Scottish Catholic Observer

A NIGERIAN priest has visited Scotland with a message of thanks for support for vocations in the African nation. Fr Julius Kundi of Good Shepherd Seminary, Kaduna, in Northern Nigeria, is visiting parishes in Motherwell Diocese and Glasgow Archdiocese on a three-month mission to raise funds to expand Good Shepherd Seminary to allow it to meet a growing demand for places from clerical students.

He visited Mission Matters’ Coatbridge headquarters last week and said he was working on Nigeria’s ‘happy problem’ of having too many vocations.

“We have so many young men wanting to become priests that we need to expand our seminaries,” Fr Kundi said. “We currently have 96 students at Kaduna, but want to build new accommodation to allow us to take 120. Even then, we will still be turning candidates away. I have already had a wonderful welcome in Scotland. People are friendly and are keen to support our work and I am very grateful.”

Fr Kundi also said that vocations were highest in the northern area of Nigeria, where he comes from, and where the Catholic Church suffers increasing persecution by militant Muslims.

“Catholics have been and are being killed and it’s very hard to practise your religion,” he said. “But it’s there that we have most vocations and, yes, there’s no doubt that our faith does flourish when there is some persecution.”

As a token of their esteem, John Evitt, Mission Matters Scotland development manager, presented Fr Kundi, with an engraved Scottish Quaich, and Fr Kundi gave John a cloth carrying a traditional Nigerian design.

—www.missionmattersscotland.org

—This story ran in full in the August 9 edition print of the SCO, available in parishes