Baba Simon

Baba Simon was the name by which Simon Mpecké became known in northern Cameroon. He was born on 24 March 1906 at Edéa in the Sanaga-Maritime region of what was then German Kamerun, a member of the Bassa people. Baptized in 1916, he entered the minor seminary and later the major seminary in the Yaoundé area. On 17 December 1935 he was ordained a priest by Bishop François-Xavier Vogt, Apostolic Vicar of Yaoundé, and thus belonged to the first generation of native Cameroonian Catholic clergy. For more than twenty years he served as a diocesan priest in the south, in parishes connected with the developing church around Nkongsamba and neighboring districts.

In 1959, already in middle age, he obtained permission to leave the relatively established Christian communities of the south and to work among the Kirdi peoples of the Mandara Mountains in the far north. These mountain groups, neither Muslim nor Christian, had had little contact with the Catholic Church and lived under harsh social and economic conditions. He settled at Tokombéré, where the people called him Baba Simon, “Father Simon.” He lived in great simplicity, sharing local food and housing, and set himself to learn the languages of the Mafa and neighboring communities.

His ministry joined evangelization to human development. He promoted literacy and schooling, encouraged better agriculture, and supported rudimentary medical care. He sought to defend the dignity of the Kirdi against exploitation and to maintain peaceful relations with neighboring Muslim populations. His method stressed inculturation and respect for local custom rather than abrupt rupture with traditional life. Institutions later associated with his memory in the region include educational works and the hospital at Tokombéré that bears his name.

He died at Tokombéré on 13 August 1975 and was buried there. His tomb became a place of local remembrance. He has not been beatified or canonized by the Catholic Church, but in Cameroonian Catholicism he is remembered as the apostle of the Kirdi and as a model of priestly service among marginalized mountain peoples of the Mandara.