Brooklynites Travel to Ghana, Greet New Bishop

By Paul Moses

Techiman, Ghana – After returning home from four years serving as a priest in Brooklyn, Dominic Yeboah Nyarko was installed as the bishop of a new diocese in central Ghana in a five-hour ceremony that was an outdoor festival of music, dance and prayer.

Bishp Nyarko

More than 10,000 people gathered March 29 as Cardinal Peter Appiah Turkson placed a white mitre with gold trim on the new bishop’s head. Bishop Nyarko, 54, had been a parochial vicar at St. Columba Church in Marine Park while studying toward a master’s degree at Fordham University.

Two members of the parish, Deacon Larry Coyle and this writer, took part in the ceremony by greeting the bishop on behalf of the parish, coming near the end of a colorful procession that included a large contingent of chiefs in traditional dress and dozens of priests and bishops.

“It was a very emotional experience,” Deacon Coyle said of the ceremony. “The exuberance of the people was totally catching.”

In his homily, Cardinal Appiah Turkson set a high standard for Bishop Nyarko. “What must you be as a pastor?” he asked. “You become for them what Moses was for the people of Israel.”

Looking for Moses

As he explained, he meant this quite literally. “The people of Israel cried out to Moses for bread and water,” he said, adding that Moses had expected to be solely a spiritual leader. He told the new bishop: “You also have to perform the service to provide bread and water.”

The lack of drinkable water is, in fact one of the region’s major problems and typical of the kinds of issues a Catholic bishop in Ghana is expected to grapple with. Many villages in the new Diocese of Techiman lack plumbing and electricity.

“They need help,” Bishop Nyarko later said of his flock, some 79,645 Catholics in a region with a population of 695,826. In addition to water, he said, he will also emphasize education and health facilities, areas in which the Catholic Church is a key provider in Ghana.

He had made similar remarks about his plans at a Mass held by the Ghanaian Apostolate of the Diocese of Brooklyn on Feb. 17 at St. Catherine of Genoa Church, Flatbush, where Bishop Nyarko has friends in Brooklyn’s Ghanaian community.

Bishop Nyarko, known in St. Columba parish as an unassuming and hardworking man who never looked to be in the limelight, was treated as something of a rock star in Techiman, a town recognized for a huge flea market that attracts customers from throughout Ghana and beyond.

Bishop on Billboards

Billboards around town hailed his appointment as bishop, and T-shirts and handheld fans were sold with his image. On March 30, exuberant crowds cheered for him as he was paraded through the center of town – he stood in the back of a pickup truck – to the sound of a battery of pounding drums. Cheers erupted all along the route as participants and observers hailed him by waving white handkerchiefs.

The Mass that encompassed the ceremonies to erect the new diocese and consecrate its first bishop had a similar spirit, thanks to an immense, sweet-voiced choir, a resounding brass band and skittering dancers dressed in bright orange, yellow, red and green.

The erection of a new diocese in the Brong-Ahafo region – the center of the country – is a sign of the Church’s continued growth here. It was formed from the Diocese of Sunyani, located in the regional capital. Church officials said that 35 years ago, the Sunyani diocese had three priests. Now, there are 122 priests in the area it covered.

Under the leadership of Sunyani’s Bishop Matthew Kwasi Gyamfi, many of the priests have come to New York to study and to serve in parishes.

The lengthy Mass on March 29 was held on a sweltering day, but water was handed out to the people in plastic bags. The plastic seats, sheltered in the shade under tents that lined a soccer field, remained filled until the Mass and official statements of congratulation that followed it were completed. Then the celebration continued with parties in various church halls, and resumed the next morning with the parade and a Sunday Mass of thanksgiving that thousands of people attended.

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