Fr. Gregory Kubowicz, SVD

Fr. Gregory Kubowicz, SVD, was born in Krakow, Poland. He professed First Vows as a Divine Word Missionary in 1980 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1989. He is currently assigned to the Yendi District in Ghana, West Africa.

Divine Word Missionaries arrived in the Yendi District of Ghana forty years ago. Parishes were established in Yendi, Bimbila, Chamba, Tatale, Saboba and Chereponi. In 1999, Yendi was established as a diocese and Vincent Boi Nai SVD was named its first bishop.

The larger towns of the Yendi District, especially Yendi and Bimbila, were inhabited by Dagomba people who were mostly Muslim. The smaller villages and townships were populated by tribes that remained faithful to their traditional beliefs and were open to the Christian message.   The largest tribe was the Konkomba and the missionaries translated the Bible, Catholic prayers and liturgical texts into their language. Today the Konkombas have the entire Bible printed in their language, as well as a prayer book, a catechism and the Sacramentary. This is very helpful, because the Konkomba are so numerous and inhabit a large area of land. However, there are many local dialects that have no written system at all.

Although English is the official language of Ghana and English is taught in the schools, illiteracy is widespread, especially in northern Ghana. This presents a great challenge to evangelization and to providing basic skills to the population.

Yet, all is not lost. While the living conditions of villagers have not changed much, some forms of modern technology have become quite common. The major towns in the Yendi region and many of the smaller villages have electricity. The market is flooded with cheap radios, tape players and CD players. Batteries that were once used only for lighting are now purchased mainly for electronic devices, especially in villages where there is no electricity.

This development has opened up a new industry. Budding musicians, even if they do not know how to read or write, can travel to the capital city, record their music on cassettes and return home to sell the tapes. Villagers are anxious to buy these cassettes because they are produced in their native language. Some of the churches have adopted similar methods. One church, for example, has recorded on audiocassettes the entire New Testament in Likpakpaln dialect. Divine Word Missionaries has opened a recording studio in Yendi and our missionaries are cooperating with others to begin an FM radio station that will broadcast in local languages.

Even after forty years, Divine Word Missionaries are learning new ways of evangelization.