Streicher, Henri

Henri Streicher was a missionary bishop of Uganda. Born at Wasselonne, Alsace, France, Streicher joined the Missionaries of Africa (also known as White Fathers) in 1884 and was ordained a priest in 1885. He volunteered for Uganda and arrived there in 1891 in the middle of civil and religious unrest. Appointed apostolic vicar of Northern Nyanza (1896), he was ordained bishop in 1897. By 1913 he had opened forty new mission posts. The growing work created three new vicariates: Lac Albert (1913), Ruwenzori (1933), and Masaka (1934). The last was the first to be entrusted to Baganda diocesan priests. Believing that Africans should be their own missionaries, he began a school for catechists (Rubaga, 1902), ordained the first two Bagandan priests (1913), and founded a congregation for Baganda sisters, the Daughters of Mary (Banabikira, 1910), and one for brothers, the Brothers of Charles Lwanga (Bannakaroli, 1927). He began the beatification process of the martyrs of Uganda and attended the consecration of the first African bishop for Masaka, Joseph *Kiwanuka in 1939. Retired at his request in 1933, he celebrated his episcopal golden Jubilee in 1947.

J. G. Donders, M Afr

Bibliography

N.a. “Monseigneur Henri Streicher,” in Notices Nécrologiques, 1950-1952 Société des Missionaires d’Afrique, Pères Blancs (1957), pp. 3-47.

G. D. Kittler, The White Fathers (1957).

Y. Tourigny, So Abundant a Harvest: The Catholic Church in Uganda, 1897-1979 (1979).

J. M. Waliggo, “The Catholic Church in the Buddu Province of Buganda, 1897-1925” (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge Univ., 1976).

This article is reproduced, with permission, from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, copyright © 1998, by Gerald H. Anderson, W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan. All rights reserved.