Question 1.9

1.9 What memories do you still have of these years in Ivory Coast?

I only spent three years at Saint Augustine Minor Seminary, 1957 to 1960. The academic program was rigorous and identical to the one in French middle and high schools, since the seminarians had to pass the same official exams as their student colleagues. Our professors gave equal attention to our intellectual, cultural, and spiritual education. Sports and daily manual labor were also an important part of the program.

However, daily Mass was the focus of our day. It was carefully prepared for and celebrated with fervor and solemnity, especially on Sundays. Special attention was paid to our liturgical education, so that we might understand the mysteries we were celebrating. Training in silence, discipline, and communal life helped to mold the seminarians, preparing them to develop their own interior life and to become true stewards of the mysteries of God. We learned to live together as a family, avoiding regionalism or tribalism. We constantly had to change our companion during our daily walks or recreation, so as to get used to living in brotherly communion with everybody, without privileging or preferring anyone. We thus were able to train to become the future priests of multicultural, multiethnic, and multiracial Christian communities. The priests wanted the Eucharist to make us blood brothers, one family, one people, one race, that of the children of God. The present archbishop of Abidjan, Jean-Pierre Cardinal Kutwa, was my classmate.

Guinea gained its independence in October 1958, and because of strained relations and the lack of cooperation between Sékou Touré and Félix HouphouëtBoigny, we had to return to Guinea to a combined seminary and middle school run by the Holy Ghost Fathers.