Father Campbell has been in Ghana since 1971
Book on Fr. Campbell celebrates his work with lepers
A book on the life and impact of the revered Catholic priest, Rev. Fr. Andrew Campbell, has given details about how the Weija Leprosarium came to settle at Weija.
The book “The Lepers’ Priest, Fifty Year of Missionary Impact in Ghana, 1971-2021: Celebrating the Life and Works of Reverend Father Andrew Campbell, SVD” details how the people of a suburb of La, in Accra, turned the lepers away, calling for them to be ostracized.
“The Weija Leprosarium was started in 1949, completed in the first quarter of 1950, and occupied by the first batch of eighty-five (85) lepers in August 1950.
“What necessitated the construction of the Leprosarium was that, the opinion leaders and residents of one of the suburbs in Accra, Jomo in La, where the La Poly Clinic is currently situated, openly objected to having lepers being part of their community. They wanted the lepers to be ostracized from the community,” portions of the book said.
The narration, as written by author, Maria Marciana Kuusaana, a history lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, also explained how so much pressure kept mounting on them so much that one Dr. McCarthy had to quickly step in.
“As the pressure mounted by the people of Jomo to have the lepers evacuated became intense, Dr. McCarthy decided to convey the lepers to Ankaful in Cape Coast where he had put up a clinic to cure leprosy. This plan could not go through because it was against the custom of the Ga people to have lepers cross the Densu River.
“Dr. McCarthy was compelled by the situation to find an alternative. This pushed him to acquire a vast piece of land at Weija for that purpose,” it added on page 74 of the book. Read Full Story
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