The return of Holy Cross to Africa in 1957 after a long absence and the inauguration of a brothers’ recruitment program for young Ghanaian men in 1962 brought among the first applicants a small boy entering St. John’s Secondary School in Sekondi. This boy, Joseph Kofi Tsiquaye, was the son of a renowned catechist from the Catholic parish in Obuasi/Ashanti, a gold mining town upcountry from the coastal area where the school was located.
Beginning Form 1–the equivalent of 8th grade–Joe had several years of schooling to complete before he could make the one-year novitiate program leading to the first profession of vows that would welcome him officially into Holy Cross. Other boys joined the same program, some staying with it longer than others. But of the first candidates, Joe remained in the end the only one to persevere and to grow through the 35 years he has been a professed member of the congregation.
Being first or among the first in any new undertaking requires character, conviction and dedication, all qualities Br. Joseph possesses in abundance. Sent to the States to undergo his novitiate year of training in 1966, he successfully completed it and made his first temporary profession of the vows of religion in 1967, returning at once to Ghana to complete the last two years of the seven-year secondary school program, and then to enter the university and earn a bachelor of science degree.
He then taught mathematics for three years at St. Augustine’s Secondary School, Cape Coast. In 1974 he moved to Sekondi to become director of the candidates’ program at St. Joseph’s Hall on the grounds of St. John’s School and to teach in the school. This role he fulfilled until 1977 when he was sent to the U.S. again to earn a masters in science in mathematics at DePaul University, Chicago. He completed that work in a year and stayed on to experience an intensive leadership program with the Institute of Cultural Affairs in Chicago, returning in 1979 to St. John’s in Sekondi to teach.
With the unexpected departure from Ghana of the then district superior, who had been elected provincial superior in the U.S., Br. Joseph was chosen as his replacement, becoming the first Ghanaian superior of the District of West Africa.
He had, earlier that same year, received permission to respond to the urgent entreaties of the bishop of the new Sunyani Diocese some distance upcountry from the coast to be among the first brothers to establish for the diocese a laity and youth formation program. Even with his election as district superior, Br. Joseph retained his post in Sunyani. He, along with other brothers, set up a strong and vibrantly active program supportive of the spiritual growth of the youth and laity of the diocese. Some brothers, Joseph among them, also helped at the new minor seminary by teaching classes there. From 1979 to 1990 Br. Joseph was Diocesan Coordinator of Laity Formation, and for nearly that same period a member of the staff at St. James Minor Seminary. For six years during that period he also had the position of Diocesan Coordinator for the Catholic Charismatic Renewal.
In 1990 Br. Joseph was asked to help staff the Holy Cross novitiate program in E. Africa, as young men from Ghana were being sent there to Uganda to join their confreres in the East African district for their initial training. Br. Joseph accompanied them during that year, then returned to Sunyani, where he took up many of his former duties.
In 1992 he went back to the U.S. to do further studies in spirituality, this time at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. For three years he studied there, emerging with a Ph.D. in formative spirituality. He was immediately asked to be the Ghanaian representative on the formation staff of the Saaka novitiate program in Uganda, where he had spent the year earlier. He remained there assisting in the formation of novices for six years until he was asked by the superior general of the congregation to fill a vacancy in the general council in Rome. Br. Joseph accepted this important task, agreeing to serve out the remaining four years of his predecessor’s six-year term.
Br. Joseph’s sincerity, his tireless pursuit of goals geared toward both personal and community growth, and his seemingly inexhaustible capacity to endure frequent international travel have been at the service of the entire congregation, whose members everywhere have benefited from the rich perspective on both life in society and in religion that Br. Joseph brings to Holy Cross.
From the small young teenager who knocked at the door of the new candidate’s house in Sekondi in 1962 to the prestigious position of congregational leadership, Br. Joseph has made a notable impact on the growth of Holy Cross in Africa and on the future of the congregation and its ministries in that continent. He has become an elder whose wisdom is sought and heeded by those who have followed his pioneering footsteps in Holy Cross.
