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Name: LOOGMAN, Alfons (Father)

Birth Date: 15 Jan 1897 Amsterdam

Death Date: 19 Sep 1964 Baarle Nassau, Holland

First Date: 1925

Profession: Spiritan missionary

Area: Mombasa

Book Reference: Red 25

General Information:

Gazette 30 May 1933 Father H. Loogman (sic) Roman Catholic Mission, Holy Ghost Society

Henry J. Koren, Spiritan East African Memorial, 1994: His parents were deeply religious converts, who had the happiness of seeing four of their children including Alfons, opt for the religious life, He graduated from the St. lgnatius Gymnasium in his home town and spent one year in Weert before making his novitiate in the castte of Gemert. lt had been the home of Jesuits expelled from France in the 1880s, but was placed at the Congregation's disposal in 1916 when they had been were called back to defend with their lives a country that did not allow them to live within its borders. He made his vows there on September 29, 1917 and then went to Louvain to follow the courses at the Coilegium Magnum of the Jesuits. On August 28, 1921 he was ordained there. Despite the pleas of Provincial Albert Sébire to be allowed to retain the intellectually and artistically gifted young priest for the Province' he was assigned to the Vicariate of Xanzibar and in August 1922 he sailed together with Fr Michael Witte to Mombasa. From 1 922 to 1934 he served in Mombasa mission, which by the time he left it had over 4,000 faithful and catechumens. Three years after his anival he founded the Swahili weekty Rafiki Yetu (Our Friend), a deed that forced him to first train Africans to operate the hand press that he had purchased.  Buying it itself had been quite an experience. As he later related, he did not have the money and wrote to a friend who was negotiating its acquisition that he had to give up buying it because he had no one who would be his guarantee for the purchase price, whereupon that friend cabled him" "Press shipped. I am your guarantee'. He had a hard time explaining matters to the bishop, but the end results were very good' The only Catholic newspaper in East Africa, its circulation aimed at 10,000 subscribers at a time when the Swahili newspaper reading public was still rather small. As editor of a newspaper, he was of course obliged to become an expert in Swahili and he did it so impressively that he could serve as a member of the Government lnterterritorial Committee for that language. He correctly foresaw that, despite the diversiiy of languages in East Africa, Swahili would become the lingua franca known by all. As time went on, he published many works in Swahili, including two series of readers for the use of Catholic and govemment schools that were widely used in East Africa and sold an estimated two million copies. His elegant Swahili translation of the New Testament also sold some 15O,OOO copies.

ln 1933 hewent tovisit Bp. Wilson in Bagamoyo, who was on the verge of being transferred to Sierra Leone and desired to see Fr. Loogman as his successor in the Bagamoyo vicariate. The Apostolic Delegate in East Africa, Abp, Arthur Hinsley (himself about to become the Cardinal Abp. of Westminster) had called Loogman an "ideal missionary", he would undoubtedly have been chosen for that position if unfortunately the news had not leaked out prematurely. lnstead, in 1934 he became the principal of the Teachers Training School at Kabaa. At the repeated requests that his many talents be used for the formation of African priests, the Superior General transferred him in 1937 to the Bagamoyo vicariate. We find him there as director of the junior and senior seminaries at llonga; when they were moved to Bagamoyo and finally to Morogoro, he moved with them. The twenty-five young priests formed by him personally were a living proof that he was both spiritually and psychologically the right man for that responsible task. Twenty years later, in 1957, he went to Maua as novice master for the African congregation of Brothers, but still in the same year his Swahili expertise was again appealed to, this time for the ambitious translation of the entire Bible. lt led him to Tabora as chairman of a committee charged with the task of bringing out a Catholic edition of the Bible in Swahili. This project, whose chief work horse he was, however, came to a halt when the decision was made to publish an ecumenical edition of the Bible for all Christian churches. His view of the missionary task was far ahead of what was then commonly accepted and he is justly considered a forerunner of what in our times has become known as inculturation of the Church. Meanwhile Duquesne University had appealed to the Generalate to obtain his services as Professor of Bantu Languages at its lnstitute of African Affairs. He anived there in 1959 and began teaching Swahili. At the same time, he got a chance to prepare a new grammar and syntax for that language, one which would not be based on classical or European ways of thinking, but wholly follow Bantu categories. A book of selected Swahili readings was to follow that work. Both were published by the Duquesne Press in 1965 and 1967, but he did not live to see them in print. Early in 1964 he suffered as stroke. Realizing that the end was near, he retumed to Holland and retired to Baarle Nassau. He died there in his sleep a few months after his anival.

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