The Day we met a Saint

Thirty years ago today we met a man I believe should be numbered among the Saints. 

On Monday 1 April 1996 I spent most of the day working at my job as an editor at the University of South Africa, editing a Science of Religion study guide. When I got home, Fr Nektarios Kellis phoned. 

He was a missionary priest in Madagascar, and said he was on his way back to Madagascar from
Zimbabwe, and was staying in a hotel near the airport waiting for his connecting flight which only left the next morning. The hotel he was staying in was in an industrial area, so there was nothing to do there. Going for a walk among dark empty factories closed for the night was not an appealing prospect, so he tried to phone someone just to talk to. He had my phone number as a contact, and so he phoned me.

I had never met Fr Nektarios, but I knew of him from a student of his whom I had met in Nairobi the previous year when I was doing research for my doctoral thesis on Orthodox mission methods. As part of my research I had interviewed Jean Christos Tsakanias, who came from Madagascar. 

He told me that the Orthodox Church there had been started by Greeks in 1953, and had been purely Greek. It had closed in 1972, when foreigners, including the priest, had been expelled after political disturbances on the island. It had remained closed until last year, when the Greek community made announcements in various periodicals, and an Australian priest, Archimandrite Kellis, had come to the
island, and began active mission right away. They were then under Bishop Chrysostomos of Zimbabwe, who had already ordained several local priests, and the Divine Liturgy was celebrated in the Malagasy
language. 

It sounded as though Father Nektarios had achieved an amazing amount in the 18 months he had been there. Jean Christos told me he would travel with Fr Nektarios down the east coast of Madagascar, and when he saw a village without a church he would stop, and ask the chief of that place if he could meet any people who might be interested in Orthodox Christianity. If the chief agreed, he would make a date to return and speak to the people, and if any were interested, would start a new parish there. In this way he started about 12 parishes within 18 months.

So when Fr Nektarios phoned on that Monday afternoon I didn't just want to alleviate his boredom by chatting on the phone, I wanted to meet him. My wife Val then worked in Klipfontein, which was halfway to Kempton Park, where the airport was, so she went to fetch Fr Nektarios from the hotel after work and brought him to our house in Kilner Park, Pretoria. I thought we could take him out to supper, so he could be with people instead of just sitting in a hotel room. 

We took him down to Johannesburg to show him the parish we then belonged to, the Church of St Nicholas of Japan in Brixton. Then we looked for a place to eat, but being Monday, all the restaurants were closed. 

We took him to see Fr Chrysostom, then our parish priest, and then took him back to his hotel at 11 pm. 

In the course of all this driving around Father Nektarios told us a bit of how he had got to Madagascar. He had been in Adelaide, South Australia, as chaplain to an old age home, and read an article in a publication from Greece about Madagascar, appealing for a priest there. It turned out later that the article was phony -- no one in Madagascar was appealing for a priest, just someone in the magazine office thought it would be a good idea.  But he thought God was calling him to Madagascar anyway, though he had a difficult job persuading his bishop, who was reluctant to lose a priest from his diocese. Eventually the bishop allowed him to go only because he saw that he would be resentful if forced to stay. 

Father Nektarios had been visiting Zimbabwe, where the Patriarch of Alexandria was blessing a monument to the first bishop, who had died in Bulawayo. While they were there the Metropolitan of
Zimbabwe, Archbishop Chrysostomos, had had a heart attack, and had only just come out of hospital, so Fr Nektarios had stayed until he was well enough to go home, and so only now was he returning to Madagascar. There were no direct flights from Harare to Madagascar, which was why he had had to come to Johannesburg and stay overnight. 

Fr Nektarios was very interested in mission and was keen to see mission happening in Mocambique and other places in the diocese. He thought we should go to Zambia, where there were several people who wanted to become Orthodox.

Well, that was thirty years ago, and a lot has happened since then. Madagascar was later made a diocese in its own right, and Fr Nektarios was elected as its first bishop. Sad to say, he was killed in a helicopter crash along with several other clergy, including the Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria, Petros VII, on 11 September 2004.

May their memory be eternal!

 

 

The devastating effects of the new colonialists

When there was a coup in Madagascar a few months ago, there was widespread condemnation of the unconstitutional actions -- from the US, from France (the former colonial power) and from the African Union, with several African countries threatening to impose sanctions. BBC NEWS | Africa | Pressure grows on Madagascar coup:

The African Union has suspended Madagascar after the army forced out the president and installed the opposition leader in his place.

Southern African leaders say they may impose sanctions on the Indian Ocean island unless legality is restored.

But as with many such stories, there is more to this one than meets the eye.

Wish you weren't here: The devastating effects of the new colonialists - Nature, Environment - The Independent:

The urban poor were angry at the price of food, which had been high since the massive rise in global prices of wheat and rice the year before. Food-price rises hit the poor worse than the rest of us because they spend up to two-thirds of their income on food. But what whipped them into action was news of a deal the government had recently signed with a giant Korean multinational, Daewoo, leasing 1.3 million hectares of farmland – an area almost half the size of Belgium and about half of all arable land on the island – to the foreign company for 99 years. Daewoo had announced plans to grow maize and palm oil there – and send all the harvests back to South Korea...

The government of President Ravalomanana became the first in the world to be toppled because of what the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization recently described as "landgrabbing". The Daewoo deal is only one of more than 100 land deals which have, over the past 12 months, seen massive tracts of cultivable farmland across the globe bought up by wealthy countries and international corporations. The phenomenon is accelerating at an alarming rate, with an area half the size of Europe's farmland targeted in just the past six months.

Memory Eternal -- Pope Petros VII

This is the third anniversary of the death of His Beatitude Petros, Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa, who was killed in a helicopter crash on 11 September 2004.

He was the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians on the African continent, as the secular media would say. Several other clergy were killed with him on that day, including three bishops, so it was a severe blow to the Church in Africa.

Among those killed was His Grace Nectarios, Bishop of Madagascar, whose short period in that country as a missionary priest and later bishop was amazing.

Father Nectarios Kellis was a priest in Australia, and he read in a magazine published in Greece that a priest was needed in Madagascar, because they had been without a priest since 1972, when political changes had led to the expulsion of many foreigners, including the Greek priest.

Father Nectarios asked his bishop if he could go, but the bishiop said no, he needed him in Australia. As the computer fundi for the diocese, he would be hard to replace. But later the bishop relented. I can see that you will just be miserable if you don't go, said the bishop, so go with my blessing.

Father Nectarios went to Greece, and found the author of the article, so see how he could make contact with the people in Madagascar who were appealing for a priest. He was told that there weren't any. The person who wrote the article had made it up -- he had just seen that there hadn't been a priest there for a long time, and thought it would be nice if there was one.

Father Nectarios set out for Madagascar not knowing what to expect, and arrived there in 1994. He found two churches, neither in use, one in the capital, Tananarive, and one of the coast. There was a local family that was acting as caretakers of the church in Tananarive, and I met a member of this family, a young man, at the Makarios III Orthodox Theological Seminary in Nairobi in November 1995. I was then doing research for my doctoral thesis on "Orthodox mission methods", and was interviewing the students (who came from various parts of Africa) to find out how the Orthodox Church was growing in their home countries.

The story I heard from Madagascar was quite amazing. Father Nectarios had been there for 18 months, and had started 15 new parishes in that time. He travelled down the coast taking the student with him, and when he saw a village with no church, would speak to the chief of the village and ask if he could come on a date to be arranged to explain the Orthodox Christian faith to anyone interested. Then a few weeks later he would return and speak to the people there, and then gather the interested people to catechise them and baptise them, and so 15 new parishes had been started within 18 months.

Six months later I met Father Nectarios in person.

At that time Madagascar fell under the Archbishopric of Zimbabwe, and Father Nectarios had travelled to Bulawayo where the Patriarch was blessing a memorial in the local church. While they were there, the Archbishop of Zimbabwe suffered a heart attack, so Father Nectarios stayed on for a few days to look after him. When he eventually returned to Madagascar, he had to change planes in Johannesburg, and as the plane for Madagascar only left the following morning he was booked into a hotel overnight near the airport. The hotel was in Isando, an industrial area, all over factories, where there is nothing to do and nothing to see, but the seminary student had given him my phone number, so he phoned me, and we said we would fetch him and show him around a little, rather than leave him sitting in a lonely hotel room. It was Monday 1 April 1996, in the middle of Great Lent, and we wanted to take him to supper at a restaurant, but finding a restaurant open on a Monday in Gauteng is not easy, never mind one that serves fasting food. Still, we took him round to see some churches and a priest we found at home, and while we were going around he told us the story of how he had found himself in Madagascar. He was quite a delightful character, short, with a reddish hair and beard, and he spoke Australian with a Greek accent.

Later Madagascar was made into a separate diocese, and Father Nectarios was consecrated as its bishop, and served there until his death on 11 September 2004. His successor was Father Ignatios Sennis, who had served as a priest in Calcutta (Kolkata) in India, where he served mainly among the very poor people.

The 11 September 2004 was a sad day for the Orthodox Church in Africa, and for those who died and their families we pray: Memory Eternal!