Anti-apartheid activist and internationally renowned theologian, Father Albert Nolan, died in the early hours of October 17. “You have to take sides”.

Many will remember him as a hero of the struggle against apartheid, a humble Dominican priest and theologian awarded the national Order of Luthuli by President Thabo Mbeki in 2003.  Many more will know his name and have read his 1976 best-seller Jesus Before Christianity about the historical Jesus.  I will remember him as an inspiration and spiritual guide when I was Southern Africa Desk Officer at the Catholic Institute of International Relations (CIIR) during the 1980s when both civic resistance and state repression peaked in South Africa.

Albert, despite a traditional academic training in the Angelicum, the Dominican Pontifical University in Rome, believed that theology should be open to everyone, that it should come from the grassroots and be about discovering where and how to find God in an unjust world.  He was later to put his religious journalism into practice as the editor of Challenge, a popular Catholic paper in South Africa.  When Albert was Provincial for Southern Africa, the Johannesburg Dominicans abandoned their priory in a posh part of town, so the where of theology was a decrepit building in the ill-named Mayfair, home to down-and-out whites and surprisingly multi-racial.  The estate agent couldn’t believe his luck when he was given a description of the building the Dominicans were looking for and got rid of an unsaleable property.  And the how was by integrating faith with political commitment.
Albert Nolan chose the right religious name (he was baptised Dennis); like St. Albert the Great, teacher of St. Thomas Aquinas, he was an inspiring teacher and mentor.
YCS and YCW chaplain at the largely Afrikaans University of Stellenbosch, he became National Chaplain of the Catholic Federation of Students in 1973.  As well as listening and responding to youth seeking how to live in an unjust and divided society – ‘you have to take sides’ was his advice – he was able to compare notes with his counterpart in Peru, fellow priest Gustavo Gutierrez, the father of Liberation Theology and later a Dominican.Leading up to and into the State of Emergency in South Africa (1985-1990), a time of massive repression and of mass resistance by the United Democratic Front drawing together African National Congress (ANC) front-organisations, church institutions and  independent civic bodies, Albert nurtured a group of young Catholics committed
to the liberation struggle.

Hector Pieterson Memorial Site, Soweto, Johannesburg. Photo: 123rf.com

By listening to their difficulties, their fears of imminent arrest, their doubts about having children, their problems in handling the violence both of the state and anarchic youth, he was able to encourage a spirituality that both discerned the signs of the times and helped them develop a moral framework within which they could actively resist apartheid.   At the Mayfair Priory praying the Magnificat was almost a bidding prayer as each in their different ways was in the business of ‘pulling down the mighty from their thrones’.
For Albert apartheid was ‘sin made visible’.  I can hear him saying it now in his strong Cape Town accent. I can also hear his gentle humour coming through hair-raising stories of things nearly going wrong.  He was a wonderful companion and pastor.  In 1983 he was elected Master-General of the Dominican Order by his confrères.
His response was to request that he be allowed to decline so that he could remain in South Africa and fulfil his commitment there.  This was put to the vote and agreed so that he had the shortest time in office of any Dominican Master-General.
At the time of his election Albert was working in the Johannesburg Institute for Contextual Theology (ICT) begun in 1981, a small ecumenical group that included Rev. Frank Chikane, later the general-secretary of the South African Council of Churches who became President Mbeki’s Chef de Cabinet. The name Contextual Theology did little to protect it from the repression which was certain had it been called the Institute for Liberation Theology.  In June 1985 ICT published and distributed the Kairos document, a radical biblical and theological comment on the political crisis in South Africa and a challenge to the Churches to take sides, signed initially by over 150 mainly black Christians.  The South African National Security State was taken completely unawares.  Many more signatures followed publication and as the document was read out in township churches there was a palpable sense that congregations felt ‘this is what we believe’.

Sweden concluded that leaving support for the ANC solely in the hands of the Communist Party of Soviet Union and the East German Stasi bode ill for the future and was secretly getting money into South Africa to boost non-violent forms of resistance.  Much the same group as the ICT, including Albert and the great Dutch Reformed Church dissident pastor, Rev. Beyers Naudé, performed the invaluable and unusual role within South Africa of guiding this funding of the internal movement of the ANC whose base was outside South Africa in Lusaka, Zambia and to a lesser degree in Maputo, Mozambique.  For example one of the major requests of the ‘Christian ANC’ group was funding to strengthen leadership amongst black youth.  At the time arrests of youths for ‘necklacing’, that is killing suspected collaborators with flaming tyres around the neck, was decapitating the youth movement and creating anarchy in the townships.Albert saw the movement against apartheid bringing together the different races and Christian denominations as a glimpse of the ‘kingdom of heaven’.   He saw no conflict between faith and political commitment and there was something beautiful about the way he and those around him lived out that integrated vision.  We should learn from him.  (Photo:  Babelio – 123rf.com)

Ian Linden
Professor at St Mary’s University,
Strawberry Hill, London.

On 20 November 2022, Comboni Father Joseph Ambrosoli will be beatified in Kalongo in the north of Uganda. “God is love and I am his servant for the suffering people”.

“My name is Joseph Ambrosoli. I come from Ronago. I have just qualified as a medical doctor and I want to place my profession at the disposal of the Missions. I would like to know if, in your Order, a doctor can become a priest and if, once a member, he would be sure of being assigned to the Missions and practice the dual profession of priest and doctor”.
It is the Summer of 1949 and it is with these words that the young Doctor Ambrosoli introduces himself to Father Simone Zanoner, the Rector of the Comboni Missionary Seminary in Rebbio in the Province of Como in Northern Italy.

Although Joseph says his name is ‘Ambrosoli’ he does not mention that he belongs to the well-known and influential honey-producing Family of the same name. Father Zanoner replies: “The Comboni Missionaries were founded for the Missions and it is therefore standard practice for those who join to go to the Missions. I can therefore guarantee that you will go to the Missions!”. Thus began the missionary adventure of the man who would become the great ‘Doctor Aburojoli’, the Doctor of the Acholi Peoples of Northern Uganda.

‘The Cenacle’
Joseph was born on 25th July 1923 to Giovanni Battista and Palmira Ambrosoli in Ronago, a charming village in the Province of Como, close to the border with the Canton of Ticino in Southern Switzerland.
His father was a successful entrepreneur in the honey business with the well-known slogan: ‘There are all sorts of honey and then there is the unmistakable flavour of Ambrosoli honey’.
He grew up in a family where his mother Palmira was noted for her practice of the Christian faith. It was she who educated Joseph in the faith and trained him in that moderation and self-limitation that would accompany him throughout his life.
His Christian formation was consolidated thanks to holy priest educators who were concerned only with the education of children and the youth, and always attentive to the sick.

Fundamental to his spiritual life and his missionary option was his meeting with Don Silvio Riva, the diocesan assistant of the Catholic Action of Como who brought together the best young people in a group that he christened ‘The Cenacle’. His spiritual growth translates into the search for holiness understood as identification with Christ.
As a result of all this, Joseph would therefore become a Comboni missionary doctor. He was already 28 when he entered the novitiate (1951). He made his religious profession, quickly completed his theological studies, and was soon ordained because Africa urgently needed him. It was on 17 December 1955 when he became a priest in the cathedral of Milan. The ordaining bishop was Giovanni Battista Montini who would become Pope Paul VI.

Uganda. The ‘Pearl of Africa’
On February 1st 1956 Father Joseph set sail from Venice aboard the aptly-named ‘SS Africa’ bound for Mombasa on the coast of Kenya, and then continued his journey from Mombasa to Gulu a town in the North of Uganda. And then by road from Gulu to the Mission of Kalongo in East Acholi to where he had been assigned.
Starting from the simple dispensary, he built a large hospital with 350 beds, to which the sick from Lira, Kitgum and from Kenya and
South Sudan flowed.

The jewel in the crown of that hospital is the school for midwives, which Father Joseph was very fond of. The study program is based on the English model and includes three years of study and internship after which each student nurse has to face an exam before a commission coming specially from Kampala, the capital.
The diploma issued is valid for every health facility in the colony and for all English-speaking countries.
Father Joseph was totally dedicated to the sick: “I must try to impersonate the Master in me when he treated the sick who came to him … If only they could see Jesus in me!”, he would say. He immediately understood that to win the hearts of Africans he must employ infinite benevolence. He worked unsparingly not only as a surgeon but also as a facility director and teacher in the nursing school. He was able to remain at the operating table for six straight hours, always standing, and then move to the clinic, without showing even the slightest sign of tiredness.
People ended up having unlimited faith in Father Joseph’s healing powers, to the point of considering him a sort of thaumaturge: “If you are sick, you have only to go to Father Joseph; he examines you and you come back healed, both in heart and in spirit”, they would say.
He also involved all the nursing staff, making them feel directly involved in the management of the workings of the large hospital. He shared responsibilities with his fellow doctors and gave them autonomy.

The exodus
Before going to rest, the Rosary was a must: “Reciting the Rosary while walking under the starry sky of God, with the stars of the magical African sky, is really something else”, he wrote to a friend. He took but a few hours of rest at the end of the day. “Once in heaven, I’ll have all the time I want to rest”, he would say.
He also knew how to show his stern character as a defender of the weak, including the heroic defence of the wives of government soldiers and, in general, of the people of the south, on whom the guerrillas, from the north, intended to take their revenge.
When the rebels realized their imminent defeat, they gathered threateningly in front of the hospital gate, demanding the people of the south to kill them and take revenge for their defeat.

Father Joseph intervened, placing himself in front of the gate and saying to the rebels: “Do not enter here. If you want, kill me as well, but don’t enter here!”. And the rebels relented.
1986 was certainly the most difficult year for Kalongo caught between the government troops and those of the revolution. The situation for the hospital worsened on January 30, 1987. Having gathered all the hospital and mission personnel, the military authorities accused those present of complicity with the Acholi guerrillas and the order to evacuate was given. The exodus from Kalongo to Lira would be an ordeal for Father Joseph. He truly became similar to Jesus, who appeared to many on Calvary as the icon of the most complete human failure.
His concern was still for the 42 midwifery students who had to prepare for the state exam, scheduled for May.

Things took a turn for the worse. His health was deteriorating, and the Lord granted him his desire to die with the people he loved so much. His last words distinctly grasped by those who assisted him were: “Lord, your will be done”. His Lord came to take him at 13.50 on Friday 27 March 1987. At the age of 64.
Father Joseph’s desire to be buried among the people he loved and for whom he gave his life. On the tomb of Father Ambrosoli, there is a plaque reminding everyone that he was ‘A Comboni, a priest and a doctor’. The true message, however, is contained in the phrase that Father Joseph repeated and that the people wanted to be carved in marble: ‘God is love and I am his servant for the suffering people’.

Elio Boscaini

Anti-apartheid activist and internationally renowned theologian, Father Albert Nolan, died in the early hours of October 17.
“You have to take sides”.

Many will remember him as a hero of the struggle against apartheid, a humble Dominican priest and theologian awarded the national Order of Luthuli by President Thabo Mbeki in 2003.  Many more will know his name and have read his 1976 best-seller Jesus Before Christianity about the historical Jesus.  I will remember him as an inspiration and spiritual guide when I was Southern Africa Desk Officer at the Catholic Institute of International Relations (CIIR) during the 1980s when both civic resistance and state repression peaked in South Africa.
Albert, despite a traditional academic training in the Angelicum, the Dominican Pontifical University in Rome, believed that theology should be open to everyone, that it should come from the grassroots and be about discovering where and how to find God in an unjust world.  He was later to put his religious journalism into practice as the editor of Challenge, a popular Catholic paper in South Africa.

When Albert was Provincial for Southern Africa, the Johannesburg Dominicans abandoned their priory in a posh part of town, so the where of theology was a decrepit building in the ill-named Mayfair, home to down-and-out whites and surprisingly multi-racial.  The estate agent couldn’t believe his luck when he was given a description of the building the Dominicans were looking for and got rid of an unsaleable property.  And the how was by integrating faith with political commitment.
Albert Nolan chose the right religious name (he was baptised Dennis); like St. Albert the Great, teacher of St. Thomas Aquinas, he was an inspiring teacher and mentor.  YCS and YCW chaplain at the largely Afrikaans University of Stellenbosch, he became National Chaplain of the Catholic Federation of Students in 1973.  As well as listening and responding to youth seeking how to live in an unjust and divided society – ‘you have to take sides’ was his advice – he was able to compare notes with his counterpart in Peru, fellow priest Gustavo Gutierrez, the father of Liberation Theology and later a Dominican.
Leading up to and into the State of Emergency in South Africa (1985-1990), a time of massive repression and of mass resistance by the United Democratic Front drawing together African National Congress (ANC) front-organisations, church institutions and  independent civic bodies, Albert nurtured a group of young Catholics committed to the liberation struggle.

Hector Pieterson Memorial Site, Soweto, Johannesburg. Photo: 123rf.com

By listening to their difficulties, their fears of imminent arrest, their doubts about having children, their problems in handling the violence both of the state and anarchic youth, he was able to encourage a spirituality that both discerned the signs of the times and helped them develop a moral framework within which they could actively resist apartheid.   At the Mayfair Priory praying the Magnificat was almost a bidding prayer as each in their different ways was in the business of ‘pulling down the mighty from their thrones’.
For Albert apartheid was ‘sin made visible’.  I can hear him saying it now in his strong Cape Town accent. I can also hear his gentle humour coming through hair-raising stories of things nearly going wrong.  He was a wonderful companion and pastor.  In 1983 he was elected Master-General of the Dominican Order by his confrères.
His response was to request that he be allowed to decline so that he could remain in South Africa and fulfil his commitment there.  This was put to the vote and agreed so that he had the shortest time in office of any Dominican Master-General.
At the time of his election Albert was working in the Johannesburg Institute for Contextual Theology (ICT) begun in 1981, a small ecumenical group that included Rev. Frank Chikane, later the general-secretary of the South African Council of Churches who became President Mbeki’s Chef de Cabinet. The name Contextual Theology did little to protect it from the repression which was certain had it been called the Institute for Liberation Theology.

In June 1985 ICT published and distributed the Kairos document, a radical biblical and theological comment on the political crisis in South Africa and a challenge to the Churches to take sides, signed initially by over 150 mainly black Christians.
The South African National Security State was taken completely unawares.  Many more signatures followed publication and as the document was read out in township churches there was a palpable sense that congregations felt ‘this is what we believe’.
Sweden concluded that leaving support for the ANC solely in the hands of the Communist Party of Soviet Union and the East German Stasi bode ill for the future and was secretly getting money into South Africa to boost non-violent forms of resistance.
Much the same group as the ICT, including Albert and the great Dutch Reformed Church dissident pastor, Rev. Beyers Naudé, performed the invaluable and unusual role within South Africa of guiding this funding of the internal movement of the ANC whose base was outside South Africa in Lusaka, Zambia and to a lesser degree in Maputo, Mozambique.  For example one of the major requests of the ‘Christian ANC’ group was funding to strengthen leadership amongst black youth.  At the time arrests of youths for ‘necklacing’, that is killing suspected collaborators with flaming tyres around the neck, was decapitating the youth movement and creating anarchy in the townships.
Albert saw the movement against apartheid bringing together the different races and Christian denominations as a glimpse of the ‘kingdom of heaven’.   He saw no conflict between faith and political commitment and there was something beautiful about the way he and those around him lived out that integrated vision.  We should learn from him.  (Photo:  Babelio – 123rf.com)

Ian Linden
Professor at St Mary’s University,
Strawberry Hill, London.

We have asked mons. John Baptist Odama, Archbishop of Gulu in Uganda the meaning of the beatification of Father Joseph Ambrosoli.

The beatification of Father Joseph Ambrosoli is a blessing not only for the Archdiocese of Gulu, Uganda, where he spent most of his missionary life, nor for Africa alone, the continent he loved deeply, but also for the entire Church and the entire human race. Father Ambrosoli’s life reflected the love of Christ.
And we know that Christ’s love is salvation for humanity from all kinds of evil, especially the spiritual evil we call sin.
He prayed hard to be liberated from selfishness, which is the evil that dominates our world, leading it far away from the dream God has for it. Even as a young man, Father Ambrosoli prayed that Jesus would free him from selfishness, and the love of Christ moulded him in such a way that he became a-man-for-others.

Mons. John Baptist Odama, Archbishop of Gulu.

A typical prayer of his was: “O God, deliver me from myself”. A prayer that may seem rather strange to many. Correctly understood, however, it is a splendid invocation addressed to God. And God made him truly free from himself and totally devoted to others. It is a prayer we should all pray always, if we want to live our lives like Jesus Christ, who from being God became the ‘servant’ of all.
By beatifying him, the Church wants to present Father Ambrosoli to us as an inspiration to imitate Christ, who lived and died for us all.
In our diocese of Gulu, we already boast two other blessed, Jildo Irwa and Daudi Okello: two young catechists who were killed in the early 20^th Century and whom the Church today venerates as martyrs.
These three splendid people are not just a monopoly of the people of Gulu, simply because they are from here. Instead, they are a blessing
for the whole world.

Father Ambrosoli lived the values of the Gospel and practised what Jesus came to proclaim: salvation. His service to the people was nothing but ‘healing’ and ‘salvation’, especially for the poorest and most abandoned. He used to repeat: “I must love the poor”. He gave himself a slogan: “God is love and I am his servant for the poor and for the suffering”. He really was healing and salvation for many. And that was an extraordinary blessing for us and our people.
By proclaiming him blessed, the Church offers us a sure example to imitate. Through his life, he can teach us to be truly human, that is, people who can take interest in and care for others.
Father Ambrosoli was a simple man, humble and pure in his intentions. He served people with total dedication. No one was afraid of him. He was not at all proud, although he could have been, being one of the best doctors Uganda had.
Although he was the hospital’s head doctor, he never drew attention to himself, to the point that some people hardly noticed him. A warder from Gulu had brought a patient to the hospital in Kalongo. As was his wont, doctor Ambrosoli came and started passing between the beds, greeting the patients. After a while, the warder asked a nurse what time the doctor would arrive. “But the doctor has already been here”, she replied. “He even greeted you. But you can join him in his office at any time”. Fr. Ambrosoli was of a disarming simplicity.

I was assigned to the diocese of Gulu as archbishop in January 1999, 12 years after father Ambrosoli’s death. During my pastoral visits to the new diocese, people did nothing but speak well of him to me. They had no doubts: the ‘great doctor’ had been a very special person in all respects. Therefore, I decided to make an investigation and gather precise information about him, especially first-hand accounts of his life.
I thought that, if certain gospel values had indeed been lived by him in a truly exceptional way, they deserved to be made known to more and more people, so that, by imitating him, they would be helped to change their lives. Not only that: their faith would increase and their love for one another would improve. The best way to proclaim the gospel is a truly evangelical life. Dr Ambrosoli’s life really appeared to be such.

The initial work was undertaken by Father Joseph Okumu, who acted as local postulator [the person who guides a cause for beatification or canonization through the judicial processes required – editor’s note]. His work was then passed on to a postulator in Rome, who continued the work by interviewing all the Comboni missionaries who had known Father Ambrosoli closely. All this meticulous work was then collected in a voluminous document, called Positio in Latin: a true examination of the whole life of the ‘great doctor’, trying to show how he had really lived an evangelical life in a heroic way, following the example of Jesus. Father Ambrosoli had not only read and heard the Gospel, but had put it into practice.When, as a bishop, I ordain a deacon, handing him the book of the Gospels, I tell him: “Receive the Gospel of Christ, whose herald you have become. Believe what you read, teach what you believe and practice what you teach”. From the day of his diaconate, Father Ambrosoli did nothing but this: living the gospel. He was filled with the love of Jesus, so much so that he felt he had to share it. That is why he kept saying: “I must love those who are not loved”.
I want to repeat what I have already said: the beatification of Father Ambrosoli is an inspiration to us all. Blessed Giuseppe Ambrosoli is nothing less than a gift that God gives us through his Church. My wish is that we all learn from him to love as he loved.