Follow Us On:
1) Whether in politics, economics, or even religion, our human dispositions have at all times almost remained the same. In the 5th decade of their mission in Igboland, the Holy Ghost Fathers began thinking of handing over the leadership of the church to the indigenous priests. The way they went about it showed one thing: human beings are basically the same. Just like the colonial government handed over to their foot soldiers to enable their neo-colonial project, the missionaries wanted to also hand over to native priests who were members of their congregation. Since there were no native priests who were members of the Congregation, the missionaries sent 3 priests, namely, Mark Unegbu, Anthony Nwedo, and Godfrey Okoye, to Ireland so as to make it possible for them to join the Congregation.
2) This motif was unknown to the trio (at least, to Unegbu) till they landed in Ireland. Nwedo and Okoye gave their consent to becoming members of the Holy Ghost Congregation and were immediately sent to the Novitiate. Mark Unegbu, on the other hand, rejected the invitation to become a member of the Holy Ghost Congregation. He wanted to remain a diocesan priest, as he was ordained to be. The leadership of the congregation was disappointed and vowed to make sure he paid for his stubbornness. My uncle was indeed a stubborn character. In his days as the supervisor of schools for the Umuahia diocese, teachers nicknamed him ‘Stiffneck’.
3) Recounting the discussion with the leadership of the Holy Ghost Congregation in Ireland on joining the Congregation in his autobiography, My Life, he recalls being invited by the General Superior of the Congregation: “Among other things, he spoke to me about becoming a bishop, but he clearly stated that that could not be realised unless I became a member of the congregation. The only statement I made was, ‘I shall think about it.’ I have been thinking about the matter till today as I am writing these memoirs.”
4) Shortly after that, his bishop, Joseph Brendan Whelan C.S.Sp., wrote him from Nigeria, revealing to him the decision to make him a bishop “but stating that the Holy Ghost Fathers would not accept anybody who was not a member of the Congregation.” Many years later, Unegbu said that he felt guilty each time he remembered that he never replied to his bishop’s letter nor went back to the Provincial to give him the result of “my thinking”. A few days later, the General Superior invited him to his office and also told him the plan to make him a bishop “with the same necessary conditions.” He gave him no answer.
5) Shortly afterwards, Unegbu was separated from Nwedo and Okoye when they entered the novitiate for a one-year programme. According to Unegbu, it was “a year of loneliness”. Writing further, he said, “I was left alone—the kind of loneliness I had never experienced in my lifetime, neither before nor after that event.” He continues: “With the departure of my confreres and brothers, things changed for me. I suddenly found myself a stranger among my brothers in the Lord. The situation was not envisaged nor prepared for. Things were no longer to be the same.”
6) The first punch came a few days later during the annual retreat for the members of the Kimmage Manor community where he lived. As he wanted to join in the second conference, the Provincial of the Congregation, who was the first person to tell him about the ‘bishop thing’, wheeled him around and said to him, “This is a retreat for Religious; go to the Jesuit House and join the Seculars.” He recalls rather disappointingly: “For the past three years of our stay in Kimmage Manor Fr. A Gogo Nwedo and myself had joined in the ‘Religious Retreat’ without desecration of the community.”
7) When he went to the Jesuit house, they also rejected him because they did not understand why he did not join in the retreat going on in Kimmage, where he lived. The Jesuit priest he met at the door simply told him, “Sorry, I cannot help you.” He banged the door and walked away. ” Unegbu continues: ‘The bang knocked me off. I stood there for about five minutes to recover my mental balance… . I went up to my room and decided to do a private retreat.”
8. 
“My next surprise came at lunchtime. When the bell rang for lunch, I walked into the main refectory, where Fr. A. Gogo Nwedo and myself had dined with the Kimmage Manor community for the past three years since we came. At the table, each priest, including both of us, had his allotted seat. When I entered, I found that my name had been removed from its place, and no other place was allotted to me. Everyone at the table ignored me. Then one of the servers, a seminarian came up and called me out and said to me, “You can go to the refectory in the section where priest-visitors dine…. . There I dined for the remaining year of my sojourn “with strange bedfellows.”
“My next surprise came at lunchtime. When the bell rang for lunch, I walked into the main refectory, where Fr. A. Gogo Nwedo and myself had dined with the Kimmage Manor community for the past three years since we came. At the table, each priest, including both of us, had his allotted seat. When I entered, I found that my name had been removed from its place, and no other place was allotted to me. Everyone at the table ignored me. Then one of the servers, a seminarian came up and called me out and said to me, “You can go to the refectory in the section where priest-visitors dine…. . There I dined for the remaining year of my sojourn “with strange bedfellows.”9) In the chapel, Fr. Unegbu was no longer allowed to sit with others, so he began to sit where visitors normally sat. As he entered the sacristy the next day to vest for Mass, he discovered that his name had been removed from the altar assigned to him. This was before Vatican II, when concelebration was not allowed. He was directed to a private chapel where retired and visiting priests celebrated.
10) During recreation after lunch, it was customary that members took a walk along the avenue. “To my disenchantment, I found out that no group had the rudeness to openly reject me or the courtesy to admit and talk to me. I was just ignored. Then I began to realise what it meant to be a secular among religious.”
11) In agreement with his bishop, Unegbu decided to do a one-year programme in education at the University of Dublin as he waited for his brothers. He pleaded to be accommodated in the College of the Congregation in Dublin, but he was told that there was no vacancy. “I then appealed to my bishop to let me go home.” His bishop told him to wait for Nwedo so that they can go home together.
12) Meanwhile, his bishop asked him to use the one year to translate the gospel of St. Mark into Igbo and to proofread the Igbo catechism that was being printed in Dublin. “Loneliness; a nightmarethat haunted my life. I was ever afraid of psychologically breaking down under the tension. It is difficult to put down in writing the mental agony I went through during the year.”
13) In autumn 1951, Frs. Nwedo and Okoye came back to Kimmage from the Novitiate. For Unegbu, “it was more than joy. It was a great jubilation to see the end of my loneliness. The reunion was heavenly,” he said.
14) On the day their send-forth party to Nigeria was scheduled in Kimmage, no one informed him. He was also absent because he had already planned to visit someone in Scotland.
15) As they were being escorted to the airport by the Provincial of the Holy Ghost Fathers, a reporter came to him and asked, “Are you a Holy Ghost priest?” Before he could utter a word, the provincial said to the reporter, “No, he wants to be a bishop,” and then turned to him and said, “When you become a bishop, you come, and we receive you.”This was for him “the last slap”. “What crime did I commit against the Holy Ghost Congregation?” he asked himself. “Nothing I am aware of, except that I did not get a call to the religious life.”
16) Upon their return to Nigeria, in 1958 the Umuahia diocese was created with Anthony G. Nwedo C.S.Sp. (1959) as its pioneer bishop. In 1961, the Porthacourt diocese was created with Godfrey Okoye C.S.Sp. as its pioneer bishop. Fr. Mark Unegbu, on the other hand, worked first as a parish priest and principal and later as the supervisor of schools for the Umuahia diocese, a post he had till the Bīafran gen0cidal wār broke out in 1967.
17) To cut a long story short, after the expulsion of the Holy Ghost Fathers in 1970 after the Bīafran War, the seat of the bishop of Owerri became vacant because Bishop Whelan was among those deported. Bishop Unegbu’s former househelp, Francis Arinze, whom he sent to the seminary in 1946/47, was the then archbishop of Onitsha.
18) A few weeks after the expulsion of the missionaries, Archbishop Arinze visited him together with Bishop Anthony Nwedo C.S.Sp. in his residence at Umuahia. Arinze told him, “The Holy Father has appointed you the Bishop of Owerri. Do you accept or not?” “Don’t be joking,” Unegbu replied. When he realised that Arinze was not joking, Unegbu said, “Yes, I accept.”
19) Exactly 55 years ago, on September 20, 1970, Unegbu was consecrated the first indigenous bishop of Owerri at Mount Carmel Church Emekuku by his former “houseboy”, Archbishop Cardinal Francis Arinze. Bishops Nwedo C.S.Sp. and Dominic Ignatius Ekandem were the co-consecrators.
20) My take:
Do not be desperate for power. Build yourself into a leader.
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* All the quotations in this write-up were taken from Bishop Mark Unegbu’s autobiography “My Life”, published by Assumpta Press in 2002. You can get your own copy at any Catholic bookshop in Igboland.
* The first picture below was taken during his 4-year sojourn in Ireland. The second one is the bishop and myself. It was taken exactly on Bishop Unegbu’s silver jubilee on 20th September 1995. That was also the year I joined the senior seminary.
