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Archbishop
Arthur Hughes WF 1903 — 1949
Taken from "The White Fathers"
by Glenn D Kittler, originally published
by Harper & Brothers 1957
 Arthur
Walter Hughes was a reckless example of a holy clown. He became an archbishop
of the Church and the papal ambassador to Egypt and he got more
fun out of it than a kid on a roller coaster. At one of the most solemn
moments of his life, he took time to quip. He was in Alexandria at the
reception of the newly appointed Copt-Catholic Patriarch, a man named
Amba Morkos II. During the formal toasts, Hughes rose and said with
great dignity: "Ad multos annos— as we'd say in English: “Forever
Amba."
Hughes had come from a poor English family and he had very little schooling.
As a boy be earned his living as a newspaper copy boy. He had a gnawing
crave for knowledge. He often spent hours in a museum or library, and
be had a remarkable ability to memorize at sight whatever he saw or
read. At fourteen, he launched himself on a study of comparative religion,
and a year later he walked into a Catholic parish in London and announced
that he was ready to enter the Church. The pastor prepared to give the
boy the usual preliminary catechism, but at the first session the priest
discovered that Hughes knew more than he did. He was accepted into the
Church immediately and then declared that he wanted to become a priest.
Such extremes of fervour were not uncommon in converts, and the priest
expected Hughes to calm down after a while. Instead, the boy applied
for admission to the White Fathers' seminary in Hampshire and was accepted.
 As
a student he had to compete with young men who had years of formal education
behind them, and it would have been understandable had be lagged at
the bottom of his class. It appeared at first that he would, particularly
in Latin and French both of which he needed for his higher studies.
In his other subjects, he was always the leader; within eighteen months
he knew Latin and French fluently, so much so that he could pun in both
languages, usually with Biblical inferences which startled his much
older and mission-weary professors. His faculty for languages was phenomenal.
In the early weeks of his study of French, he was seen carrying a grammar
into the refectory, and, to tease him, other students asked if he was
ready to take a test in it.
“All right," he said. "Pick any subject and I'll talk
about it in French for an hour."
Amused, the students groped for a subject, then one them glanced at
the food on the table. He said: "Cheese.”
Off Hughes went for the full hour in perfect French, astounding his
classmates not only by his skill in the language but his knowledge of
cheese. He admitted later that he was merely recalling from memory what
he had once read about cheese in an encyclopedia at a time when the
topic interested him. Years afterward he similarly astounded an audience
of the League of Nations Union in London when he was called upon at
short notice to give a talk on slavery. He talked for an hour without
notes or pause, his mind again full of facts he had culled from his
avid reading.
Hughes went to Uganda in 1933, where he was appointed secretary to the
bishop, plus supervisor of schools and a dozen other jobs. He was a
small man with short legs, and because it was therefore difficult for
him to stay on a motor cycle, he was permitted to use a car. It was
a tiny, beat-up English car, and the sight of it bouncing along the
rugged Uganda roads at all hours of the day and night became a landmark
of the White Fathers. Part of the mission-school budget came from the
government, a small part which varied in its generosity according to
the whims of the British agent for schools. One year Hughes submitted
an unusually large, request, and the agent asked: "Why are you
asking so much money from the government? Why, the Catholic Church is
the richest organization in the world; you ought to be able to get your
money from Rome."
"What are you talking about?" Hughes returned. "The Church
was founded on a rock and it's been on the rocks ever since." The
joke was enough to break the threatening unpleasantness—and he
got his money.
At the outbreak of World War II, the Vicariate of Gulu on the Equatorial
Nile in the northern part of the Uganda Protectorate was under the jurisdiction
of Italian priests and bishop. The British didn't want any Italians,
though they were clergymen, at liberty in the country, so the missionaries
were moved away from the area. For that matter, the White Fathers, because
of the internationalism of the society, were the only Africa missionaries
whose Italian and German members were not made prisoners of war. The
removal of the Italians required replacements at Gulu; the White Fathers
and African priests were sent in, and Hughes was appointed administrator.
Typical of him, he did not look upon the appointment as something temporary,
though it was, and he went to work at top speed, building missions,
opening schools, expanding hospitals. Four tribal languages were used
in the vicariate; Hughes arrived knowing none. He realized, however,
the importance of learning the languages not only for the convenience
of getting things done but for the respect which his knowing them would
indicate to the people. In the vicariate just a few days when he made
his first tour of the missions, he wrote a speech in English and had
it translated into the four languages all of which he memorised, and
he was thus able to speak to the people in their own tongue on his initial
encounter with them. The Africans were tremendously impressed and were
immediately his loyal supporters.
Hughes had
a genius for making people friendly and keeping them so. One of
the African priests with him was extremely shy, to the point of
being anti-socia, and the nuns at the convent he had frequently
to visit mistook the man's timidity for some kind of aloofness aimed
against them. Hughes learned about it. One afternoon he telephoned
the convent and, disguising his voice, said he was the hospital
administrator, that the priest had been brought in for an emergency
appendectomy and would not be able to go to the convent the next
day. A few hours later, he telephoned again with the same disguise,
and said that the priest had had a remarkable recovery, that he
would after all be able to go to the convent, but that since he
was so shy, it would be better if the operation were not mentioned
by the nuns. Obediently the nuns avoided the subject when the priest
arrived the next morning, but they were so overwhelmed by what they
thought was his miraculous recovery that they showered him with
such attention and affection that he was literally ripped out of
his shyness and got along beautifully with everybody thereafter.
On another occasion, Hughes was visited by some nuns who were, he
knew, starving themselves so that they would have more food to give
to the children at the school they ran. At breakfast, Hughes sent
eggs to their quarters, but the nuns refused them, saying that they
knew that eggs were hard to come by, that Hughes was working very
hard, and that he should keep them for himself. It was one of those
delicate moments when the slightest pressure from Hughes would have
caused the uncomfortable embarrassment which nuns suffer so easily
and lastingly. The nuns were happily surprised when Hughes appeared
unexpectedly at their car to say good-bye just before they left.
When they arrived at their school, they found tied to the car's
rear bumper a basket of eggs with a note commanding them to eat
the eggs as an act of holy obedience to their superior.
The Italian situation which had existed at Gulu was also true in
Cairo. The apostolic delegate to Egypt was Italian, and though he
was concerned only with Catholic affairs, the British government
felt he should not be there and asked the Vatican to replace him
with an Englishman. Again the appointment went to Hughes, and it
was a most unwelcomed appointment. It meant he would have to become
a bishop, and it also meant that his days as a missionary to Central
Africa were over. Hughes would have refused the assignment, but
in obedience to the Pope he knew he would have to take it. The British
were happy to see him when he arrived in Cairo in late 1942 and
offered to arrange an introduction for him with King Farouk.
"That would be very nice," Hughes said, "but I don't
think I should meet Farouk under British auspices. After all I’m
not here as a representative of the King of England but the Prince
of Peace."
Learning this, the Egyptians were delighted. Hughes became a frequent
dinner guest of Farouk, enhancing his position even more by learning
Arabic and always conversing in it. Farouk even then was an energetic
sensualist; if his parties did not always end in orgies, they were
nevertheless too raucous for a priest. Only once did Hughes have
to complain by asking Farouk to be kind enough to hold off the dancing
until Hughes left. After that, Farouk's parties when Hughes was
present were models of propriety. People wondered what Moslem Farouk
and Catholic Hughes had to talk about. Farouk, despite his dissipations,
was an intelligent, educated man who, weary of the terrified yes-men
who surrounded him enjoyed the company of someone who was bright
and well formed, who joked easily with him and openly disagreed
on any point of view he felt was wrong.
There were others who should not have enjoyed Hughes much, but they
did. Egypt had some three million Christians, less than a fourth
of whom were Catholics. The others belonged to various rites which
had over the centuries broken with Rome mostly for nationalistic
reasons. Their spiritual fidelity was to their own patriarchs. Important:
though they were severed from Rome, they had true sacraments and
priests. The Church of England, on the other hand, changed the ritual,
thereby losing its apostolic inheritance. After the break-off about
a thousand years ago, several of Oriental Rites in a sense returned
to Rome while retaining their own patriarchs and special characteristics,
again for reasons of nationalism. The Orthodox Rites remained apart.
It has always been the conviction of Rome that sooner or later the
separated churches would return. To try to hasten that day, however,
could be a mistake, especially in view of enduring nationalistic
differences still between the various rites themselves, and so the
matter had been left to time, to prayer, to God—and to men
like Arthur Walter Hughes.
Hughes was a warm and charming man with an abundance of sincerity.
Though he was in Egypt as a representative of the Pope, he attended
special religious services in other Catholic churches, whether or
not they were allied with the Vatican. His presence always stirred
a great deal of comment and wide satisfaction. Simply by being there
he was helping to bridge both the gaps between the various rites
and Rome. The people were as pleased as the patriarchs. When Hughes
was consecrated bishop, his pectoral cross and episcopal ring were
gifts from Eastern church groups which ordinarily would have dreaded
having so influential a Roman Catholic in the country. He was an
attraction wherever he went. Once his train south into Egypt stopped
at a wayside station, and he stepped out for fresh air. Word rushed
through the region that be was there, and hundreds of people hurried
to meet him. Even high-ranking Moslems found him irresistible and
were constantly sending gifts and doing favours. And when he attended
a party given for him by chaplains of the British Army, he enchanted
the Protestant chaplains by going first to them because, he said,
he was anxious to meet their wives. This was no pose; he meant it,
and that was why everybody liked him.
Evidence of his success occurred in 1.947 when Egypt announced it
would like to exchange ambassadors with the Vatican, the first Moslem
country ever to do so. When considerations began for appointment
of the Papal Internuncio, Egypt insisted that Hughes be raised to
that office. Now Hughes had experience to know that though he was
apparently well liked, there were many in Egypt who were uneasy
over the popularity of the Catholic Church.
There was an axiom among diplomats that one must watch his friends
closer than he watched his enemies, and Hughes was well acquainted
it. He was therefore not surprised when he learned that official
pouches mailed to the Vatican were being tampered with. He solved
that problem simply by sending in the pouch only chitchat letters
about the weather and everybody's health; his official observations
regarding the position of the Church in Egypt he put into ordinary
envelopes with ordinary stamps and popped them into the comer mail
box himself.
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Buried
in the usual heavy postal traffic, the letters arrived in Rome untouched.
At one time he discovered that certain prominent Moslems were planning
a long-term, slow but steadily increasing program against the Church
in Egypt and throughout Africa. Through friends, he acquired a copy
of the blueprint with the understanding that he just wanted to read
it and would return it in the morning. He sat up all night typing
a copy of it.
The Moslems found out what had happened and suspected what Hughes
had done. To keep him from getting the report to the Vatican, undercover
men were assigned to watch his every move. His telephone was tapped,
whatever be mailed was intercepted, everybody who left his house
was followed in the event that he had given the document to them.
Hughes was fully aware of all this and he thought it was a great
deal of fun. And he knew what be would eventually have to do. His
official position had put him in charge also of Catholic affairs
in Palestine. The White Fathers were there, running a seminary for
young men destined for the Melkite priesthood. The Melkites were—and
are—adherents to the Byzantine Rite which had broken from Rome
in the fifth century, but the Melkites subsequently returned. In
1859, the Sultan of Constantinople, a French ally in the Crimean
War, offered to France as a gift the Shrine of St. Anne, built on
the site of the home of the mother of the Virgin Mary. Friends of
Lavigerie in Paris asked him to take it over. At first Lavigerie
was hesitant because it meant sending White Fathers away from Africa,
for which they were intended. But then he accepted the shrine on
the grounds that there were Moslems in Palestine, too, who needed
the White Father influence. He had another reason that he didn't
tell anybody. The Melkites were in union with Rome; if other Eastern
rites were to follow suit, the necessary influence, Lavigerie felt,
would come from within the Middle East. It was his intention one
day to build a Melkite seminary in Palestine whose graduate priests
would be, in effect, an attraction toward Rome. He did not want
that influence to be too abrupt, and he felt it was most important
first to attract more schismatic Easterners to the Melkite Rite,
and the way to do that was to have a lot of outstanding Melkite
priests. He knew he would never get permission from Rome to open
a seminary right off, so he sent White Fathers to Jerusalem to take
care of the shrine and open a high school for Melkite boys. Three
years later, the Melkite patriarch visited the school, saw how excellent
it was, and said he thought it would be wonderful if the White Fathers
could start a seminary for the Melkite priests he so badly needed.
A request of this kind to Rome was quickly approved, and the seminary
began and has since provided for the Middle East scores of fine
young Melkite priests. Many years later the seminary became very
important to Archbishop Hughes.
In the midst of all the cloak-and-dagger surveillance of him, the
seminary provided Hughes with an excuse to go to Palestine to see
how the White Fathers were doing. The Egyptian Moslems correctly
suspected that he would use the occasion to get the anti-Catholic
report out of the country and they were on the train with Hughes
when it pulled out of Cairo. The Archbishop had two pieces of luggage.
One was a suitcase of his clothes, and this he kept open on the
seat opposite and dug into whenever he needed anything. The other
was a small briefcase to which he clung as if it meant his life.
He never let it out of his sight, wherever he went on the train.
The Egyptians watched anxiously for the first moment they could
grab it. Hughes even slept with it in his tight grip, resting his
feet on his opened suitcase. The Egyptians did not sleep at all.
The train pulled into Jerusalem; Hughes busied himself locking up
his suitcase. At the last moment, he pretended to be terribly occupied
with finding a porter to carry his suitcase and carelessly put down
his briefcase. The Egyptians grabbed it, jumped off the train, ran
across the platform, and boarded a train just pulling out for Cairo.
Hughes almost waved at them. He opened his suitcase and took out
the envelope containing the secret report and mailed it at the first
post office he saw. The Cairo-bound Moslems soon discovered that
they had only a briefcase of old newspapers.
Though Archbishop Hughes never outgrew the physique of a boy, he
did the work of a dozen men. When his regular duties did not keep
him busy enough, he took on extra chores and studies. He saw everyone
who came to him, day or night, however serious or trivial the matter
at hand. He was a prince and ambassador of the Church, and though
as such he could have rightly lived in a certain elegance, he rejected
anything resembling luxury. If he knew he had a sumptuous banquet
to attend, he privately fasted for days before it. His work in Cairo
freed him from the rules of the White Fathers, but he nevertheless
kept them. He was up at five every morning for his meditation, and
whatever his schedule, he took time to join the priests who worked
for him in the daily religious exercises. The spiritual depth he
had evinced as a young man remained with him all his life. Once,
soon after his ordination, an elderly priest served his Mass and
told him afterward, "Young man, I want you to say a Hail Mary
every day of your life for the grace to say Mass as you did this
morning."
The same could have been said of his piety the day he died. He had,
in 1949, gone back to England for what was supposed to be a rest,
but he arrived in London with a long list of chores and favours
to be done. Up at five every morning, he was off to the parish church
and back by the time his parents awoke and found that he had made
their morning tea and brought it to them. Then out he went on the
endless round of work. He had been warned by doctors that he had
a bad heart, but he never let this deter him from what he felt had
to be done. Nevertheless, there were times when he was too exhausted
to take another step. Once, visiting a White Fathers' house upcountry,
he went to his room for some papers he had been discussing, but
did not return. The priests looked for him. He had fallen asleep
on the bed, fully dressed, and remained there for thirty hours.
The tensions and pressures of his work in Egypt were beginning to
tell on him. His family and fellow priests were worried; they insisted
that he see a heart specialist, and he reluctantly agreed. Three
days before his scheduled appointment, he suffered an attack while
driving in London but managed to get home safely.
The night preceding the appointment, he had two more attacks, and
the second was fatal. It was when his confréres were examining
his personal effects that they discovered the extent of his mortifications.
Bent on sanctity, he had had hidden away several instruments of
penance, used apparently as reminders of vigilance against whatever
shortcomings he must have felt were keeping him from a complete
union with God. The discovery was a great surprise, and it was further
evidence of his determination for piety. His sudden death at forty-seven
shocked everyone into a sense of loss; people grew jealous of Heaven.
Friends remembering him these days always cap their remarks of his
achievements with: "Oh, he was a charmer.” That, too,
is a trait of saints. |
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Fond
Memories of Fr Duffy
Father
Walsh, as he was known to us when he was parish priest at Heston, was
a outstanding character —
as you will have gathered if
you have read "The History
of the White Fathers in Scotland"
on Page 11 of the HISTORIES section (attributed to Fr Marchant).
Inspired
by a White Father uncle, Alice left her home in Northern Ireland to
join the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa in Heston, Middlesex.