Arthur Walter Hughes: He Spent Himself for Africa Maurice Billingsley tories of poor boys rising to rub shoulders with royalty Kingdom. On one occasion he arrived starving and thoroughly Sare likely to involve a measure of ruthlessness and of wet on a Scottish priest’s doorstep, mistaken at first for a gentle- conveniently forgetting one’s roots. Archbishop Arthur Walter man of the road. Nearer to home, he addressed a distinguished Hughes did not take himself seriously enough to fall for these audience, including the colonial secretary, speaking for an hour temptations. He died aged forty-six as papal internuncio to the without notes on the slave trade but giving copious and accurate Kingdom of Egypt, beloved for his openness to Christians, Jews, references from his preparatory studies. and Muslims and his desire to be of service to all. Arthur Hughes was born in 1902 in Clapton in East London, In Uganda, 1933–42 an area with many poor residents, including a sizable Jewish com- munity. His parents, migrants from Wales and Ireland, were not In 1933 Hughes received his longed-for appointment to Uganda. churchgoers. England then provided free elementary education His superior, Vicar Apostolic Bishop Michaud, was impressed to the age of fourteen, but the more academic grammar schools when Hughes greeted him in the local language, Luganda, which were fee-paying and beyond the family’s means. Arthur therefore he had studied in London before departure. Michaud gave him left school at fourteen and took a job in a newspaper office, but responsibility for education, where he answered to another Eng- he pursued wide-ranging studies in the local free library. His lish convert, former headmaster Archbishop Arthur Hinsley, the reading convinced him of the claims of the Catholic Church. apostolic delegate, who was determined to see church schools in After being received in the church, he applied to the archbishop East Africa offer a good all-round education. His brief covered of Westminster to train as a priest. institutions ranging from village schools to seminaries and the Cardinal Bourne, wary that a convert’s zeal might not last, teacher training college, which Hughes called his “nine choirs asked him to use the next two years to discern his vocation. of angels.”1 He had responsibility for Catholic students at the When Arthur duly returned, still eager, he was dispatched to national university being set up in Makerere. In 1937 he insisted Bishop’s Waltham in Hampshire, where Fr. Pierre-Marie Travers to the governor, Sir Philip Mitchell, that outside England the ran the junior seminary of the Missionaries of Africa, or White Catholic Church had the same rights as the Anglican to set up a Fathers. This boarding school then housed French and English chaplaincy: “Your Excellency, you can not honestly deprive the boys. Arthur’s time was devoted to learning French and Latin, many believers in Jesus-Eucharist [sic] of his presence in their subjects not taught in elementary schools but required for his midst. He is their bosom friend, their inspiration, their safeguard, continuing studies in France and North Africa. their strength. Without Him their life becomes wasted, bare, dull, Small classes helped Arthur’s gifts blossom. He gained mas- and aimless.”2 tery of both languages, earning himself the nickname of “profes- Church schools in Uganda received grants from the Protector- sor.” He once accepted a challenge to speak on any given topic ate Government, although never enough to meet all needs. When in French for an hour, and he successfully held forth on cheese. Hughes asked for more money, he was told that he belonged Later, it was said that his Latin replies were more fluent than the to one of the richest organizations in the world. “The Church lectures of the seminary staff who used it to teach in Carthage. was founded on a rock, and has been on the rocks ever since,” Once at lunchtime, a salad was sent up dressed in paraffin rather Hughes replied, and won the increase.3 Like Hinsley, an early than olive oil. Priests and pupils pushed it away as uneatable, ecumenist, he cooperated with other churches to achieve benefits only to see Arthur chewing away, apparently quite happily. for all. His respect for other Christians led to his praying with a His sense of humor had already been manifest in Hampshire, Protestant school inspector whose wife was ill, an unlooked-for but the staff in Carthage were less sure about his punning in gesture in those days. three languages and misquoting Scripture, fearing he was not This was a time of rapid change for the church in Uganda, as serious. Eventually, they were convinced that he was possessed the vicariate was divided from 1934, leading to a major reshuffle of a joyful spirit rather than empty levity, and they recommended of personnel, with one area handed over to Ugandan clergy, in him for ordination in 1927 despite some concern for his health. preparation for the time, in 1939, when Joseph Kiwanuka would Disappointment followed when Hughes found himself “in exile became the eagerly anticipated first Uganda-born bishop. All this from Africa,” back at Bishop’s Waltham. Short and stout, he was meant extra work for Hughes, though he still found time to care a popular teacher despite having no sporting talent—other than for boy scouts and other young people. an encyclopedic memory for cricketing statistics. When the Second World War came, Uganda was not far This posting did not last long, as the society had agreed to enough from Europe to avoid the conflict. When Italy declared run a parish in Heston, West London. From this base Hughes hostilities in 1940, the Italian missionaries in the northern Vicari- could readily travel to speaking engagements around the United ate of Gulu were interned as enemy aliens. At the same time, as the town was close to Italian-held Ethiopia, the British army Maurice Billingsley, who studied with the Mission- requisitioned the main vicariate buildings to provide barracks for aries of Africa at school and senior seminary, teaches troops to counter any Italian aggression from the north. Hughes disaffected young people and has taken an M.A. in was dispatched to take charge, overseeing the evacuation of theology at the Franciscan International Study Centre, buildings so effectively that no losses were reported. Canterbury, England. That his was a temporary responsibility did not tempt —[email protected] Hughes to go easy. He began by writing a sermon and having it translated into each of the four local languages, so that he could preach from memory as he visited each mission. When 158 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 36, No. 3 he eventually left this responsibility, the vicariate’s work had attending festivals and praying with them.6 He also established doubled in size. cordial relations with the country’s Islamic and Jewish leaders. This was possible only because he was a true missionary, a man In Ethiopia and Egypt, 1942–49 of God before he was an Englishman. Hughes established clinics and schools, open to all, in the Hughes was sent to Ethiopia in 1942 to resolve difficulties for poverty-stricken villages of the Delta and Upper Egypt, sup- the church following the Italian expulsion, and then on to Egypt ported by his contacts at home. It is a tribute to the wisdom of after a few months. The apostolic delegate there was an Italian, Hughes and the Egyptian Church that the schools remained unacceptable to the British, occupiers in all but name. Hughes’s open throughout the Suez crisis and to this day; one of them is appointment was seen as a minor success by British diplomatic named in his honor. They were regarded as Egyptian schools, and propaganda services; his close but critical cooperation with not British. Such enterprises needed government blessing. Hav- the authorities in Uganda may have led them to believe he would ing established his credentials as independent of the British be useful, if not docile, in Egypt. government so forcefully on his arrival in Egypt, Hughes won Earlier in the year the British had parked their tanks outside the ear of the young king. (Farouk, notorious for his sensuality, the palace to intimidate King Farouk into changing a government respected Hughes enough not to bring on the dancing girls till seen as favorable to Italy and Germany. Hughes was well aware Hughes had left his company.) of the outrage this action had caused. From the outset he asserted Hughes also had a ministry to foreign Catholics in Egypt, his independence from the British. When the embassy offered to mainly troops, including Italian and German prisoners of war. effect an introduction to the twenty-two-year-old king, Hughes Although the British Army supplied a staff car for his use, he insisted on flying the Vati- can flag rather than that of the British. He continued to pray with clergy of other denominations, endearing himself to the army chap- lains by insisting on meeting their wives before an official reception. He once disap- peared from dinner with the chief of staff to make his way to the kitchen, where he delighted the Maltese cooks by thanking them for the meal. In the POW camp he helped set up a seminary for Germans who had sensed a call to ministry or, in the expression of the Roman Catholic Church, Archbishop Arthur Hughes who sought to try their as internuncio in Egypt vocations. and his nunciature As the war drew to a close in 1945, Hughes was declined, saying confirmed in his position as apostolic delegate and ordained that he did not bishop, but Egypt now sought full diplomatic relations with the represent the king Vatican, the first Muslim-majority state to do so.