Simon Mpeke was born in Cameroon to poor agricultural workers who were non-Christians. Early in life, Simon felt an attraction to Christianity and asked to be baptized. In 1935 he became one of the first eight Cameroonian priests to be ordained. Yet he felt God was calling him to some special mission. In 1953, he learned of the spirituality of Charles de Foucauld, a modern desert hermit who emulated the hidden life of Jesus and aspired to be known as “the brother to all.” Here, Simon felt, he had found “the path he had been seeking.”
From a newspaper article he learned about the Kirdi mountain people of northern Cameroon, a marginalized and often persecuted group, generally disdained by both Christians and Muslims as pagans. In 1959, with his bishop’s consent, he pursued his calling to evangelize these people. Yet he found a people with a deep instinctive relationship with God. His mission would become a ministry of service and brotherhood. Walking barefoot, like the people, he helped them establish schools and medical centers. In return, the people embraced him as a loving father. And so they called him Baba. As one of the elders said: “He was our son, our father, our brother, he was everything for us.” Baba Simon died on August 13, 1975. In 2023 he was declared Venerable.
“Everything that surrounds me breathes God. . . . To stand before God, one does not have to imagine Him anywhere else but in us where He is, in our action where He acts, in our neighbor where He lives. When we die, our body will be buried in the earth of God where it will wither in God and wake up in the Ocean of Eternal Life. . . . To believe is to become aware of the Life . . . in God!” —Venerable Baba Simon Mpeke
