Part 1 of 4: Called, Not Cornered – Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Ahiatrogah on Becoming a Catholic Priest
Long before Emmanuel Ahiatrogah thought about the priesthood, his grandfather was building a church.
His father’s father was the contractor who put up the Catholic church in Asamankese, the one with the two towers. He died early, and the grandson never got to meet him. What Fr. Emmanuel knows of the man he learned from his own father: a Catholic, a builder, himself the descendant of Catholics. In that family, faith was handed down the way a trade is, from one generation to the next.
Today Fr. Emmanuel is a Catholic diocesan priest. At St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Adenta Frafraha, Accra, Dufe Voice sat down with him to ask how he got there, and what the journey has asked of him along the way.
Nobody at home was surprised
The family he describes is staunchly Catholic. His mother came from another Christian denomination, but on his father’s side the line runs back through his grandfather and great-grandfather, and he admits he has not yet done the full work of tracing it. So when he announced that he wanted to be a priest, there was no drama. For a family like his, he says, “it made sense to them.”
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The word he won’t use
Ask a priest what the priesthood has cost him, and Fr. Emmanuel will correct your vocabulary. To say something costs you, he argues, is to say you have been put at a disadvantage. What the priesthood asks is that you let go of certain things, and not because those things are bad. They simply do not fit the role. A lawyer accepts the limits of the law. A doctor accepts the limits of medicine. A priest accepts his.
He explains it through freedom. Picture yourself in a lecture hall, needing the toilet. You are free to stay and embarrass yourself, and free to quietly walk out. The right use of freedom is the second one. Because he chose this life freely, he says, it has not curtailed him.
“Freedom is using your free will to do the right things.”
A library of other people’s marriages
The harder question is marriage. Does he ever feel he is missing something? His answer is plain logic, delivered without drama. He will never know marriage first-hand, and he says so honestly. But grief needs something to grieve, and he cannot miss what he never had.
What he does have is a close view of other people’s marriages and how they are holding up. Over the years, he says, that has given him “an entire library” of experience to draw on when he sits down with couples about to marry.
“The truth is you can’t miss what you didn’t have.”
Nine years of finding out who you are
Becoming a priest is a slow process, and it is designed to be. It begins with discernment, the growing sense that this is what God wants of you. You then tell your parish priest, who watches you for at least a year to see whether the call can really be nurtured. After that, a vocations director takes charge of the process and you enter the seminary.
Two subjects are compulsory there. Philosophy trains students to reason, so that what a priest says is logical and reasonable and not driven by feelings alone. Theology then turns to God through scripture and through the tradition of those who walked with Jesus and those who came after. Together they take at least nine years.
The morning of ordination
Even nine years do not guarantee the ending. Candidates have been pulled from the ordination queue on the very morning of the ceremony. Fr. Emmanuel knows men who left in their eighth year, one year from the finish. Sometimes the man himself discovers that this is not his path. Sometimes the people responsible for his formation decide it is not.
That is why he insists this is nothing like starting university and expecting a degree at the end. It is a formation process, a process of getting to know yourself, and the person in charge of the process is allowed to say no.
“The aim is not completion. The aim is to be better.”
A different measure
We live among certificates, titles and finish lines, so it is unusual to hear a long road defended on other grounds. For Fr. Emmanuel, the point of nine demanding years is the person they make of you, and the honesty to turn back if the road is not yours. Whatever your faith, that is a measure of commitment worth sitting with.
Part 2 takes on harder ground: colonialism, African traditional religion and respect between faiths. Follow Dufe Voice (@Dufevoice) and subscribe on YouTube so you don’t miss it, and tell us in the comments what stayed with you.
LABELS
Interview, Priesthood, Catholic Church, Ghana, Faith, Dufe Voice, Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Ahiatrogah
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A Catholic priest in Accra explains what the priesthood asks of you, why he doesn’t call it a cost, and the nine-year road to ordination.
About the author: Dufe Edor is a student journalist, filmmaker and the founder of Dufe Voice (AWO), a storytelling brand that tells African stories through interviews, film and writing. His work focuses on Ghanaian media, journalism and cultural storytelling. Follow @Dufevoice on social media. Contact: dufestories@gmail.com
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