April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
HOSPITAL CHAPLAIN
Priest who traveled from Ghana remarks on Church differences
"I have to put some life into it," he explained, adding that Americans don't always laugh with him.
Adjusting to American customs has been a challenge for Father Kuusegmeh, the Catholic chaplain at St. Mary's Hospital in Troy since last summer.
When Father Kuusegmeh did post-graduate work in counseling at northeastern U.S. universities, he also discovered students had little respect for instructors. In Ghana, "we say a teacher is an elder, no matter what," he told The Evangelist.
As far as the Catholic Mass goes, Ghanaians worship for up to two and a half hours on Sundays - with no option for a Saturday vigil Mass, but plenty of instruments and dance.
"Sundays are days for celebration for us," he said. "After Mass, they don't just go back home. Here, everything has to be fast."
But the priest, who lives in the rectory at Sacred Heart parish in Troy and assists at Masses there, is getting the hang of life in America - even if people don't understand his accent. Father Kuusegmeh grew up speaking Dagare, a dialect of his Dagara tribe in the dry, northern part of Ghana.
As a child, he helped sustain his family by harvesting crops such as maize, beans, rice, plantains and peanuts until he began attending school at the age of eight. He learned English beginning in the fourth grade and later studied under Irish priests, so he understands westerners.
Father Kuusegmeh knew he wanted to be a priest around the age of 11, when a man in his home parish of Holy Family in Hamile was ordained.
"I said, 'I want to be like that man someday,'" he said. "To be able to stand up at the altar and celebrate."
He became an altar server and entered a minor seminary in sixth grade. After school, he became a social worker, serving in prisons and hospitals before joining the Congregation of the Holy Spirit seminary and studying in Ghana, Gambia and Nigeria. He was ordained a religious missionary priest in 1995.
In his early priesthood, Father Kuusegmeh taught in a seminary, did missionary work in Malawi and helped his congregation. In 1998, he came to America to pursue a master's degree in spirituality and counseling at Fordham University in the Bronx.
He returned to Ghana in 2000 to work as a spiritual director and teacher for his seminary; later, he oversaw the Diocese of Obuasi's pastoral center in the south. (In Ghana, he noted, the term "pastoral center" means a place for pastoral activities, such as retreats, programs for lay people and training for catechists.)
Father Kuusegmeh supervised 14 employees and a campus of eight buildings; he was also vice provincial of his order.
In 2007, he returned to the U.S. to earn a master's degree in psychoanalysis from Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis in Boston. He's working on his Ph.D. in psychoanalysis and culture from the same school.
Before coming to St. Mary's, he served as a chaplain at three New York hospitals and a nursing home.
At St. Mary's, Father Kuusegmeh celebrates the sacraments when requested by patients, celebrates Mass in the hospital chapel and visits patients. He said his experiences as a hospital chaplain have completed his vocation as a priest and taught him humility and compassion.
"I just like being with the sick," the priest remarked. "They teach me a lot of things. They are helping me to come closer to my own God. They teach me that my life depends on somebody, somebody greater than I am. I'm happy that I am at their service."
Father Kuusegmeh visits his mother and two sisters in Ghana every few years and plans to continue serving in the Albany Diocese: "Whatever is the need of the Diocese, I'm open to it."[[In-content Ad]]
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