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2021-11-30 / 236
2 ?
Catholic Medical
Missionaries
of Mary
CALABAR,
SOUTHERN NIGERIA,
WEST AFRICA.
THE DEAMOND PRINTING WORKS, CORK.
Exporting hermicamais & cloth
iti 1937.
...

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Catholic Mission House, Calabar
THE Care of the sick must always be one of the most important activities of the Church. Her Divine Founder Who went about doing good "healing the sick" has given us an example in this.
This activity is most important on the Foreign Missions where the pagan millions must learn to see the "charity of Christ" in the Church which comes to teach them of God. On the Missions medical work is often the only way to get in touch with pagans who are shy of foreigners. But above all it is probably the best way to prove to them that the missionary is working in their interest and for love of them. Very often natives may be suspicious of missionary activity as being just another way of exerting European influence. Work for the sick, and suffering, quickly convinces people that the Church has an interest in them which is not worldly but which has its origin in the Love of God.
Catholic Missionaries have always tried to do what they could to alleviate the suffering of the sick in the lands where they worked. Hospitals and orphanages and leper settlements have been founded and devoted priests and Sisters have given their lives for God in this missionary work. Protestant Missionaries have been by no means slow to take a prominent part in Medical Mission work. Indeed their medical mission work is often much ahead of our Catholic work. They send doctors to missions and only trained nurses which dispensers but medical men respond to the call for help on the Missions and the zeal and self-sacrifice they display in their work, might often be copied by Catholics.
As our Catholic Missions grow and expand the need for more highly organised medical work becomes apparent. Catholic Hospitals are necessary. And a Hospital means that fully qualified doctors must be available. On the Continent and in America this need has been fully realized for some time and measures have been taken to meet the need. Institutes have been founded to train medical men who will give a number of years to work on the Foreign Missions. Such is the Catholic Medical Mission Institute at Wurzburg in Germany.
But so great is the need of fully qualified doctors on the Foreign Mission that it is impossible to meet it adequately by depending altogether on lay voluntary workers. Besides the expense of the Afro-American lay-workers on the cost. Again, lay-workers will always have home ties and duties which will make it almost impossible, even for the most devoted workers, to give themselves wholly to God in this exacting work in Missionary lands.
Hence the instruction of the Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith, issued on 11th February, 1936 is of supreme importance. That Instruction be formed with the special sacred Congregation that new Institutes of Sisters be formed with the Sacred Congregation maternity and Child-Welfare work. Moreover, the Sacred Congregation expresses the wish that exacting Congregations of Sisters form some of their members for the same work.
To fit themselves for this task the Sacred Congregation desires that the Sisters in these Congregations should have full medical training.
The Sacred Congregation then proposes to meet the great need of medical help of the Foreign Missions by having Sisters fully trained in every branch of Medical work, and giving their lives to that work. This Instruction is of the greatest importance and is bound to have far-reaching results in Catholic Medical Missions.
In 1937 the Medical Missionaries of Mary were founded in the Prefecture of Calabar, S. Nigeria, with the aim of meeting the wishes of the Sacred Congregation in this matter.
The Foundress of the New Institute, Sr. Mary of the Incarnation (Miss Mary Martin) has desired for many years to do such work for God. The Instruction of February, 1936 mentioned above, now permits her to do so.
In the Calabar Prefecture, the priests of the Society of St. Patrick, (Kiltegan) are at work. And the needs of the Medical Mission work there are very great. There is only one Catholic Hospital in an area of more than 13,000 sq. miles, (or more than two-fifths of the area of Ireland!) This hospital has been worked with the help of a member of lay volunteers from the Continent and Ireland, among them being the late Dr. P. A. Dunlevy (native of Co. Mayo). In the same area the Protestant Missions have six hospitals with European Doctors and Nurses in attendance, while they have a much larger number of dispensary and welfare centres. Very often the young Christians must attend the Protestant Hospitals with danger to their Faith and even when the danger is not great our Catholic people are faced with the strange spectacle of Churches that are not Catholic, doing far more for the care of the sick and suffering than the Church founded by Him Who was the Special Friend of the Sick.
And if the Catholic is not sent to a Protestant Hospital in time of sickness he usually has to page a more terrible ordeal parents. Very often the sisters may be pagan. In that case the native doctor who is also the "Ju-ju" man is called in and he proceeds to "sacrifice" to the "spirit" that is the cause of the sickness. Quite often the Father who attends a sick-call finds the poor sufferer in the house of such a native "doctor", or in his own home surrounded by the "charms" and "preventations" by which the pagan relatives try to ward off the attacks of evil spirits. What a danger this is to the faith of the such pagan practices! Many a heart-ache is caused to the priest who has brought these goo souls into the Church and who after administering the Sacraments must go away and leave his children to fight the last fight for God against the evil enemy who seems to make a last effort to snatch these souls won by the precious Blood. And how the Father often longs for a Catholic Hospital where many a life could easily be saved and more souls won for God.
But it is in the matter of Maternity and Infant-welfare work that the greatest need of medical help exists. As is very evident to all the hope of the Church in the Mission lands is the Christian family. Very often that family has been established with great care and suffering by the missionary in pagan surroundings and among a polygamus people. Yet the young mother of this family which is the foundation of the Church is as a rule

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handed over to pagan relatives in her hour of peril. Thes pagan mid-wives are ignorant of almost every rule of health and hygiene. Many of the young Christian women die in child-birth and sad to say many die without even the consolation of the Sacraments because these pagans who are present will not send for the priest.
In the Calabar Prefecture moreover there is the inhuman practise of murdering twin-children. When twin-children were born the pagan practise has been to throw these waifs away to die in the "bush." The mother of twin-children was made an outcast and was not allowed to live in the village or to enter the market place or farms of the villages. Thanks to the efforts of Government and the influence of Christianity these hideous practises are being rapidly abolished but in backward places they are by no means destroyed. Even if the pagans will not now murder twin-children they often refuse to care for them and twins are frequently brought to the Mission Station, and 'got rid of' by leaving them to the missionary. What can the Father in a mission station do for these waifs if there is no one to care for them in an orphanage ?
We need orphanages and hospitals to care for the Children and Mothers in these pagan lands. We need devoted Sisters who will give their lives for the poor and forsaken ones of Jesus Christ. It is not enough merely to baptize young Christians and then expose them to all the dangers that Satan knows how to take advantage of in time of sickness. We need devoted women to care for the young Christian Mothers and to help them in the work of making the names of our Christian people truly Christian names. For all that work the Medical Missionaries of Mary is being formed and the new Institute looks to Catholic Ireland for the encouragement and help necessary to do big work for God.
Then there is the crying need of helping the poor lepers of the Missions. All the Leper Settlements of Calabar are run by Protestant Missions. From the humanitarian point of view they do excellent work, but it is a hard thing for our Catholic priests to be compelled to enter these places on sufferance to administer the Sacraments to these poor outcasts who may be Catholic. If they could address the Catholic people certainly they would cry out and ask that the Charity of Christ be extended to them.
While our country has, thank God, entered enthusiastically into the work for God on the Foreign Missions, yet, in Medical Mission Work she is far behind the Continental Countries.
Please God that will not be said of Ireland in the near future.
J. MOYNAGH,
Prefect Apostolic,
CALABAR.
For further particulars apply :—
SR. MARY MARTIN, SUPERIORESS,
"Medical Missionaries of Mary,"
c/o. Society of St. Patrick,
Kiltegan, Coo Wicklow.