Joseph Dupont (bishop)
|
Joseph-Marie-Stanislas Dupont M. Afr. |
|
|---|---|
| Vicar Apostolic of Nyassa | |
 |
|
| Installed | 16 February 1897 |
| Term ended | 28 February 1911 |
| Successor | Mathurin Guillemé |
| Other posts | Titular Bishop of Thibaris (16 February 1897 – 19 March 1930) |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 21 December 1878 |
| Consecration | 15 August 1897 by Bishop Adolphe Lechaptois |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
23 July 1850 Gesté, Maine et Loire |
| Died | 19 March 1930 (aged 79) Thibar, Tunisia |
Joseph-Marie-Stanislas Dupont (23 July 1850 – 19 March 1930), nicknamed Moto Moto ('fire fire') by the Bemba people was a French Catholic missionary bishop, who was a pioneer in Zambia's Northern Province (then part of North-Eastern Rhodesia) from 1885 to 1911. He persuaded the Bemba, feared by the Europeans colonizers and by neighbouring tribes, to allow him to become the first missionary into their territory around Kasama. At the time the British South Africa Company (BSAC) chartered by Britain to administer North-Eastern Rhodesia was not in control of all the territory.
Dupont was born in Gesté, Maine et Loire, on 23 July 1850 to a peasant family. After a short and quite successful military service, he studied to become a member of the White Fathers missionary society, now called the Society of the Missionaries of Africa. He was ordained a priest on 21 December 1878, and took his oath as a member of the White Fathers the following year. He was then sent to teach at the College of Saint-Louis of Carthage at Thibar in the French protectorate of Tunisia, now in the Béja Governorate. He was later sent to the Karema Mission on Lake Tanganyika in 1892.
The White Fathers had arrived at Mponda, west of Lake Nyasa, in 1885, and in 1891 had moved up the Stevenson Road which had been built to connect Nyasa with Lake Tanganyika, stopping at Mambwe Mwela. They attempted to set up in Bemba lands but the Paramount Chief of the Bemba, the Chitimukulu, was fiercely opposed to any incursion by missionaries. When Dupont arrived at Mambwe in 1895 he found that some of the independently minded Bemba Senior Chiefs were not opposed, and one of them, Makasa at Kayambi, gave Dupont a foothold in his area in 1895. Dupont tried to expand into the Bemba heartland and though gaining favour from many of the chiefs, was still opposed by the Chitimukulu.
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