“I just wanted to be a holy priest.”
One never knows when God may interfere with retirement plans. After 25 years as a priest, attending Mount St Mary’s Seminary in Maryland in the United States and then serving in the Diocese of St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, 55-year-old Fr Neil Scantlebury – a native of Barbados – had begun to think of the twilight chapter of his distinguished clerical career: his dream of being a cruise ship chaplain. Growing up in Barbados in the 1970s, he loved crick- et (heroes included Sir Garfield Sobers) and movies (he confesses to now enjoying Netflix, especially action films). “A friend was a cruise chaplain and he also enjoyed seeing the world,” Bishop Scantlebury recalled over lunch in a hotel a short walk from the house in Speightstown where he was brought up. “So I had begun to make enquiries…”
But God or, to be more specific, his emissary Archbishop Fortunatus Nwachukwu – the local papal nuncio – had other plans after he met Scantlebury at a “Jesus Explosion” rally in Trinidad. “He did the final Mass, I was there assisting and so I met him. He then invited me for Mass and breakfast, and he got to know a bit of me.” The next thing he knew, his name was on the nuncio’s terna of three names to be the next Bishop of Bridgetown, Barbados.
In 2021 Scantlebury became the first Barbadian to ever hold the post. He took over from the high-profile Charles Jason Gordon, now Archbishop of Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. What makes the engaging bishop such an interesting choice is that it shows how much the Vatican is concerned about the serious challenges facing the Catholic Church across the Caribbean right now.
Still just 57, Scantlebury is well-suited to the task. He has made the abortion issue in Barbados something of a personal cause, along with the challenge to the Church by the growth of Evangelical Christians who are actively being funded to “knock on the doors of Catholic homes” at local parish level in an effort to “convert” Catholics over to Evangelicalism. “It’s a real problem,” he says, “not just in Barbados but across the Caribbean.”
Although the Caribbean is not divided like America, and most bishops lean towards the “traditional”, the Church in Barbados faces a lack of local vocations. Another concern is the closure of Catholic schools and convents. This June, the Ursuline Convent Schools are closing down, which means no more St Angela’s Infant and Junior School or St Ursula’s Secondary for Girls and St Francis Secondary for Boys. Since 1894, the Ursuline Sisters have provided a sound Catholic education in the Antilles.
“The sisters are elderly,” says Scantlebury. “It is sad. In addition, St Patrick’s Secondary, which was a diocesan school, also closed a few years ago. So we will now only have a Catholic primary school on the island.” Whilst Barbados used to have a fairly visible Catholic community (mainly Irish) in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, there are now only around 10,000 Catholics left (some 3.5 per cent of the population).
Until 1954, the only Catholic church in Barbados was St Patrick’s, the fine neo-gothic cathedral that was built between 1847 and 1850. I was delighted to see various British military standards still on display today in the church, including my local Shropshire Light Infantry. It has tessellated floors and stained glass, and stands in the precincts of Bridgetown’s historic Garrison district. Scantlebury celebrates Sunday Mass, where the congregation is around 150 or so. Whilst this may give a rather bleak picture of how Catholic numbers have fallen off on the island since the days when the large 19th-century Irish immigrant population – many were sentenced to be transported to the island because of their religious or political background – would pack into St Patrick’s, Scantlebury is not unduly worried “because this is where we are”.
The surge in Evangelical TV channels across the Caribbean hasn’t helped. But there is another historical reason: the declining Jesuit missions across the Antilles. The best example of this is the parish of St Francis of Assisi in Mount Standfast, St James. When I attended Mass it was packed, with a dynamic young priest and live-streaming of the service. Many were expats or tourists.
The parish was run by the British Jesuits. But in July 2020 the Jesuits quit the island with St Francis’s long serving priest, Michael Barrow SJ, handing over the once-flourishing Jesuit outpost to the local diocese. Part of the problem is that Barbados had become something of a sanatorium for elderly or ill Jesuits, due to its climate, and many were unable to be as effective as their energised predecessors. One notable eccentric in the 1960s was the splendidly-named Father Archibald Prime, who used a large clown puppet in his sermons by way of a prop to explain the gospels.
The British Jesuit mission began in the 1630s, when Fr Andrew White SJ (1579-1656) landed on Barbados en route to Maryland. Life was hard and the cost of living high (des-pite the abundance of exotic pineapples, he complained in a letter home to his Father General that a young pig was £5 sterling and a “turke” was 50 shillings).
In 1857, the Jesuit mission properly took off when the Vicariate of British Guiana and Barbados was given to the British Province of the Society of Jesus. By 1885 the numbers of Catholics had risen to 800 and a Catholic school was founded, along with the convent whose schools are closing down this summer. In 1897, the flourishing St Patrick’s church was burnt to the ground after an arson attack. Under Fr Patrick Hogan SJ (1846-1904), the cathedral was rebuilt with increased seating and with a blessing and re-consecration held on St Patrick’s Day in 1899.
To the Herald’s editor, Scantlebury appears as a throwback to one of the most affectionately remembered Jesuit priests on Barbados: Fr John Besant SJ (1859-1944), a convert who was formerly an Anglican clergyman. Besant was a hugely popular priest and social figure on the island as well as a designer of yachts and a “champion of faith and morals in pulpit and press” as he was described in the British Jesuit archives:
“He was a keen sportsman and an energetic member of the Barbados Yacht Club. He seems to have mixed much in the society in the island, known everywhere for ‘his gentle, cheerful and affectionate manner’,” – much like Scantlebury today. The challenging local numbers might be why the Vatican wanted to appoint a local man. “I think Rome is trying to get local people from their diocese, because it shows a sense of maturity and that is good. Having a local boy being in charge gives the diocese a sense of pride. We have done this. And so it’s really and truly a blessing.”
His vocation came as a boy on the island. “From a very young age, around five, I thought of becoming a priest. We had a priest in our parish, Our Lady of Sorrows in Ashton Hall, St Peter, and it was his example. I wanted to be like him.” His father was also a local deacon. Although Mount St Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore diocese is nicknamed the “Cradle of Bishops” due to the proportion of episcopal alumni since being founded in 1808, Bishop Scantlebury never thought he would become the 54th one of his home diocese. “It never occurred to me at the seminary! I just wanted to be a priest,” he says, “I wanted to be a holy priest.”
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