EAHB 1906 - Rev. L.F. Demaison - Mombasa

North - Fr, Louis Demaison; Holy Ghost Fathers; arr. Zanzibar from Europe 2/11/1904; in charge of Zanzibar Cathedral 3/6/1905; Procurator, Mombasa Mission 1905.

Henry J. Koren, Spiritan East African Memorial, 1994: A brother of Fr. Charles Demaison, he had earned a M.A. in letters and done most of his senior studies when he joined the Congregation at Chevilly in 1888 and was ordained in 1889.   Together with 43 other young priests he made his vows on August 15, 1890 at Orly.  For several years he functioned as director of Rockwell's juniorate and then in 1898 went back to France.  In between he was for two years private secretary of the Superior General of the Congregation. In 1901 he was appointed to the Vicariate of Senegambia, where he served at Bathurst (now Banjul).  From there he went in late 1902 to take part in the mission started in Lower Nigeria.  Illness, however, drove him back to Senegambia in 1904. In 1905 we find him in East Africa at Mombasa serving as procurator.  From 1910 on he was pastor in Zanzibar's busy parish. World War One appears to have mobilized him as a chaplain serving the local Allied forces operating in German East Africa.  An illness incurred while on duty required treatment in Europe and he was sent to France. In 1920 we find him at Holy Spirit Seminary in Paris and then from  1923 on in Fribourg, Switzerland, as procurator. In November 1926 he resumed pastoral ministry in Mauritius.  He served there especially at Curepipe and was still on that island at the outbreak of World War Two. After that war, we find him still as a pastor, though by then he was an octogenarian, on the neighboring island of Reunion.   Having celebrated the diamond jubilee of his ordination to the priesthood, he died there.