Father Clem Comes to Clifton

19 September 2008

Father Clement is a priest from Malawi in Africa who has become a regular visitor to the Clifton Diocese.  He ministers in St Bonaventure’s in Bishopston, Bristol and St Francis of Assisi in Nailsea when their parish priests are on holiday.  cliftondiocese.com met up with Father Clem - as he is known to the parishioners who’ve grown to know him - to find out a bit more about his life in Malawi and what he thinks of the Clifton Diocese.

You can listen to Father Clem’s podcast in our multimedia panel on the right.  We also have a selection of images from his home country. 

Father Clem was ordained in 1996 and after a year in a parish moved into teaching at the minor seminary in Malawi.

His bishop then asked him to go to Rome to study church history at the Gregorian University where he obtained his degree and returned home to take up the post of Professor of Church History at St Peter’s Major Seminary in Zomba the former capital of the country

His first visit to England was Christmas 2001 and he returned for Easter 2002.  After that he was invited by the then parish priest of St Bonaventure’s, Father Michael Healy to look after the parish during his holiday.

In 2005 St Francis church in Nailsea also asked him to supply there and the next year adopted him as their parish project, raising money for a water pump to supply clean water for the first time in his home village. Previously all water had to be collected from the river.

Through other fund raising schemes he now has a reputation as ‘The Waterman’ and his third borehole has recently been completed. Father Clem does all the negotiations with the village elders, arranges the drillings rigs and supervises the whole job reporting back to the benefactors.

Malawi is one of the ten poorest countries in the world and food production is at a subsistence level. If the rains fail to come at the critical time there is a poor harvest and much hunger.

St Bonaventure’s parishioners raised money for maize in November 2005 and Father Clem hired a lorry, went to Mozambique and returned with 100 bags of maize which was distributed to 500 families. Since then he has been able to buy fertiliser each year to increase the yield from the land.

Despite his busy life as a priest and a teacher Father Clem has become a means of helping his impoverished people to improve their lives and wishes to thank all those who have helped in this ministry.

Val Anglin