ST. LOUIS–He came with a twinkle in his eye.
The Rev. Cajetan Ngozika Ihewulezi, a Roman Catholic priest of the Holy Ghost Order, migrated from Nigeria to the United States in 2001 with the hope of finding the equality and freedom that he had read about as a child. Today, he is one of an estimated 200 Nigerian Catholic priests nationwide who have left family, friends and home parishes for a temporary stay among Catholics in the West.
Once in America, Ihewulezi found that only some of his preconceived notions proved true: He has made meaningful relationships with his host priests and the Catholics he’s served, while concurrently working toward a doctoral degree.
But in his chaplaincy role at a local hospital in St. Louis, Mo., the city he’s called home for the last six years, Ihewulezi has encountered Roman Catholics who refused his services in adminstering holy sacraments to their sickly bodies. The patients wanted a face they knew, an accent they understood, a skin color similar to their own.
Ihewulezi also found that his mostly black parish in north St. Louis is plagued by poverty and drugs and riddled with abandoned buildings; the white parts of town, by contrast, are thriving and safe.
Ihewulezi's new book, “Beyond the Color of Skin: Encounters with Religious and Racial Injustice in America,” is the story of one Nigerian man's encounters with the real America, glories and blemishes alike.
He writes, “My soul will not let me rest, as I have become a slave of my conscience. What I have found in my research and interviews and my experiences in this country has deeper meaning than my own comfort. So I take this chance and turn the results over to God.”
Read an excerpt from "Beyond the Color of Skin"
Print
Email
Bookmark
