Men on a mission!
Meet Father James and Father Max, the Nigerian priests who travelled to Wester Ross to minister to their flock... armed with their faith, their Bibles (and two sets of top-quality thermal underwear)
IN the quiet of a Highland chapel house, two young Nigerians pore over a couple of road atlases, marking out what appears to be an impressively ambitious road trip. They join the dots from Beauly near Inverness, along the twisting roads past Ullapool and Gairloch and onwards up the western shores of Ross-shire.
But a long-planned pilgrimage to the North Coast 500 is not what they have in mind – these two men have been engaged in a higher purpose.
Father James Anyaegbu and Father Max Nwosu are priests, sent by their church halfway around the world from their native West Africa to plug a shortage of manpower in this distant and dwindling outpost of Catholicism.
For the past five years, these two clerics have swapped life in Nigeria for Inverness-shire and all points west, covering mile upon mile of sprawling Highland glens to minister to their scattered and ageing flock.
This unlikely tale of surrogate Fathers offering succour to their newfound Scottish family is the focus of a BBC Scotland documentary due to air later this month.
Entitled Our Fathers, it details the culture shock felt by the men who, before they set foot in the country in 2015, confess they had never so much as typed Scotland into a computer search engine.
The film was completed long before the coronavirus pandemic caused all of us to experience our own feelings of dislocation. At its heart, it explores notions of home and family, which lends it a poignancy and relevance even for post-Covid times.
In it, Father Max, 39, admits his surprise at the sharp northern turn in his career path: ‘I was surprised [to be sent here] and it was the very first time I typed ‘‘Scotland’’ in Google.’
Of course, Google could scarcely prepare two men more used to equatorial Africa’s year-round tropical warmth and the crowded streets of their old inner-city parish for the unforgiving cold of a Scottish winter or the solitary beauty of the Highland glens. More than 2.5million people live in the former colonial city of Aba, in the south-east of Nigeria – equivalent to half the Scottish population.
Having become used to preaching before thousands of worshippers or more in a church more akin to a stadium in Aba, the Fathers were immediately struck by the more modest attendances at their Sunday sermons. ‘In this parish every Sunday, we will have between 70 and 80 people [celebrating Mass]. In Aba, I was used to seeing a very large number of people, no less than 5,000 persons,’ said Father James.
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HIlE organised religion is on the wane in Scotland, Christianity retains a muscular hold on Nigerian life. The nation’s 190million inhabitants are almost equally divided into Muslims and Christians, including around 20million Catholics. In Scotland, there are little more than 800,000 Catholics left, the vast majority in the Central Belt, and a dwindling band of priests ready to stand and serve them.
There is a certain irony that a country that was colonised by British soldiers then Catholicised by British missionaries should now be helping its old imperial master by providing light and hope in places where it was fast fading. What saves the film from plunging into such cynicism is the Fathers’ infectious cheeriness and irresistible zest for life.
From a large congregation in an overcrowded parish that he could easily get round on foot, Father James found himself confronted with demanding drives across desolate moorland and up winding coastal paths to reach those few souls that remain and bring them to their Saviour.
‘I may actually have travelled more than some of the Highlanders and seen more of their country since I’ve been here,’ he said. ‘I have travelled all the way down to the Scottish Borders and to Berwickshire and back. I do love it.’
The change of scenery came as a shock, but he tells the programme: ‘Preaching to the people here in the church in Beauly, I feel I’m talking to each and every one of the people. I know I can have a personal relationship with each of them. If you are preaching to 3,000 people it is totally different.’ As if to reinforce the point, the camera pans round to a nearempty church showing the young African priest sharing communion with barely a handful of white-haired locals. The contrast could not be starker. And yet, the affection in which the parishioners hold their adopted Fathers is equally clear.
The film’s directors, Zoe Hunter Gordon and Kieran Hennigan, also follow the priests to a care home, where they are shown singing and laughing together with residents.
Miss Hunter Gordon said she wanted to film the priests after watching them lead her grandmother’s funeral at Eskadale Church, near Beauly. ‘With their wonderful singing voices and youthful energy, they were a real contrast to the priests that had come before them, and I knew I wanted to tell their story,’ she said.
The mutual bonds of friendship revealed by the film are strong.
‘We are not going to let them leave. We are going to lock them up,’ jokes one elderly parishioner at one point, with an almost grandmotherly concern. Another parishioner adds: ‘Time is ticking, but we are very happy to have them here.’
The priests felt that same close tie almost from the moment they arrived in August 2015, when they were taken to football games and ceilidhs by their congregation.
‘When we first came, our parishioners just embraced us. Certain families just embraced us and it was like an indirect form of adoption,’ said Father James, talking to the Mail about his time in Scotland. ‘We became like their children almost and they always kept a close look on us making sure we were alright. That made us love Scotland even more.’
The churches and care homes are currently closed but Father James has remained in Scotland, offering Mass online. He said: ‘We are coping well so far with lockdown. We no longer travel out, but we do still communicate with our parishioners through chatrooms. We even offer a confessional through the window of the parish house, which is different. We are all adapting!’
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HAT closeness of community and church works both ways, he added. ‘The priesthood gives you a sense of responsibility. When you are ordained, you are no longer entirely for your biological family, you are for the people of God.
‘That’s why you become a Father, for the people of God. So that focus actually keeps you going as a priest. But then, on your own, you feel your biological family as well. So speaking with them helps you.
‘Also, because I am here with Father Max, we can talk about things like family and home, we can cook [Nigerian] food and that does really help. Speaking your mother tongue in a foreign place is also very helpful. I talk weekly on the phone to my mum. She is my guiding light.’
The youngest of six children, Father
James, 34, was raised in a deeply religious household and became the first member of his family to join the priesthood.
‘From a very early age, I was already thinking about joining the priesthood. I remember, when I was six years old, I would celebrate mock Masses. If you are raised a Catholic, you already know the Eucharistic celebrations, so I would practise Mass when I was alone in the house.’
He recalls dressing up in his mother Josephine’s wrapper – the colourful traditional garb worn by nigerian women – like pretend priest’s robes, while a borrowed kitchen cup would serve as a chalice for communion.
‘I would celebrate almost the whole Mass just alone there, imagining there were people sitting in front of me,’ he said, giggling with delight at the memory.
‘When I was six, what attracted me most was the beauty of the Mass. I love to sing also and the singing was part of the beauty of the ceremony. My mum and my elder sister were both in a choir and they would always sing at home. It was only later at the seminary that I understood and embraced entirely what it means to be a priest.’
His deep faith helped him deal with the loss of his father in 2005 and one of his brothers ten years later. ‘Being a priest has helped me overcome my own loss because faith gives you hope and helps you to understand what life is all about and where we are going.
‘I think I was able to help my family with that too. I would have to stand strong and they drew strength from that.’ His mother, now 70, supported his desire to serve God. ‘She would travel long distances to visit me at the seminary, which was hundreds of miles from where I grew up. She would travel to see me and bring letters from my dad and my siblings. She was absolutely my backbone.’
His first foreign posting to Scotland stirred feelings of nervous excitement. ‘as a young man I was ready to face whatever responsibility was to come,’ he said. ‘The only thing that troubled me a little bit was the weather. We learned the answer pretty quickly, which was to put an extra layer on! [another high-pitched giggle].
‘In nigeria, it is constantly warm and when we arrived, one of the parishioners took us immediately to an expensive shop where we got one of the best sets of thermal underwear we could. We still have them – they are our most precious commodity after our Bible!’
In their downtime, their sunny nature and a propensity for dazzling african clothes have made them a minor hit on the music scene as well, after they teamed up with two other nigerian priests based in aberdeenshire, Father Kingsley Chigbo and Father Peter Ezekoka, for a series of concerts.
The rhythms and harmonies of those Igbo language songs appear to be an even greater draw than Sunday Mass, as the film records a packed hall in Fochabers on the Moray Firth.
The songs tie them to their homeland, while video calls home helps alleviate the homesickness.
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OTH the priests’ mothers have been over to visit their sons and were welcomed in by parishioners like long-lost relatives. Father James said: ‘They were very kind and wonderful and kept inviting us to their homes for dinners and lunches. It was an amazing period.’
That intimacy with parishioners has been a revelation to Father James. He said: ‘In nigeria, you have hospitals and schools and businesses within one parish, so I could walk around on foot visiting people that I needed to see. Here there is a very large area to cover.
‘It is very beautiful scenery, which does help. Sometimes after one of the Masses in summer, I would stop between Poolewe and Ullapool at a very beautiful beach and spend some time there, eating a packed lunch prepared by my parishioners and take photos and just breathe in the scenery.
‘These are places that many travel from abroad to see and I have the privilege to drive around here for my work. am I a lucky man? Well, I like to see the positives in everything I am doing and there are a lot of positives and that spurs me on.’
The glaring negative, of course, is the need for him to be here at all as the Roman Catholic Church struggles to attract young blood to its seminaries. ‘We are hoping young people will be inspired by our work to embrace the priesthood and that we will become influencers to them,’ said Father James.
‘The Church in africa is becoming a very good instrument to helping the Church in the West of Europe in boosting the faith. The parishioners here understand now that wherever you go, in africa, in Europe, in america, the Church remains the same.’
How will Father James look back on his time in Scotland? ‘Oh well, the joys we have instilled in the minds of the people here; the strong belief they will have in God will be one of our strong legacies when we leave. That people are not losing their faith, but gaining their faith and strengthening their faith due to our services here.’
When the two Fathers eventually move on to their next mission, they will hold the Highlands close to their hearts. ‘I will keep in touch with the people here because they have become like a family,’ said Father James. ‘The joy will continue after we move, but the move itself we are not looking forward to. What we are looking forward to is the fruitfulness of our journey that faith continues to grow.’