Meet ‘our brother’, my community’s shining light [Pulse Contributor's Opinion]

Not amid pomp or display or solemn requiem procession. He didn’t even lie in state. His body didn’t enter the church. He wasn’t lowered to tears of a weeping crowd or thundering gun cannons.

It was a quiet, anticlimactic descent into the dust.

When the pictures and videos made it to our family WhatsApp group, a young priest was coordinating four other fully masked men in their soutanes. Slowly, they poured red sand and covered the grave.

My uncle was interred at least an hour before the 9.30am slated time for mass, before a few of my kin - who could make the impromptu journey - arrived at the venue. And the venue wasn’t Umuaro, our family land. It was in Owerri, within the perimeters of Assumpta Cathedral, the stately church building belonging to the Roman Catholic Church, nestled in the heart of the Imo state capital.

My uncle was a priest.

The mass still held, but coming after interment meant it was already stripped of the routine anticipation that wells as obsequies near a crescendo, when pallbearers lift the casket. The arrangement looked every bit like putting the cart before the horse.

Born Raphael Okechukwu Madu, my uncle died Reverend Monsignor Raph Madu. And in-between were an array of other titles that depicted his steady progress in life: Brother Raph (the Seminarian), Father Raph (the young priest), Rev Dr. Raph (the priest who had obtained a PhD).

Embedded in the tiny dash that separates his birthday and death day were the intellect, grit, decency and charisma that thrust him on the national stage of the Catholic universe. He was the immediate past Secretary General of the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria, a prominent and truly powerful position.

For context, the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria is the administrative headquarters of the Catholic Bishops Conference, the forum of all bishops and archbishops of the Catholic Church in the country. The Secretary General heads the secretariat and runs the forum’s headquarters. Father Raph was the immediate past occupant of that seat. Just as he was serving out his tenure in 2018, he was reclaimed by his diocese -Owerri Archdiocese - and later got appointed the Imo State Government House Chaplain.

‘Monsignor’ was a fitting honour, bestowed on him by the Bishop and affirmed by the Pope, for his outstanding service to the church, service that spanned three functional areas of the church’s operation – pastoral, academic and administration.

Having lectured generations of other priests in Bigard Memorial Seminary, Enugu, where he rose to become Dean of Philosophy, he was the pastor’s pastor. He was once the spiritual director of all Knights of St. John in Nigeria and, until his death, a governing council member of the Catholic Institute of West Africa.

My community is distraught, and everyone is seething.

You see, Father Raph wasn’t my uncle in the sense of my father’s brother or my mother’s brother. He was that uncle with whom I shared ancestry. We were of the same kindred. He was an uncle to all sons and daughters of Umuaro, and the larger village, and the entire Nunya town.

In my place, if you mentioned “our brother” in your conversation, everyone knew whom you were talking about. If you were referring to another person, then it would behoove you to differentiate by saying the person’s name, like ‘our brother Chinedu’. Fr. Raph was that singular ‘our brother’ who needed no extra identifier.

Even his immediate family had graciously conceded the entire village, and even the entire catholic faithful in Isuikwuato local government as a whole, that endearment. Their son, the shining light, had become the son of the community. You never heard his siblings refer to him as ‘my brother’.

In his younger days, not many in my place had acquired tertiary education. Also, my community is mostly of the catholic faith. The priest (Father) is next to God. Simple. Whether he’s from the farthest recesses of Eha Amufu or the packed streets of Onitsha, the priest was god. So, when it became clear that our own son was going to be a priest, receive very high education and attract all that priestly deference in tow, the entire village tuned to his progress. There were casual gists about him on the streets, and intermittent formal announcements in St. Paul’s, the village church, at each milestone he crossed: Our son is now in America studying for his Masters; our son is now in Belgium studying for his PhD, the highest certificate in the field of learning; our son went to Rome, he sent us pictures of the Vatican, where he met with the Pope.

In all, he bagged three Masters and a PhD.

In-between them, he came home a few times, once with some white men and women, who spent time in our village visiting different locations, the jangling clicks of their cameras attracting the excitement of kids and fixed admiration of adults. One of their favorite spots was Ogbalelu, the premium river within my own hamlet, believed to be portable for drinking. Ogbalelu is a waterfall formed within the rocks buried in the hill from which the stream of water drops.

The tourists particularly liked the river, because its whole vegetation of many hefty trees was preserved by the village in deference to the gods. Monkeys lived and thrived unsought, screeching loudly into homes and farms in the evenings. Fishes in the river were unharmed.

The water wasn’t fetched on Eke market days, because legend had it that the Eke day belonged to the god of the river. The pristineness of Ogbalelu was an attraction in itself, and every new person in Nunya was taken there to see our monkeys.

All of this was before a certain parish priest posted from Mbano denounced the practice of abstaining from fetching Ogbalelu on Eke days.He called it idolatry and promised an end to it. On the day of the liberation, he took parishioners to the river, and baptized it, and christened it John and ordered members to fetch from it every day. That singular act became the crack that upset the natural order of that habitat. The monkeys gradually disappeared, receding far into the remote forests of Umueti, a desolate community whose only two survivors – from perennial communal wars fought generations ago – relocated to ours. Now their offspring live among us.

The trees got lumbered by some random natives, all for personal profit. And now, other than the hills surrounding the river and the stream of waterfall itself, nothing is remarkable about Ogbalelu anymore. If ‘our brother’ had brought the tourists now, their cameras may not have clicked with the same measure of enthusiasm.

Father Raph’s death was a real shock because, at just 65, he was one of those you never associated death with. That is a foolish thing to say, but we all have that person to whom we’ve subconsciously conceded longevity. He was one of them. He was - pardon the cliché, but it does fit here - larger than life.

That explains the struggle to accept his death. My elder brother conveyed the unsavory news to me on Sunday night, in a terse WhatsApp message that at once underlined his own struggle to accept the news and at the same time tried to convince me it really happened.

“...Our own Fr. Raph is dead.”

“Which Fr. Raph?!”

But I knew they weren’t two. We had only one of him, the community giant who had a presence, even in his absence, in the joy and sorrow of every family. He inspired a generation of priests in my community, because he was successful as a priest. In the entire local government, my community has arguably the highest number of its male children as either ordained catholic priests or seminarians on their way to priesthood. Those who are already priests are also pursuing higher education, just like “our brother” Fr Raph did.

You want to be a priest? Have you talked to our brother?

You are looking for a job? Have you talked to Fr. Raph?

You want to learn a trade? Have you talked to Fr. Raph?

The late Reverend Monsignor Raph Madu The late Reverend Monsignor Raph Madu Pulse Nigeria

He was the centre of every developmental conversation in the community; the community’s first son,even if he had tens of seniors. He had a vast network of high net worth contacts. His house in the village has hosted a number of past and present governors. Just last December, when he held a thanksgiving in commemoration of the latest – and now last – feather in a cap lacking space for more feathers, as monsignor, he hosted one sitting governor in his home, in my village, our ancestral home.

Fr. Raph. was the pride of my community. Stories were told, even if sometimes exaggerated out of limited knowledge, of territories he’d conquered and offices he’d entered. Such stories sustained a certain belief in his omnipotence; a belief that grew to attract him the reservations of many who felt not helped, even in the abundance of means.

But he at least had enough of himself to share. The more he shared, the more he had to go round. He would visit to commiserate with you in times of tragedy, especially if he was not personally there when the event happened. For most catholic families in the kindred, he personally said the homilies during family funerals. For instance, the last I saw of him was at the funeral of another uncle, the father of a younger priest, where he said the homily. He reminded us of the certainty and finality of death, and its unpredictability.

He seemed to have fully understood his place in the community, and was fully involved in its affairs. He shared his substance from time to time, sending money, even if little, to grieving families. For the men and women in the kindred, there was the assuredness of rice and vegetable oil and tomatoes to share every Christmas season. There were many years of slaughtered cattle or goats. There was even a time he sent bales of clothes to the entire kindred. And people gathered to share. Father Raph, the Father Christmas.

Where I come from, such men are revered, and expected to live really long. When they die, the entire community is thrown into full-scale mourning. One of the things that console is the chance to give the person a “befitting” burial. This often then compels the family to give some reasonable time before funeral plans are announced.

Befitting burial stems from an internal conversation with the self. You reason that the deceased was good to you, to all. You could have saved him if you had the powers to. But now that you couldn’t, you want to make him proud. You want to show gratitude. It doesn’t matter that he’s totally unaware of all you’re doing. It is such conviction that makes you invite multiple dance troupes, give 21-gun salutes and slaughter cows.

My community seethes because they were denied the chance of reciprocating his kindness in the only moment they’ve seen him helpless. They were denied both Fr Raph’s life and the chance to send him home in a blaze of glory.

First, they struggled to accept his death. There was no news of any illness, or that he was bed ridden - information that would have prepared them for one of the two outcomes (as they say in my place) of sickness. The death was still being hushed when, the very next day, his diocese released an official announcement. On Tuesday, funeral arrangements were published. He was to be buried on Friday, just five days after. Even commoners are not rushed to their graves in this manner.

The modern rule in the church is that people are buried within two weeks after their death. We

understand, but we had also expected that his would be stretched to the end of the two-week period – to give sufficient time for everyone to return. Not as if we hadn’t seen, or even witnessed within the same community, Catholics who died and were kept for weeks and months before funerals. Some of those burials even had bishops in attendance.

The feeling is that our most illustrious son was buried without the honour he deserved; a reality likely to limit the breadth of admiration our people hold for the catholic priesthood going forward.

His life inspired young men and their families to pursue a life in canonical service of the church, now his death might force a rethink.

To be fair to the church, the process they adopted in the burial may have been informed by the

rampaging Covid-19. But while this is plausible, it doesn’t dilute a community’s anger of not being carried along in their son’s funeral arrangements.

Years ago, during the funeral of my own father, Fr. Raph said the homily. He told an interesting story of a man, in a certain village, who was visited by death. The man, quite courageous, welcomed death to his home and served him lunch. While death was distracted with the sheer amount of food and drinks he was served, the host’s wife, as instructed by her husband, stole death’s roll which determined who was to be picked next. The family saw that their patriarch was top on the list, and quickly altered the arrangement, swapping their father’s name for the name in the bottom of the list. Thereafter, they secretly returned the list to death while he still ate and made merry.

Done eating, and impressed by his host’s hospitality, death thanked him and informed him of his desire to reciprocate the kindness by refusing to follow the initial order in his list. He told his host that he originally had his name at the top of the roll, but that he would now pick from the bottom. He took the man with him. The man died instantly.

With such creatively contrived anecdotes that brought focus to the inevitability of death, Fr. Ralph helped us deal with the death of loved ones. Now that it’s his turn, we will invoke them to stay sane, even as we try to make sense of it all.

May the Very Reverend Monsignor Raph Madu find eternal rest in his journey home.

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Pulse Contributors is an initiative to highlight diverse journalistic voices. Pulse Contributors do not represent the company Pulse and contribute on their own behalf.

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About the author: Chinedu Ekeke is a public affairs analyst, PR consultant and writer. He contributed this piece from Lagos.