Mission to Kilimanjaro. Alexandre Le Roy

      Bishop Raoul de Courmont, C.S.Sp.

      Founder of the Kilimanjaro Mission

      Died in Paris, 1925, aged 83 years

      Dedicated to the Memory of

      Fr. Adrian Edwards, C.S.Sp.

      Foreword

      The late Fr. Adrian Edwards, C.S.Sp., renowned author and anthropologist, has provided a wonderful service in carefully translating into English the classic missionary ouvrage of Mgr. Alexandre Le Roy, C.S.Sp., Au Kilima-Ndjaro, first published in French in 1914, thus making the publication available to a wider contemporary audience. As an experienced missionary and academic, Fr. Edwards clearly saw the importance of this work in the history of missiology, and its translation, completed shortly before his unexpected death in 2017, effectively serves as his final legacy to the mission of evangelization to which he dedicated his life and talents.

      Mgr. Le Roy, an intrepid missionary, accomplished ethnologist, and artist, had a profound interest in, and a deep love of and respect for, the people he encountered on his extensive travels, as well as their culture, customs, values, and artwork, an approach which shaped his vision and strategy for evangelization at a time when many of his contemporaries shared a significantly narrower worldview. His classic work, Au Kilima-Ndjaro, is a fascinating account of the arduous journey into the East African interior undertaken in July 1890 by the author and two other members of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, Fr. Auguste Gommenginger and Bishop Jean-Marie de Courmont, together with their entourage of almost 300 men, from the initial base at Bagamoyo on the coast, founded in 1868. With his unique insights and perspective, Le Roy describes in graphic detail the various stages of the almost six-week journey, the internal organization of the group for maximum efficiency, his impressions of the region, and the people along the way, together with the difficulties encountered which included inadequate water, illness, and threats from wild animals in the unchartered territory of the semi-arid Maasai steppe. His memoirs culminate in the striking description of their final destination, the majestic snow-capped peak of Kilimanjaro, which clearly evoked awe and amazement in Le Roy and his companions:

The spectacle we have before our eyes is something that will remain unforgettable. Underneath a completely blue sky, there in front of us, we see the immense profile of the marvelous mountain. The two peaks [Kibo and Mawenzi] appear to be supported by this enormous pedestal . . . as a candelabra lit in the course of centuries to the glory of the Creator.1

As noted by the African historian, Matthew V. Bender,2 the subsequent sixty years of Spiritan missionary activity on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro saw the establishment of one of the largest and most prosperous Catholic communities on the continent of Africa. In addition to the founding of dozens of mission stations among the Chagga people, the economic and social landscapes of the mountain were transformed through the establishment of schools and hospitals and the cultivation of Arabica coffee, which became a lucrative business for the population, to the extent that the region had the highest ratio of schools to students, the highest school enrollment figures, and the most medical facilities per capita in any part of rural Eastern Africa.

      I have no doubt that this publication, available in English for the first time, will be of considerable interest to historians and missiologists alike, as well as to the general public at a time of increasing research into African history and culture.

      John Fogarty, C.S.Sp.

      Superior General

      1. Bender, “Holy Ghost in the Highlands,” 69.

      2. Bender, “Holy Ghost in the Highlands,” 69-89.

      Author’s Preface (1914 Edition)

      The pages you are about to read contain the report of a voyage of exploration to Kilimanjaro (East Africa). The voyage was undertaken in 1890 in order to study then-unknown nations so as to found new centers of evangelization.

      Written for the Catholic Missions of Lyon, these pages first appeared as serial articles in that journal; they were then put together into one volume (Mame, Tours). That edition quickly ran out, but demand continued.

      Truth to tell, Africa, still a closed continent only yesterday, is quickly transforming itself through European action. It thus serves some purpose to recall, albeit in ramble souvenirs, the way this great continent became open. This simple story of the founding of a Catholic mission was written for benefactors, associates, and friends; it appears today just as then published. The only change is in the last chapter, where the author, surprised to be still alive when so many of his confreres and friends have gone to the Master, indicates what became of the Catholic attempt at penetration into the interior, specifically into Kilimanjaro. And this would be for the serious reader—that is, for you all—the principal interest of this report, a report that never thought of becoming a book, and having become one, did not hope to again see the light of day.

      One can see colleges, sponsors, seminaries, apostolic schools, boarding schools, and parish libraries finding readings of this genre as interesting as many others equally instructive and wholesome. In the past, such readings even inspired missionary vocations. They still can do so. May God be praised! May this prove to

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