Members add the nominal letters S.M.A after their names to indicate their membership in the congregation. Fr. Antonio Porcellato is the superior general as of November 2022.
History
Foundation
The Society was founded in 1856 by Bishop Melchior de Marion Brésillac with the blessing of Pope Pius IX.[9][10] The post-nominal initials S.M.A is the acronym of the Society's name in Latin: Societas Missionum ad Afros.[11]
Ireland
The presence of the SMA in Ireland began in 1876 when Fr James O’Haire volunteered his services to the SMA to go to Ireland to recruit English speaking priests for the missions. He set up an apostolic school in Cork in 1877, 'Lough View', on the Old Youghal Road. Later that year it moved to 'Elm Grove', Mayfield. In 1878 Fr Francis Devoucoux SMA came to Mayfield, Cork to take charge of the Apostolic school. Following studies in Cork, students would go to Lyon, France to study Theology and Philosophy, before ordination. In 1919 the first ordinations occurred in Cork for the SMA by Bishop Broderick.[12]
The Irish province was officially founded on 15 May 1912 by Bishop Paul Pellet, SMA Superior General, and is based in Cork. In Cork there was the Juniorate/Classical school (St. Joseph's) in Wilton, and the Theological Seminary, Blackrock Road. From 1914 to 1924 a novitiate for brothers was housed in Westport. In 1916, the SMA was left Cloughballymore House in Galway in the will of its owner Llewellyn Blake, setting it up as a seminary, St Columba's Scholasticate in Cloughballymore, Galway, with students studying Philosophy and taking a degree at University College Galway. The SMA Juniorate at Sacred Heart College, Ballinafad, Co Mayo, which was founded in 1908, by Fr. Joseph Zimmerman, it prepared students for the Intermediate Certificate with students then transferring to Cork to complete the Leaving Certificate. It closed in 1970. Cloughballymore operated until the 1950s when it was sold by the society.[13] In 1926, Provincial of the SMA Maurice Slattery bought Domantine House and estate in Co. Down, which served as the SMA Theologate, taking over from Cork as the major seminary for the society. Dromantine served as a seminary up until 1972, training over 600 priests in that time,[14] From 1972 SMA students were trained at the National Seminary, Maynooth College. In 1996 Dromantine House was developed into a retreat and conference centre.
Four members of the Irish province have served as superior general of the Society of African Missions including Bishop Kieran O'Reilly SMA and Bishop Patrick Harrington SMA. Currently there are about 200 members of the Irish province. Cois Tine (which means fireside in Irish) is an initiative by the SMA in Ireland helping immigrants from Africa.[15] The SMA administers two churches in Cork: St Joseph's Church, Blackrock Road, and St Joseph's Church, Wilton. The society also has a plot in St Joseph's Cemetery, Cork.
United States
Fr Ignatius Lissner, SMA, founder of the society's missions in America.
The SMAs began ministry in the United States in 1906, being given authority over Black Catholic ministry in the whole of the Diocese of Savannah—nine years after Fr. Ignatius Lissner first arrived stateside to promote SMA activities and fundraising.[16][17] The diocese then encompassed the whole of the state of Georgia, and as such Lissner and other SMA priests were responsible for founding some of the oldest Black parishes there (including Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Atlanta, and St. Peter Claver Catholic Church in Macon's Pleasant Hill Historic District).[18]
During his time in Savannah, Lissner also helped found the Franciscan Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary, in response to a Georgia law banning White teachers from teaching Black students.[19] Lissner enlisted the help of Mary Theodore Williams to found an order of Black nuns to teach there instead. The Handmaids were founded in 1917 and the group remained there in Georgia before following Lissner to New Jersey in the 1920s, and later moving to New York.[18][20][21]
Lissner started in 1921 what was at the time the United States' only integrated seminary, St. Anthony's Mission House in Bergen County, New Jersey. Black men were otherwise barred from all but one US Catholic seminary, and Lissner envisioned St. Anthony's as a solution.[22] Racism from the US bishops thwarted his goal, however, and only a few men are known to have been ordained from St. Anthony's. It closed in 1926.[23]
St. Anthony's Mission House, a racially integrated minor seminary founded by Fr Ignatius Lissner of the Society of African Missions in 1921. Originally located in Highwood, Bergen County, New Jersey.
The province's headquarters remains as of 2022 in Tenafly, New Jersey at the former seminary, where there is also a formation house and residence that celebrates liturgy daily.[25] The US province today has priests as well as lay missionaries, and is engaged in service in various African-American parishes and ministries.[26] They maintain a house in Dedham, Massachusetts as well as an SMA Formation Center in Takoma Park, Maryland.[27]
In keeping with their founder's goal of preserving the culture of the African peoples, the US province of the society maintains in its provincial headquarters an African Art Museum, one of five maintained worldwide by the society.[28]
Membership
All the members of the Society of African Missions—both priests and religious brothers, as well as the lay missionaries who work with them—strive to be living witnesses to the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the sixteen countries in Africa where they are present and among people of African heritage wherever they live.
For most of its history, the majority of the society's members came from Europe or North America. African men who were interested in ministry were discouraged from joining the society and directed towards their own dioceses. This approach changed in the 1980s, and since that time the vast majority of vocations have come from Africa and Asia.
Since January 1928, the remains of the society's founder, Melchior de Marion Brésillac, have been interred in the chapel of the Society of African Missions in Lyon, France. The society has opened his cause for canonization and the inquiry period was concluded in May 2000. All documents were handed over to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and await further action.
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