By A.M. Kelley
Superior Catholic Herald
Indian priest to minister in diocese this summer
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SUPERIOR -- Fr. Joy Joseph Mampilikunnal's life follows a very large arc.
From a childhood in India, to parishes in the Uganda outback, to university study in Ottawa, Mampilikunnal has come to know many different worlds.
Recently he came to the Superior Diocese to spend the summer giving Fr. Thomas Thompson a hand at his parishes in St. Croix and Polk counties.
Mampilikunnal stopped by the Catholic Herald offices on May 6 on his way to St. Anne's rectory in Somerset where he will be staying. He introduced himself and told a little of his interesting story.
Mampilikunnal is 43. He grew up on a rice, spice and rubber tree farm in Kerala, India (in the southwest). He was the fourth born of his parent's six children. When asked if he worked on the farm as a child, he said, "Of course. (We) dig the land."
Christianity in Kerala dates back to A.D. 52, Mampilikunnal said, "one of the apostles of Jesus, Thomas, brought faith to India." Although only 2.3 percent of Indians are Christian (most are Hindu), Kerala has a greater Christian presence.
Mampilikunnal's Catholic parents created a "religious atmosphere" in the home and by the time he was 16 he had entered a Claretian missionary seminary. In his class there were 30 boys. Six became priests. Mampilikunnal was ordained in 1993.
He commented a little on what it was like to be a priest in India.
"Politics and religion are mixed together in India," he said.
It is not unheard of for politicians to set the people of different religious affiliations against one another.
"They politicize religious issues and use religious sentiments to gain political advantages," he said. "Some political parties are self-made patrons of some religions."
As a missionary he's learned to "promote human life," never to look down on other religions, and never to assert that one is better than the other.
"You don't say to someone, 'You are a Christian (therefore) you are good,'" he said. "Whether you are Hindu, Muslim, Christian, you have the capacity to know God."
Mampilikunnal understands that his job is to live "the message of Christ and help the human being," he said. "You try to understand (each) person. Every person has an innate desire for the divine."
In 1995 his order asked him to go to Uganda to work as an associate parish priest while he learned the language and culture. Two years later he became the director of the diocesan pastoral center, which trains lay leaders and catechists. In 2002 he was made pastor of the huge Kiyunga Parish. It is comprised of 42 subparishes (called outstations) covering 15 square miles with 100-150 families at each outstation.
The parishioners farm maize, beans, groundnuts, potatoes, bananas and cassava.
"People are poor," he said, "but you find them more happy. They cope with situations well. They take life as it comes."
Needless to say, they have a lot to cope with. For starters there's malaria, "a most killing disease," Mampilikunnal said.
The next scourge is AIDS. In the 1980s and 1990s, 30 percent of Ugandans were infected with the HIV virus. Mampilikunnal said that number has been reduced to six percent today and attributes the decline to awareness programs and counseling, and to the use of condoms.
Regarding condom use and the health of his parishioners, as a Catholic priest, Mampilikunnal must tread a fine line.
"In the public forum you do not agree (with the use of condoms)," he said, "but (we) did not oppose it."
The health of all Ugandans is a concern to the Claretian missionaries.
"You don't just visit the Catholic families," Mampilikunnal said. "You visit everyone and listen."
He has a hand in the economic and social development of villages, noting that one health center involves the church, local people and government agencies.
Is he a social worker or a missionary? He is both. "In rural areas you cannot separate them."
Sent by the Claretians, Mampilikunnal has been studying at St. Paul University in Ottawa since August 2007. By May 2009 he expects to have a master of arts degree in mission studies and interreligious dialogue. Then he will return to his Uganda parishes.
Before then, Mampilikunnal said he has a lot to learn in Wisconsin--the first fact: It's a 30-hour bus trip from Ottawa to Superior. And what we have learned about him: He doesn't seem to have a word in his vocabulary for "complain."
Uganda
The CIA World Factbook, last updated on May 1, 2008 offers the following information:
Uganda is a landlocked country in eastern Africa, west of Kenya. It is slightly smaller than Oregon with many lakes and rivers and 21.57 percent of its land is arable.
The population is 31,367,972 and Ugandans have a life expectancy at birth of 52.34 years (in the United States the life expectancy is 78.14 years). The infant mortality rate is 65.99 deaths per 1,000 live births (in the United States this is figure is 6.3 deaths per 1,000 live births).
The CIA notes: "(the numbers) explicitly take into account the effects of excess mortality due to AIDS; this can result in lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality, higher death rates, lower population growth rates, and changes in the distribution of population by age and sex than would otherwise be expected."
The majority of its population is Christian and 42 percent are Protestant and 41.9 percent Catholic.
Uganda has a tropical climate, generally rainy with two dry seasons: December to February, and June to August.
© Superior Catholic Herald, 2008