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Name: WALTER, Gustav (Brother)
Birth Date: 8 Feb 1883 Eckartswiller
Death Date: 2 Nov 1967 Mombasa
First Date: 1930
Profession: R.C. Mission
Area: Mombasa
Book Reference: Red 31
General Information:
Henry J. Koren, Spiritan East African Memorial, 1994: He made his vows on March 19, 1901 at Chevilly, where he also became proficient in the building trades. On December 12, 1902 he sailed from Marseille to the Vicariate of North Zanguebar. Bp. Allgeyer placed him at Mombasa. He was destined to make his most important contribution to the vicariate there, for apart from two short interruptions he would remain there for half a century. Mombasa, with its harbor and railroad connection to Nairobi and beyond, was growing in leaps and bounds; people flocked to it from all over the world and among these there were numerous Catholics, in addition, the local population also had to be taken care of. Thus its little church was in bad need of replacement by a large structure. Br. Gustave drew up the necessary plan in 1914; the bishop found it excellent and the people pledged the necessary funds. Despite the outbreak of World War One, he and the Brothers Kilian Rettig and Claver Femandes laid the foundations in 1916 and began its construction. The church was finished six years later. lt had become an imposing edifice in Romanesque style, adorned by two large towers that were visible from far out at sea. Bp. Neville was happy to bless it in February 1923, and the parishioners saw that their gifts had been well spent. ln 1910 he had spent a short time in Nairobi at St. Peter Claver's Church, probably for construction work in that growing Kikuyu parish; in the mid-1930s also he was away from Mombasa for a while at St. Austin's, Nairobi. After World War Two, when he was in his sixties, he was assigned to the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, which at that time belonged to the Kenya colony and to the Zanzibar vicariate. He spent his declining years there, first in Zanzibar and then in Pemba, where there were then a few thousand expatriate African, European, lndian and other nations amid a solidly lslamic native population. He proved so vigorous that he lasted another 20 years there, yet he died in his place of predelection, Mombasa. He had spent himself for 65 years in the service of Africa.