmes have been devised to promote AIDS awareness and general good health, and to provide day-care for children with special needs. The psychological and spiritual well-being of individuals and families is served by the provision of guidance and counselling, and leadership courses as well as retreats are offered to encourage the involvement of lay people in the pastoral ministry. The association of the Society’s lay supporters, the Friends of Mill Hill, receive missionary animation through their participation in bible-study groups. In the Mill Hill parish of Luanda, a market town in Kenya’s Western Province, special attention has been paid to the special needs of hundreds of children with impaired hearing. To restore their sense of personal dignity and to boost their chance of independent living, the young people are offered the chance of primary education, and vocational training for those whose formal education will not continue. The ministry started by a Mill Hiller to reach out to Luanda’s street children, many of whom have been orphaned by AIDS, is being continued and developed by the Mill Hill Sisters. Luanda is also a centre for the basic formation of East African candidates for the missionary priesthood in the Mill Hill Society. From Luanda the candidates progress to Jinja, and finally join one of the Society’s international formation houses in India or in Nairobi. In Nairobi, the students live as small groups in a housing colony on the edge of the Kibera slum and attend classes at Tangaza University College. The promotion of the missionary vocation in the areas first evangelised by early Mill Hillers continues to bless the Society with young Kenyan missionaries for its worldwide apostolate.
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M I L L M I S S I O N T O D A Y
AFRICA
Congo (DCR)
A
courageous remnant of Mill Hill priests, supported by a lay Associate, has persevered in the Society’s commitment to the rain-forest people of this long-suffering country. Like the local inhabitants the Mill Hillers have learned to cope with a lack of basic infrastructure and utilities such as electricity and running water. A long history of colonial exploitation and civil war has deprived the people of even the most basic educational necessities and of elementary healthcare. In the midst of poverty and insecurity, the missionaries work with the local Church in the diocese of Basankusu to deepen people’s understanding of the Gospel and Christian life by the means of small Christian communities, and to foster the celebration of the Eucharist in a vibrant indigenous style. Efforts are made to generate an outgoing missionary spirit among the baptised, along with a spirit of respect towards the beliefs and practices of traditional religions and Pentecostal sects. Mill Hillers also contribute to the life of the Church by teaching theology at the regional seminary. At the same time a formation programme is conducted for a small number of candidates for membership in the Society. Congolese Mill Hillers have already been serving for some years in the Society’s missions.
Cameroon
T
he Society’s long history of evangelization and cooperation with the energetic Cameroonian Church continues today through the work of a modest international band of both veteran and more recently commissioned Mill Hillers.
A project of primary evangelization is under way, principally in the remote and neglected area surrounding the notoriously explosive Lake Nyos in the country’s northwest. There the missionary priority is to establish Small Christian Communities capable of sustaining the people’s new and vulnerable faith. The lives of the region’s most deprived villagers are being re-energised through access to elementary education, the establishment of basic health centres, the provision of running water and training in market gardening. A central element in these and other development projects is the instruction and empowerment of women. Elsewhere in the north-west and south-west provinces Mill Hillers are involved in a variety of missionary and pastoral tasks. Prominent among these is the study of indigenous cultures and of possibilities for the inculturation of the Christian message. Mill Hill men continue to serve in parish ministry in the diocese of Buea, where members of the Society first set foot in the 1920s, as well as in the grassland diocese of Bamenda. Mill Hill Brothers, alongside their pastoral activities, carry on the age-old task of keeping the missionaries’ vehicles on the road. As in other traditional Mill Hill mission-fields, the Society’s doors are open to local men attracted to the missionary life. Cameroonian members serve in missions out side their own country after their years of formation at home and abroad. Academically qualified Mill Hillers also support the local Church by lecturing in the regional seminary. An association of enthusiastic lay people, the Friends of Mill Hill, collaborate in the promotion of local missionary vocations and in the support of indigenous Mill Hillers.
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M I L L M I S S I O N T O D A Y
AFRICA
South Sudan
M
ill Hillers returned to Sudan in the 1970s after a ten-year long exclusion enforced by the government. It was not too long before they and their people in the south had to endure a protracted civil war that lasted into the early years of the 21st century. The southern Christian community survived but in a severely weakened state that improved, however, with the return of refugees from the north and from neighbouring countries. Southerners who had been absorbed into vibrant Christian communities abroad, as well as those who had chosen to identify themselves as Christians in the Islamic north, returned home to form parish communities. Mill Hillers directed their efforts at primary evangelization, the formation of Small Christian Communities and reconciliation between different ethnic groups. Their commitment to the people of Malakal, said to be the poorest diocese in the world and among the most insecure, was severely tested during the violence that followed quickly on the euphoria aroused in the south by a virtually unanimous vote in favour of independence and the birth of South Sudan, the world’s newest country. The Malakal mission station was caught in crossfire although the badly shaken missionaries escaped with their lives. As the principal city of the oil-producing Upper Nile State, Malakal remained a bone of contention between South Sudan government forces and rebel factions. At the end of 2013, a fresh outbreak of killing and looting – which developed into a de facto civil war -- finally forced the small vulnerable international group of Mill Hillers to seek refuge in the Kenya mission. Peace negotiations allow the Society to hope for a return of its missionaries to Malakal.
South Africa
A
new Mill Hill outreach in Africa began in the 1990s with the acceptance of an invitation from the bishop of Kroonstad to serve the community in the industrial town of Sasolburg in Free State, the heart of Afrikaner farm country. In post-apartheid South Africa, Mill Hillers from Europe, other African countries and Asia began to engage in bridge-building pastoral ministry and the formation of Small Christian Communities among racially diverse parishioners in towns and townships. Their area of service has expanded to include ministry to local youth and hospital chaplaincy. The Society quickly extended its apostolate into the diocese of Rustenburg in North-West Province. As in Kroonstad, the missionaries’ activities include regular pastoral ministry as well as the provision of personal counselling and administrative work in the diocesan pastoral centre.
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M I L L M I S S I O N T O D A Y
A
lmost all of the Mill Hill missionaries at work in Latin America are now stationed in Brazil, a country rich in natural resources but blighted by an expanding gap between the rich and the poor. A short-sighted vision of economic success has led, in the world of work, to widespread injustice, and to degradation of the natural environment. The slow pace of the movement towards land reform forces the migration of the rural poor to towns and cities, where a more secular individualistic culture exerts a damaging influence on traditional family and community values. The Mill Hill mission among relocated people is centred on the formation and animation of Basic Christian Communities, where people learn to reflect on and pray about their common situations and issues in the light of the word of God, and which are frequently the mainstay of the life and activity of a parish. Prayerful reflection among the youth leads on to lively programmes of evangelisation in which they testify publicly to their faith in Jesus.
L AT I N A M E R I C A
Elsewhere in Latin America, a single Mill Hiller serves in the Society’s name in the Bolivian capital Cochabamba. There he collaborates with more than one congregation of Sisters in the Amanecer project, founded by the Daughters of Charity to care for the runaway and abandoned children of unemployed migrant workers. The Mill Hill man is responsible for the welfare of boys of different age-groups in two residential homes. The young people receive formal and vocational education, spiritual formation, counselling where necessary, and are prepared when possible for reunion with their families and for reintegration in society. His pastoral activities include the celebration of the Eucharist in Amanecer, the local parish and the city’s male and female prisons.
MISSION IN NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand
The missionaries’ efforts to generate spiritual energy among their people go hand in hand with the facilitation of practical measures to improve the quality of life among groups such as migrants, landless farmers and urban garbage collectors, and the engagement of the poor in the care of their environment.
Children of Cochabamba
T
he last of the hundred or so members of the Mill Hill society who served the Society’s mission in New Zealand’s north island are few in number. The original commitment to the building of Maori Christian communities and the preservation and promotion of Maori culture nevertheless remains strong. Veteran Mill Hillers are still serving in the pastoral ministry, as well as working with clergy and laity in the dioceses of Auckland and Hamilton towards the development of Maori liturgy, the training of catechists and the promotion of lay involvement in parish and diocesan life.
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The Road Ahead
S
oon after our foundation in 1866, the Society’s founder Father Herbert Vaughan encouraged his first Mill Hill Missionaries with these words: “Let the members of St. Joseph’s Society brace themselves to undertake the most arduous labours, by contemplating the lives of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the Apostles of Jesus Christ, who, in age after age, have spent their lives and shed their blood for the salvation of souls. What they did and endured, we, by God’s grace, can do and endure.” Several generations of Mill Hill Missionaries have left the security of their own home churches and cultures to be signs of the immense love God has revealed in the crucified and risen Christ. They have preached, taught, healed, built up humanity and planted the Church. They have spent their lives, and some have shed their blood, for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So much has been achieved, and even more remains to be done. In his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis emphasises the joy of the gospel that “fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness”. (EG 1). A century and a half of sustained missionary effort on the part of St. Joseph’s Society, in the course of which peoples have been evangelized and local churches have evolved towards maturity, enables the Mill Hill Missionaries now to face the future with optimism and with undiminished gratitude for the charism granted to their Founder. Cardinal Vaughan’s urgent concern for those among the peoples who were the poorest, and the furthest from the means of those graces that flow to humanity through the mission and ministry of the Church, became the spiritual force motivating generations of Catholic youth to offer themselves for lifelong service in the mission territories entrusted to the Mill Hill Society. It is a cause of great happiness, thanksgiving and hope that the risen Lord is now granting a generous measure of the Founder’s charism to young
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descendants of the men and women who were evangelized and baptised by members of his missionary fellowship. The internationality that Cardinal Vaughan made a defining mark of his Society has already begun to assume a new dimension, evident in the number of Mill Hillers from Asia and Africa at work around the world, and in the steady flow of candidates from India, Malaysia, Philippines, Kenya, Uganda and Cameroon. Leaders and formators will continue to encourage at all levels the growth of a fellowship that embraces diversity without division, and that testifies to the unity of humanity in Christ. The Society will remain devoted to the recruitment, and to the spiritual, personal, intellectual and pastoral development of future missionaries in those countries where its members have contributed to the rise of mature local Churches. The Society will redouble its efforts to build lay asso ciations of Friends to cooperate in the promotion of vocations, to pray for local Mill Hill Missionaries, and to contribute materially to their formation. Among the faithful everywhere, the Society will encourage the spread of devotion to St. Joseph, its ‘Father and Founder’, and the patron of family life.
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The new initiatives and courageous pioneering work being undertaken by teams of young Mill Hill Missionaries, supported when possible by older and more experienced colleagues, will enable the Society in the years ahead to remain focussed on its priorities of primary evangelization and the integral human development of the poor.
USA
UNITED KINGDOM IRELAND HOLLAND AUSTRIA ITALY
High on its list of commitments will be the continuation and expansion of its outreach to the beleaguered people of northern Uganda and South Sudan; isolated communities in Cameroon, Congo and the Philippines; exploited labourers in Pakistan; marginalised communities in India; the urban poor of Kenya and South Africa; and migrant groups in the Netherlands and the United States. Faithful to the charism of the Founder, Mill Hill Missionaries will continue to serve where the need is greatest -- among the poor, the marginalised and the oppressed. The promotion of social justice, care of the environment, and the formation of leaders and agents of peace, will figure prominently in their ministry. They will show the respect due to the cultural and religious values and sensitivities of those they serve, often in cultures radically different from their own. In a fast changing world distorted by violence, instability, extremism, divi sion and disparity, the road ahead may appear uncertain, if not perilous. Pope Francis warns us not to be more concerned with the road map than with the journey itself. “Today’s obsession with immediate results makes it hard to tolerate anything that smacks of disagreement, possible failure, criticism, the cross.” (EG 82). It is God “who has called us to cooperate with him and who leads us on by the power of the Spirit”. (EG 12) Therefore “we can move forward, boldly take the initiative, go out to others, seeks those who have fallen away, stand at the crossroads and welcome the outcast”. (EG 24).
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BRAZIL
CAMEROON CONGO KENYA UGANDA SUDAN SOUTH AFRICA
INDIA MALAYSIA PAKISTAN PHILIPPINES
The Mill Hill Missionaries will continue on the missionary journey begun by Jesus Christ, to proclaim to the world the coming of God’s kingdom of love, truth and justice. They will follow the signs pointing to those most abandoned and in the greatest need. They will brace themselves for whatever may come, and by God’s grace will endure what needs to be endured, in order to bear witness among the nations to Jesus Christ.