Albert Ndongmo

Albert Ndongmo (26 September 1926 – 29 May 1992) was Bishop of Nkongsamba in Cameroon between June 1964 and January 1973.

Albert Ndongmo was born on 26 September 1926 in Bafou, French Cameroons, near Dschang, to a Christian family of Bamiléké people.

On 19 September 1940 he entered the small seminary at Melong, against the wishes of his parents.

In January 1947 he was admitted to the large seminary at Mvolyé.

A year later Castor Osendé Afana came to the Mvolyé seminary, and the two became close friends.

Ndongmo was ordained on 21 December 1955 at Nkongsamba.

He was appointed chaplain of the Nkongsamba diocese in 1959.

On 15 March 1960, Ndongmo launched the journal L'Essor des jeunes to impart Christian values to young people.

With this journal, Ndongmo wanted to provide a forum for open debate of contemporary problems.

He saw freedom of expression as the cornerstone of an integrated system of political, social, personal and intellectual belief, and attempted to use the journal for this purpose, although he was forced to work within a very limited budget.

The journal was stamped with Ndongmo's personality.

He used it, and his "ecclesiastical immunity" to ignore the censors and criticize the regime.

After Cameroon gained independence in 1960, Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC) rebels who had been fighting the French colonial government continued to fight the government of President Ahmadou Ahidjo, whom they considered to be a puppet of the French.

Ahidjo had asked the French to lend troops to keep the peace during and after the transition to democracy.

Led by General Max Briand, who had served previously in Algeria and Indochina, these troops conducted a brutal "cleansing" campaign in the Bamiléké territory of the West, Centre and Littoral provinces.

By some reports, over a quarter of a million people died.

The rebel leader Ernest Ouandié, a Bamiléké like Ndongmo, refused to recognise Ahidjo and continued guerilla warfare.

The diocese of Nkongsamba was in the main combat zone.

Ndongmo was named Bishop of Nkongsamba on 16 June 1964, was consecrated bishop on 16 August that year and was enthroned the same day by Archbishop Jean Zoa.

He succeeded Paul Bouque in this position.

He was the first local bishop of Nkongsamba, which at that time included the whole Bamiléké area.

In the later part of 1965 he attended the third and fourth sessions of the fourth period of the Second Vatican Council in Rome.

He made an oral intervention on "the ministry and sacerdotal life of priests" on 16 October 1965.

The intervention was incomplete, since his was the sixteenth and last of the session and he did not have time to conclude it.

Cardinal Lercaro, moderating the session, politely invited him to submit his observations to the Secretariat in writing.

He submitted a written intervention on "Christological, ecclesiological and anthropological foundations of the missionary activity of the Church".

Ndongmo was thought to have personal political ambitions, perhaps even aspiring to the presidency.

He understood and to some extent agreed with the UPC since he too was opposed to the dictatorial regime,

although he did not support the revolutionary guerrilla movement.

He sympathized with the Bamiléké insurgents but accepted that the region need peace in order to develop economically.

It was reported that he visited Algers from May to June 1968 to ask for funds for the UPC from the Algerian government.

Such a trip could not have been reconciled with his pastoral duties.

He may have served as a postbox, passing communications between the local and exiled branches of the UPC.

His statements on political subjects earned him the hostility of others in the church as well as of the government.

In 1970 he was arrested, accused of treasonous dealings with rebels, and sentenced to death by a military tribunal.

His sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment, of which he served five years before the President ordered his release.

After being released he moved to Rome and then to Canada, where he spent the rest of his life.

In April 1970 the archbishop Jean Zoa wanted to move L'Essor to Yaoundé and to make it a monthly Catholic journal for young people throughout the country.

Although he agreed in principle with the need for a national journal, Ndongmo resisted the move and the change was not implemented.

The regime viewed L'Essor des Jeunes as a subversive publication, particularly when it occasionally printed Ndongmo's pastoral letters, or extracts from his sermons, and suppressed it after arresting Ndongmo in 1970.