A little known giant from Miltown Malbay

Archbishop John Joseph McCarthy
Sabina Kavutha Mutisya, Augustine Ndila, Lucy Wambui Gakere
Paulines, Nairobi
2021
214 pages

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Histories of the great missionaries and their contribution to the authentic development of Church and State are still in their infancy. Their contemporaries did not have time to write. History will produce impressive details. After a visit to educational institutions in Ethiopia a few years ago, a recent rector of Clongowes remarked “We are standing on the shoulders of giants.”

The Clareman from Miltown Malbay, born in 1896, was educated at Rockwell College in Tipperary, where he was a fast winger in rugby,

Archbishop McCarthy, who made his first profession in 1916 with John Charles McQuaid, was first assigned to Tanzania. He became the person in charge of education in the diocese and was later appointed to the Educational Advisory Board to the Tanzanian government. He became the Apostolic Delegate residing in Zanzibar, representing the Pope in the region from 1941 to 1946. 

During and after World War II he served the whole of East and West Africa as a diplomat. He supervised seventy dioceses, worked with prisoners of war and was a great champion of peace and justice in the region. He was responsible for transmitting several thousand prisoner of war messages each month. The Apostolic delegation covered all the British colonies and Protectorates in Africa, north of the Zambesi, including among others, Tanganyika (as it then was), Anglo Egyptian Sudan and the British Islands in the Indian Ocean. Every prisoner of war camp in East Africa had to be visited.

In 1953 He was appointed the first archbishop of Nairobi, a post he held until his retirement in 1971. He became responsible for the evangelisation of vast territories in Tanzania and Kenya. He served in tough, challenging and often life threatening situations but never gave up. He was a hands on administrator, a seasoned organiser, a patient listener, a passionate educationalist and an integral developer.

In 1927, after a brief stint at a school in Tanzania, he was appointed to head Morogoro – the only teacher training college run by the Church in Tanzania.

The government paid two thirds of the salaries of the teachers and the missions paid the other third. After qualifying as trained teachers, graduates returned to their villages to upgrade the “bush” schools to credible primary schools, enabling them to be registered by the government to become recognised formal schools. Results showed Morogoro had the best results in the country in the government exams.

McCarthy described ignorance as a kind of poverty that needed to be eradicated through the weapon of education. He saw that preparing indigenous people for leadership and handing over the work of evangelisation and responsibilities to them would be the solution to many problems.

At one point he was given poisoned water to drink. The culprits were arrested but he objected to their being sent to court.

He trod a careful and diplomatic line in championing the rights of Catholic schools in the face of challenges from the colonial government. He kept the Church within the system and saw to it that the educational work of the Church was recognised.

He was keen on fostering local vocations and so established St Thomas Aquinas seminary in Nairobi, the first national seminary. He helped fathers, sisters and brothers in founding schools, dispensaries, and bookshops. It was he who really brought about all the development that led to the division of his diocese into seven different dioceses. At his retirement there were sixty-four permanent mission stations/parishes in the three diocese of Nairobi, Machakos and Mombasa served by the Irish Province of the Holy Ghost Fathers.

He was a personal friend of Jomo Kenyatta, who later became President of Kenya. When Jomo was imprisoned by the British, McCarthy sent a delegation to visit him in the prison. He also sent him gifts. Later when independence was declared Jomo sent his MPs to all the parishes and convents to assure all expatriates that they were invited to stay in Kenya and that they would be protected. They were to help build the country through education, health services etc. Friendship between the two stemmed from the understanding both had of the struggle both their countries had endured to obtain freedom.

He founded two religious congregations: The Sisters of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Nairobi and The Brothers of St Peter Claver. He brought Mercy Sisters from Dublin to start schools and also the Mater Misericordiae Hospital in Nairobi.

Always encouraging to his priests, he told them “Do the best you can”. He ceaselessly prayed the rosary. He blessed and opened over one hundred churches during his time as archbishop.

For health reasons he retired back to Dublin and died at Kimmage Manor in January 1983, and was buried in the community cemetery. Although he wished to die and be buried in Africa, that was not to be. On his death the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples wrote that they “considered Msgr McCarthy to be among the most eminent and illustrious missionary Bishops of the twentieth century for the work he had accomplished in Africa and particularly in Kenya.”

Books like this one are few and far between but they do begin to tell the amazing story of the evangelisation and miracle of Africa in the twentieth century as described by Pope St John Paul II, in which so many Irish people played a major part.