Bishop Joseph Henry Ganda Pronounce Dead
By Mohamed Konneh
Archbishop, Joseph Henry Ganda has been pronounced dead. He died yesterday morning, Wednesday 9th August 2023 at the Choithram Memorial Hospital.
Messages from the church Priest continue to pour in.
Life is good but isn't fair. Today you alive and kicking, tomorrow, you are no more. Oh Death!!! , You have snatched one of us again, once a very powerful figure in the life of mother church, this is coming from Father Peter Konteh, Executive Director of Caritas Freetown.
Look, today he is no more. Death is inevitable and a necessary end. My prayer point for him now, is for God to grant him a merciful judgement. May his soul rest in perfect peace.
“Dominus pascit me”
Archbishop Emeritus Joseph H. Ganda. Yours is done. Ours yet to be. The beginning of an end. May God bless the work of our hands. Not to us, but to Him be glory and praise forever. “The Church will survive us”, as he often stated.
Indeed a day of sadness and grief but with firm faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. You are now a seed of immortality. Alleluia.
May the Virgin Mother Mary hold you in her arms.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Amen.
The most Joseph Henry Ganda, Archbishop Emeritus, (born 22 March 1932 in Serabu, Bo District, British Sierra Leone) is the retired Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Freetown and Bo.
Born in the village Serabu in the Bo district, he was the first in the area to study for the priesthood.
He completed seminary training at Bigard Memorial Seminary in Enugu, Nigeria in 1955 returning home a Deacon.
On 9 April 1961 he was ordained the first priest of Sierra Leone (just two weeks before its political independence). He was made the first Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Kenema in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone in 1971.
On 23 November 1980 he was installed as the first native-born archbishop of the Archdiocese of Freetown in Sierra Leone.
While archbishop, Ganda oversaw the construction of the St. Paul Cathedral in Kenema, the St. Paul's Seminary in Regent, Freetown, and he is credited with encouraging young people to join the service of the Church, either as priests or nuns.
He retired on 2 March 2007, after almost thirty-six years of Catholic ministry. He was replaced as archbishop by Edward Tamba Charles.
