Short history of my priesthood vocation.
My name is Father Joseph Kinda. I am an ordained Roman Catholic Priest having just recently celebrated my 25th year of Priesthood. I was born on Saturday, May 29th, 1971, at 2:14 a.m. in the maternity hospital of Ziniaré, Oubritenga province of Burkina Faso in West Africa. I am from a family of 7 children. Among the seven, our eldest brother Clément Kinda “responded to the last call”, at the age of 39. My father, Bénekré Gilbert, who has already gone to the Father above, and my mother Maria Goretti Soré, are all Catholics and were baptized as adults. I would be remiss if I was to begin talking about me and my vocation without dedicating a portion of my testament here to my mother.
My mother as a living testimony
My mother’s baptismal life is for me a living testimony of courage and faith and it is from this courage and faith that I was born, formed and blessed. My mother, the youngest of five siblings, was given to marriage according to tradition. She wanted to respect the will of her family but did not feel that being the wife of a man she did not know and who, according to what she heard, was much older than she, was proper for her. Rather than trying to eschew this marriage, the one who is attracted to the religious practice of her uncles – her mother’s family- devised a plan to escape. Waking up early one morning, she undertook what she later called “a journey of appeal.” After crossing the bush alone, she found herself in the marketplace of Koassenga, a crossroads market, where the surrounding villages sell and barter. There, a man who recognized her and whom she did not recognize, called her by her first name and asked her what she was looking for. She replied to him saying, “I am looking for the road to the church of Guilongou.” The man picked her up on his bicycle and took her to the main road that led to the Nuns of the Parish of Saint Paul of Guilongou. The assistance she received from this man, she confided, reassured her that she had made a good choice. Two days after the nuns welcomed her, a strong delegation of men from her home village visited the Nuns. Obviously, the practice of forced marriage was quite common, and the nuns were known in the region as sheltering these young runaway girls from this practice. The young women were often assaulted and were ordered to return little Mariam. The Nuns resisted with a slight and subtle lie, promising to return their daughter if she came to them. The tension lowered and the furious visitors left. The nuns hurried the next day to transfer their new child to Kaya, a Parish located at around 100 miles from them. The tracks are scrambled, and little Mariam thus escaped a forced marriage. She no longer had any family other than the Nuns and the Priests. Thus, in turn, she was a boarder at the “Cours des Sœurs” in the parish of Kaya, Guilongou, Donsé and Pabré. Having been admitted to the Nuns at a very young age, she learned the craft of weaving and a few years later became the one in charge of training the other girls who shared her fate. The last community that welcomed her was Guilongou, where a young man asked the Nuns for her hand in marriage. Word quickly spread. The one who would later become my father was suspected of wanting to marry a girl who was cursed because she had been banished from her family. Encouraged by the Nuns and Priests, the young man did not back down and followed the advice of the Nuns until the celebration of his marriage to Mariam, my beloved mother. In the meantime, Mariam assiduously followed the catechism and became a Christian with the eloquent name of Maria Goretti, whose Roman martyrology states: “Called also Marietta by some…she was twelve years old when she preferred to die for Christ, rather than sin. Maria was born in the village of Corinaldo in Italy, in a world hit hard by the economic crisis. She was the eldest of six children and, as a result, was given heavy responsibilities at a very young age. She assumed them with serenity and piety to allow her parents to ensure the family’s subsistence. Despite the exile in a farmhouse in the Pontine Marshes, the early death of her father and a difficult promiscuity, Maria, at the age of 12, shined by her interior life. All in the ardor of her first communion, she underwent the harassment of the young Alessandro Serenelli who lived under the same roof and wanted to abuse her. She resists. The boy insists. On July 5, 1902, he armed himself with a knife. Maria does not yield and says, ‘It is a sin, Alessandro!” The boy loses his head. Struck with fourteen stab wounds, Maria will die the next day in great pain having forgiven her murderer.”
First trial of a new married lady.
Only a week after her wedding, the young woman, Mariam, encountered another difficulty. Her husband went to the capital city of Ouagadougou but did not return the next day as planned. There was no phone or internet, and no one had any idea what happened to him. In the village, people talked about the curse that followed the young woman. Some people asked the young bride to leave the village. The young woman, supported by her spiritual mothers, the Nuns, and spiritual fathers, the priests, remained stoic and refused to leave. The return of her husband five days later brought her the last necessary support and avoided the worst. Her courage as a young girl with no family other than that of the Nuns and Priests of the parish, found its origin in her faith in Jesus that she embraced. For years, she was unable to return to her family. God gave her seven children – five boys and two girls.
The true seed of my faith.
My mother’s story as told above planted the seeds to who and what I was called to be from a very early age. God had a plan for young Joseph Kinda. In 1977, my aunt, Agnes, my father’s older sister, who was married in the village of Bissiga, 17 km from Ziniaré on the road to Kaya, asked my father to send her one of his children to stay with her. I was 6 years old, and my father’s choice fell on me. In October 1978, my aunt, who had asked my parents simply to allow me to stay at her side and look after the animals, decided to enroll me in school. I see in this the hand of the Providence, for in Ziniaré, my father had only been able to send his older son to school. He told us how difficult it was to get a place for a child in school. For the younger brother, the father had gone to spend the night at the school to give himself more chance to have a place for his child. At daybreak, registration began and ended just before my older brother’s turn. There were enough people registered. My discouraged father decided never to enroll any of his children in school again, especially since he had financial difficulties to pay the tuition and school supplies for the older one. I owe my school education to my aunt. I always liked school. I chose to go to the seminary because a friend, the son of the catechist of our village, had gone there a year before. The results came in and I was admitted to the Seminary along with 37 others. I was used to being ranked first or second in primary school, but I found myself in 16th place when I received my report card for the first term at Christmas break in 1984. I realized that I had to wake up because I was now with smarter students. I was lucky enough to be in a class where everyone was pushing each other. Anyone could be first or last from one term to the next. From the 7th grade to the 12th grade, I spent the best years of my childhood. The teachers had a very positive impact on me and gave me a taste for Priesthood. Intellectual work, manual work, training in liturgical chant, sports – everything was skillfully arranged so that we would have the best possible formation.
As I am celebrating this 25th jubilee of priesthood, I often look back and am amazed to see the hand of God guiding my life every step of the way. After many various assignments in different Parishes in Burkina Faso, I was assigned to be the Director of Communication for the Archdiocese of Ouagadougou and a few years later the Communication Director for the Burkina Faso and Niger Bishops Conference. I often felt and knew God was guiding me to be the best priest I could be in my country. It was in the month of July in 2016 that I was ending a six year term of assignment at the Bishops conference office. My dream was to be allowed to take a break and go further in my communications studies undertaken some years ago in France. More than that, I was given the opportunity to come to New York and initiate building up a French community in the New York Archdiocese. Assistant Pastor of the Saint Joseph of the Holy Family Church in Harlem, New York, I was able, upheld by Father David Emmanuel Nolan who the pastor, to tend to the growing and fledgling French community present there. Never in my wildest imagination did I think that within one week I was packed and ready to go to America. When I arrived that hot August day, I was welcomed to the Parish by a large contingent at the airport and an even more thunderous welcoming once we arrived at my new home, our Church. What I must remember to state is that as the Director of Communication in Burkina Faso, I was ever-present on television as well as radio and thus was a well-known Priest to the people. My arrival solidified my knowledge that God can work wonders and make life happen. In the past 8 years since my arrival our Church has grown, multiplied and flourished with the grace of God as well as every single Parishioner that is a part of our Family Church. My Church family is my family. I am their father, and I am blessed to be able to minister and serve them each and every day. We pray together. We organize together. We gather like any other family for fellowship each Sunday after our 2 pm Mass. I cannot end this brief overview of my life without saying that God is truly the Father of all, the poor and the rich. He has a plan for each of us and He loves to see us fulfill it. I have memories of the famine years and how my parents struggled to feed and raise us. I have no memory of seeing them despair. Small and in faith, they led their lives sometimes in total destitution, lacking the minimum, but keeping their dignity. My mother, whose only relatives were Priests and Nuns, used to ask them to bring back a bag of millet or flour for her family. That I will never forget! The Church is truly a family of brothers and sisters gathered around Jesus. Those who place their hope in Him will never be disappointed. The more human man is the man who is closer to God, that is, who lives the law of Love to perfection. I am blessed and want to use my blessings to share the love and compassion of God in a different ministry as Father Joseph Kinda, Chaplain and Graduate of the Institute for Clinical and Pastoral Training Chaplaincy Program.