Fr. Henry Ussher celebrates 25th priestly anniversary

We need priests because Christ wanted to continue his ministry on earth. He appointed people to carry on his work, and we are ordained in that line of succession to carry on his work in the vineyard.”

Father Henry Ussher

God doesn’t call angels to be priests.

He calls human beings.

“It’s not by my own might but by God’s own grace,” said Father Henry Ussher. “God doesn’t count on our weakness. He counts on what he can use us for.”

Fr. Ussher — a priest of the Diocese of Wiawso, Ghana, who has been ministering in the Jefferson City diocese for 12-and-a-half years — celebrated his 25th priestly anniversary on Dec. 14.

“I thank God for choosing me from among his own people to be a priest of his Church,” said Fr. Ussher, pastor of St. Clement Parish in St. Clement, St. Joseph Parish in Louisiana and the Mission of Queen of Peace in Clarksville.

“Being a priest has been a blessing to me, my family, and the people God has sent me to serve,” he said.

Fr. Ussher is the seventh child of his parents, John Ussher and Paulina Akosua Afrim. He grew up in the small town of Asankran Moseaso in the western region of the African nation of Ghana.

He received the name Oppong Kwame at birth and the name Henry when he was baptized two years later.

“I’m Catholic by my Baptism,” he stated. “Because it was through Baptism that I became a follower of Jesus. The Priesthood doesn’t make me Catholic; Baptism makes me Catholic. And at Baptism, I received a calling to serve God in a special way.”

He was a stubborn and rebellious youth but was good at math.

“Growing up, I never dreamed of becoming a priest,” he conceded.

He figured on becoming an accountant or working for a bank.

Instead, he stayed home to help his parents tend to the farms they owned.

“For two years, I planted corn, Cassava and rice,” he said. “And I helped my uncle plant cocoa. The cash crop was cocoa.”

His home parish consisted of 88 towns, each with its own Mass station.

“Maybe once in six months, the priest would come to the town where I grew up,” Fr. Ussher recalled. “Each community had its own Catholic leader — a catechist — who was trained to lead Bible studies and daily prayers in the community.”

Young Henry began assisting the catechist in his town. This led him to attend the ordination of three priests in his parish church in 1983.

“When the men who were being ordained were asked to prostrate themselves on the floor before the altar, everyone went on their knees,” he recalled.

“And while they were laying face-down on the floor, I looked at them and thought to myself, ‘I wish I could be one of them.’”

He told his mother after Mass that he wanted to be a priest.

A letter arrived five months later, inviting local teens to take an entrance exam for the minor seminary.

“I gave them my name and went for the exams, and I passed,” he said. “That started my vocation.”

He was enrolled in St. Teresa Minor Seminary in Amisano.

“It was my first time traveling by car to a big place,” he recalled, “moving from a rural community to a coastal town, passing through our capital town and moving to a neighboring region at the age of 19.”

He had saved enough money to pay for his first term of seminary studies. His parents sacrificed to pay for his second term, and the local diocese took care of the rest.

“God’s ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not our thoughts,” Fr. Ussher noted. “He made a way. I am the making of the Church, and I am very grateful.”

The motto from Day 1 at St. Teresa’s was “Work hard, pray hard, study hard.”

“Discipline was the order of the day,” he said. “You need to pass your exams. You need to participate in every activity, whether it’s games or manual work. We had to be involved in everything.

“You had to obey instruction,” he stated. “Obedience. You had to obey. You had to submit to the rules of the minor seminary.”

All of this was meant to instill discipline and prepare the young men for a life of ministry.

“At the end of it, you’re going to serve people of all kinds when you’re ordained,” he said. “So you have to be on top of everything you’re studying.”

That ethic continued through his spirituality, philosophy and theology studies at St. Paul Major Seminary in Sowotuom and St. Peter Major Seminary in Pedu.

“One of the things they looked at was moral character,” he noted. “You had to be morally good. Your spiritual life had to matter most to you. You had to be in church every day. You could not abstain from any of the spiritual activities.”

Those 15 years of study and human formation had an enormous impact on him.

“The training you receive helps you to comport yourself in everything,” he said. “It also makes you humble. Respect for authority is instilled in you. We also learned to be punctual.”

He was ordained a deacon on May 22, 1999.

On Dec 11 of that year, in the Cathedral of the Star of the Sea in Takoradi, Bishop John Martin Darko ordained him to the Holy Priesthood for the Diocese of Sekondi-Takoradi.

“The joy of being ordained was something I’ll never forget,” said Fr. Ussher. “It was broadcast outside for people to see. And you walk in behind the priests, and the bishop is behind you. And when you look back, you see all the people who have gathered there for you! It’s something you never forget.”

A father to everybody

Fr. Ussher ministered for nine months as associate pastor of Cathedral of St. Joseph Parish in Sefwi Wiawso and briefly as associate pastor of St. Paul Parish in Adjoafua, all the while serving as social communications director for the Diocese of Wiawso, which was created shortly after he was ordained.

His bishop intended to send him to Rome to study communication at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross but wanted him to gain some pastoral experience first.

Circumstances in the diocese then led him to be appointed to his first pastorate — of Blessed Virgin Mary Parish in Adabokrom — a year and three months after his ordination.

The parish consisted of 10 towns in a remote part of the diocese.

“As a priest in Ghana, you’re like a father to everybody in the community,” he said. “Everybody comes to you, for prayers, for advice. You cannot count 10 people who have been through secondary-school education.

“So, with the education I had received, I was put in charge of everything,” said Fr. Ussher. “The road into town was not good, there was no running water, no electricity, and everybody looks to you to bring change to their life, to their community.”

For 10-and-a-half years, he labored to draw the people closer to God while helping to improve their standard of living.

He helped get a parochial school built, as well as with road improvements and the eventual construction of a hospital.

But to him, the greatest achievement of his time in Adabokrom was the development of a vacant, 25-acre tract into of the Shrine of our Lady of the Rosary.

“The town has become a spiritual eye of the diocese,” he said. “The shrine! Where people go to pray for help from Mother Mary.”

Every August, 7,000 to 8,000 people gather at the shrine to celebrate the Blessed Mother.

While working to bring electricity to the town, Fr. Ussher bought a generator to light the church for evening Masses and to run the public-address system on Sundays.

He did not use it at home.

“I chose to stay in the darkness because that’s how everyone else was, so I could identify with the people,” he said.

Power lines arrived the year after he left Adabokrom, and now, about half the people living there are on the power grid.

An act of kindness

In 2009, Fr. Ussher got invited to attend a conference in the United States, and his bishop wanted him to go.

The priest wrote to 40 U.S. dioceses requesting offerings for Masses, to help him pay the airfare.

The Jefferson City diocese was the only one that responded.

“They sent me $500 for Masses,” he said. “That helped me buy my ticket.”

This diocese sent him four more additional offerings for Masses, one each quarter.

Back home, Fr. Ussher received a letter from Bishop John R. Gaydos of Jefferson City, now retired, asking if he’d like to spend four years ministering in this diocese.

Impressed by how the people of Missouri had helped a priest they had never met from another part of the world, Fr. Ussher’s bishop gave him permission to minister here.

“And now, I’ve been here for 12-and-a-half years” — half the time he’s been a priest.

Cultural exchange

Since arriving here, Fr. Ussher has served as associate pastor of St. Patrick Parish in Rolla; associate pastor of St. Patrick Parish in Laurie and the Mission of St. Philip Benizi in Versailles; administrator of Immaculate Conception Parish in St. James, St. Anthony Parish in Rosati, St. Francis Caracciolo Parish in Bourbon and St. Michael Parish in Steelville; administrator of St. Clement Parish in St. Clement, Sacred Heart Parish in Vandalia and the Mission of St. John in Laddonia; and currently as pastor in St. Clement, Louisiana and Clarksville.

The first things he noticed here were differences in the weather, culture and modes of worship.

“African culture is active culture; you get to know everybody,” he said. “Church is active, with movement, dancing.

“The culture has changed me to love what is here now,” he said. “I’m getting to love the quiet aspect, the solemn aspect of Mass here.”

The impression his people in Ghana have of Europeans and Americans is that they don’t go to church.

“But here, you see that many people do have great devotion,” he said. “And most of the churches here have Adoration chapels tied to them, which we generally don’t have in Africa.”

He’s still getting used to the weather, especially the cold in wintertime. And he still prepares his meals according to Ghanaian norms.

The priests of this diocese have welcomed him and befriended him.

He appreciates the ongoing priestly formation he receives in this diocese, along with the interaction of his parishioners.

“So, when I go home, I’ll have something to share with them from here, just as here, I sometimes share with them how it is in Africa,” he said.

One Body

Fr. Ussher said his favorite part of being a priest is standing at the altar to lead people in worship and celebrate the Eucharist.

“Being able to administer the sacraments is what sets the priest apart from the rest of the faithful in the Church,” he noted. “My greatest happiness is when I’m offering Mass, or baptizing, or visiting the sick, or being in the confessional.”

He emphasized that a priest’s purpose is to minister to God’s people for the salvation of their souls.

He does this primarily through the work of sanctifying, teaching and guiding the people through the Sacraments and sharing the teachings of Christ.

“We need priests because Christ wanted to continue his ministry on earth,” said Fr. Ussher. “He appointed people to carry on his work, and we are ordained in that line of succession to carry on his work in the vineyard.

“So, we need priests today, we need priests tomorrow, we’ll need priests until the end of time,” he stated. “Because his work needs to be continued.”

He said that to be Christian is to live the life of Christ and belong to his mystical Body.

“The Body of Christ is the Church, and the Church is Catholic,” he said. “Jesus prayed that all sheep who do not belong to the fold will be brought into the fold of the Catholic Church.

“That is why we can never stop evangelizing people who are not in the Church, as well as the people who are,” said Fr. Ussher.

Thanks and praise

He reiterated that priests are human beings, and none are perfect.

“But when we give ourselves to Jesus, he can use us,” he said. “It is God who called me, and not by my strength, but by his grace.”

Fr. Ussher is grateful to God for calling him to be a priest and to all who have been part of his ministry.

He’s quick to thank the people of this diocese who have allowed him to work with them and minister to them, as well as the people who invited him here and helped him get acclimated.

“We have a wonderful bishop here, and wonderful priests,” he said. “I thank them for working with me and helping me.”

He asked for prayers for God to continue to make him God’s instrument, in God’s own way.

“I pray that the years ahead will be a blessing for myself and all the people of this diocese and my home diocese,” he said.

“And I pray that in this diocese, the young people will hear the voice of God and will join us at that altar someday, so that there will be enough priests to minister in the diocese,” he stated.