Meet Our New Priest; He Speaks Swahili, Gogo, Haya and (thank goodness) English

A happy birthday greeting from Liz Czajkowski, Parish office manager.

By Robert R. Schwarz

            You never heard so many "happy birthday, Father Gilbert" around the St. James parish center as on last April 13. (Actually, the birthday man was still a deacon and his birthday had been the day before). Still, no staff member took up the challenge to correctly call out his full name. But that will come in time, now our 33-year-old Fr. Gilbert Rushubirwa Mashurano was ordained May 12 by Cardinal George.

The big day of confirmation of Fr. Gilbert. 

At far left is his aunt. Behind her is his uncle. 

Young Gilbert is wearing the colored leis.  

        One of the first things you should know about Fr. Gilbert is what makes him happy. It's "people in a good relationship," he said. "I like to be with people. That's my thing." You should also know that Fr. Gilbert was born and raised in a small village (population 1,000) in Tanzania, near Lake Victoria, where the adult daily income is less than a dollar. He hails from the Haya tribe, 80 per cent of which is Catholic; their first parish was established in 1905 and now has five churches. "Before the missionaries came to my village," Fr. Gilbert said, "people would sacrifice goats under a tree, believing this would connect the unsacred earth to what was sacred above the tree." Up to ten years ago, his village had grass-roof homes which were without plumbing or electricity.

A chat with Pat Farrell, 

Jr. High Religious Education Coordinator

       Our interview was in the parish library, where Fr. Gilbert─in blue jeans, a green tee-shirt, and a beige windbreaker─ immediately relaxed from his drive from the St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein. He stands about five-feet-ten, weighs perhaps 140 pounds, and smiles often—quite naturally.

His speech carried that pleasant sing-song quality of Swahili one hears in Eastern Africa. Slightly raising his hands again to emphasize a point, he expressed sadness over people in developing countries who, because of a lack of education, are easily misled about important social issues. People who boast about their talents also saddens him, especially when they don't give God the credit for their talents. " This is God's gift to them," he said, "and they should be grateful that they can use their talents to help others."

When talking to Fr. Gilbert, one will eventually hear him say "other people." His penchant for using this phrase relates to his sub-Sahara African culture where—as this reporter experienced on three visits—strong family and village relationships are maintained more so than in other countries. "We can see God through our relationships with others," he maintains. "I see people in terms of relationships," he added and then expressed his respect for the acclaimed book I and Thou by Jewish author Martin Buber.

People skills was also part of Fr. Gilbert's formal and partly classical education. He studied philosophy—he still likes to read Aristotle, Plato, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas—at the Salvatorian Institute in Tanzania, where, he says, he was also trained intensively in "neuro linguistic programming (NLP) applied to modeling Jesus the leader." The institute required this course to help future priests with counseling and the sacrament of reconciliation. (According to one definition, the "basic premise of NLP is that the words we use reflect an inner, subconscious perception of our problems. If these words and perceptions are inaccurate, as long as we continue to use them and to think of them, the underlying problem will persist. In other words, our attitudes are, in a sense, a self-fulfilling prophecy…..")

Fr. Gilbert's priestly formation, one might say, begun with his grandmother, whom he recalls teaching him the virtues of honest labor in the home and on farm land and, later, how to pray the rosary. "My spiritual growth …is due to the good training I received from my grandmother," he wrote in a brief biography. Fr. Gilbert went to live with her at age two, after his physician father was killed in an auto accident and his mother began studying to be a teacher. At age 13, Fr. Gilbert moved in with his uncle whom, he says became his role model.

Having lunch in the home 

with his role model uncle in Tanzania 

Growing up, Fr. Gilbert played soccer, volleyball and basket ball. Though his Haya village saw malaria, typhoid, and some AIDS, there were no tribal conflicts.

In front of his hometown cathedral

      What seemed to spark him more than anything towards the priesthood was when he was elected dean of his high school students and bemoaned the fact that Catholic students had not seen a priest on the grounds in six months. What especially irked the young Gilbert was that, while Muslim and Protestant students had their own spiritual director, his fellow Catholics had no one to say mass for them. He wrote the diocese bishop, requesting that a priest be sent to the school. When waiting for the full year it took before a priest finally was assigned to the school, he helped lead a Catholic student prayer group. After graduation in 2001, Fr. Gilbert joined the Congregation of the Precious Blood and soon was enrolled in a three- yearprogram at the Salvatorian Institute.              

     The St. Joseph College Seminary in Chicago would be next on his horizon, followed by his seminary training at Mundelein.

Celebrating his high school graduation in Tanzania

      Looking back on those days as student dean, Fr. Gilbert—now with an intent look in his dark brown eyes—raised his hands a few inches and said, "I couldn't stand to see my fellow Catholic students suffering because they didn't have someone to take care of them." Later he would write in his short biography that appeared in the March 11 , St. James bulletin, "In my discernment toward priesthood, I realized that a priest's avocation is a special manifestation of God's love and a personal invitation to life similar to the one our Lord lived, a call to carry our cross to witness and follow him."

     When asked about his goals, our newly ordained priest grew quite serious. "I have spiritual goals," he said. "When I visited here [recently as a deacon], I told people I needed to grow with them, spiritually, intellectually, and humanly…People will be my teacher—in language and in cultural things." He admits to two challenges: being accepted by the congregation and learning English.

        Nothing he would like more, Fr. Gilbert indicated, than to be known as a priest who likes people "in a genuine way" who wants to make their lives better by helping them form good relationships with other people.

         Our priest from Africa, of course, has moments when he needs a light-hearted break from the heavy theology and church rubrics he must deal with. For that change of pace, he turns on the TV and watches the action-packed Jack Bauer "24"series. But even then, as he watches the heroic counter terrorist Bauer fights wickedness, Fr. Gilbert is reminded of his clerical responsibilities: for Bauer, commented one internet critic, does his job "at great personal expense." 

rrschwarz7@wowway.com

© 2012 Robert R. Schwarz 

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