Foreign priests fill need in U.S. parishes

NORTH TROY, Vt. (AP) -- For the last eight months, the Rev. Henry Mlinganisa has been getting a lesson in American culture. His parishioners at St. Vincent de Paul church, meanwhile, have been learning about Roman Catholic life in Tanzania, the East African nation where he comes from.
And they're grateful to have him.
"If it wasn't for Father Henry, we would be closed," said retired farmer Ernest Choquette, 65, who has attended the simple wooden church a half-mile from the Canadian border since he was 2 years old. "When we had a surplus of priests and a surplus of sisters, we went over to Africa and ministered to their people. Now, they are coming back and ministering to us."
Father Mlinganisa is one of eight foreign priests brought to Vermont to help the Catholic Diocese of Burlington alleviate its well-known priest shortage that has forced the closure of churches across the state.
It's a practice being used by Catholic dioceses across the country.
A 1999-2000 study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University found that about 16 percent of active priests in U.S. dioceses were from outside the country. That number has likely increased since then.
While the number of priests in Europe and the Americas has dropped, the clergy ranks have grown in Africa and Asia, according to recently released Vatican statistics.
Foreign-born priests are serving all over Vermont. There's another Tanzanian priest in Brattleboro, two Nigerians at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, one in Fairfax and one in Wilmington. There's an English priest in Enosburg and a Filipino who works in the diocese offices in Burlington.
Marking 25th anniversary
Father Mlinganisa's journey began when he asked for a four-month sabbatical in the United States to coincide with the 25th anniversary of his becoming a priest. Instead his bishop sent him to Vermont for four years.
Now Father Mlinganisa does his turn at the North Country Hospital in Newport, meets with his parishioners and learns the ways of rural Vermont.
Over his lifetime, Choquette has watched as the number of priests in Vermont has dwindled and rural churches have been shuttered and parishes consolidated. He said he feared that without Father Mlinganisa the church where his seven children were married would have closed.
"When he decided to come into the rural area it gave us a whole new opportunity to keep our churches open," Choquette said.
Everyone involved recognizes the irony of missionaries from Africa and elsewhere leaving their Third World countries to share their faith in the United States. But even if he speaks with an accent and comes from a church with no electricity, the church's message is the same.
"What we read on Sunday here is the same Gospel read throughout the world," Father Mlinganisa said.
Integral to church
Father Mlinganisa, (pronounced Ma-LYNN'-ga-knee-sa) a wiry 55-year-old man who loves to play soccer and volleyball and ride his bike, said sharing is a part of the church.
"The nature of the church is missionary," Father Mlinganisa said. "By its nature, we are not bound to remain where we are incarnated."
Catholic dioceses across the country are using foreign priests to make up the well-documented shortage of priests.
"Historically we've always had missionary priests coming to this country," said Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington. "Of late we are seeing them again. It's all over the country."
But Sister Walsh said the imported priests were arranged by the individual dioceses and no one was tracking the numbers.
The hope is that Vermont's imported priests will help fill the immediate need for priests, said the Rev. John McDermott, the diocese's chancellor. Seven of the diocese's eight international priests are temporarily assigned to the United States: Father Mlinganisa's appointment is for four years.
"The prayer is that as the years progress we generate more vocations to the priesthood here in Vermont," he said.
Dwindling numbers
From a peak of more than 200 clerics in the 1950s and 1960s, there are now about 85 priests to minister to the spiritual needs of the state's 118,000 Catholics in 124 parishes and missions.
McDermott said the diocese ordains an average of 1.5 new priests a year, not enough to keep up with the aging population of priests, whose average age is now in the 60s. To reverse the loss, they'd need to ordain four to five new priests a year.
But in Africa the church is thriving. Father Mlinganisa comes from a diocese on the western shore of Lake Victoria where there is an abundance of priests. On Sundays, there isn't a seat in the pews for any of a series of Masses, Mlinganisa said.
He arrived in Vermont last March and spent the first few months of his stay living in St. Albans with an American priest to get accustomed to the United States and Vermont and serving area parishes. In June he was sent to North Troy.
Mlinganisa lives in the rectory beside St. Vincent in North Troy, but he also serves Sacred Heart Church in Troy and St. Ignatius in Lowell, about eight miles from home.
"We parishioners have been exposed to a different culture that we have never been exposed to before," Choquette said. "He often talks about his country and how things are done up there."
Some of the differences are as basic as the homes they live in.
"We just took it for granted," Choquette said. There "the houses are for shelter during rainstorms, they don't use shelter for heat and cooling. ... We've learned to appreciate highways, a lot of things that we took for granted. It's made us a little less complaining."
Bumps in the road
It's not always easy. It's hard for some of the parishioners to understand Father Mlinganisa's message through his accent (Swahili is his first language) and he doesn't always answer questions directly, a cultural difference, said Troy church member Jim Cunningham, who, despite the concerns, thinks Father Mlinganisa's presence is a blessing.
"They're known for their storytelling," Cunningham said. "He's a storytelling type of moralist. He doesn't preach fire and brimstone. He lets the people figure out their place in the story."
Father Mlinganisa had to make adjustments, too. He had to cut in half the length of the Masses he celebrates to about 45 minutes and shorten his homilies to seven to 10 minutes. And his churches are rarely full.
One exception was Dec. 10, when Bishop Salvatore Matano officiated at a Mass to celebrate Father Mlinganisa's 25 years in the priesthood. Every seat in the church was full and then the congregation put on a big dinner in his honor.
"It was a great outpouring of love for him on his anniversary," Father McDermott said. "Considering he was so new to the area I think it was an indication of how he'd really touched peoples' lives."
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