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Name: DALAIS, Maurice (Rev.)
Birth Date: 27.2.1880 Highland, Mauritius
Death Date: 4.10.1916 Mombasa
First Date: 1908
Profession: Roman Catholic Mission
Area: Mombasa
Book Reference: HBEA, North
General Information:
Henry J. Koren, Spiritan East African Memorial, 1994: He made his vows on September 30, 1903 at Orly, studied theology at Chevilly and was ordained there on October 28, 1907. His health was weak, but at his ordination he had asked the Lord to give him eight years of priestly ministry.Appointed to the Zanzibar vicariate, he sailed on July 25, 1908 to begin that ministry. Bp. Allgeyer kept him on the island of Zanzibar to assist in the busy parish with its more than 1,000 foreign Catholics from every race and country in that fully islamized town. In 1912 we find him at Mombasa, which by then had become a busy harbor town, the starting point of the railroad to Nairobi and beyond. Here, too, there was a large multiracial population that resembled the situation of his home country Mauritius. He aided there in the ministry as he had done in Zanzibar.
September 10, 1916 was a very busy day for him. He had organized the solemn silver jubilee of the mission's founding in 1891. Bp. Neville sang the pontifical High Mass, attended by virtually all Catholics and many others in commemoration of the first public Mass by the future Abp. Le Roy in Mombasa since the time when the African and non-African Mombasa Martyrs gave up their lives rather than their faith in 1631. In the afternoon there was a well-attended charity fair that produced a substantial gift for the construction of a new church. All this had been organized by Fr. Dalais. Perhaps he had asked more of his frail body that it could give. At any rate, he became ill and died soon after. It was noted that the eight years of active ministry he had asked for had been granted.