Few missioners can match Father Richard Baker in variety of experience. When the Maryknoller celebrates Mass for Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia, the liturgy is often in Arabic and English with the homily given in four languages, including Dinka and Nuer.

But variety has been part of Baker's mission career from the start. After his ordination in 1971, the missioner from Yonkers, N.Y., studied the Urdu language and culture to work in Pakistan, but, refused a visa, he ended up serving in Indonesia. Working in the metropolis of Jakarta led him to study urbanization at Portland State University, but his next assignments landed him in the rural most regions of Tanzania and Sudan in Africa.

He laughingly describes his mission career as an inherited trait from his father, who would tell folks that his job with the Otis Elevator Co. "had its ups and downs."

After a decade working in Tanzania's Musoma diocese, he volunteered in 1987 to serve in Sudan, then as now in the throes of civil war. Pastoral work was severely handicapped by strictures put on Christians by the fundamentalist Muslim government. Some displaced persons in the diocese of El Obeid, where the missioner worked, were housed in boxcars and others in mud huts in the desert. Christians were forbidden to gather for prayer or study. "Those were grim days," he says. "Hot and seemingly hopeless." Finally, government officials told Baker his visa had been revoked.

Leaving Sudan, the missioner went to neighboring Ethiopia, where 200,000 Sudanese had fled. In the southwestern part of the country, 35,000 Sudanese refugees huddled in the Pinyudo camp, near the Ethiopian Nuer and Anuak ethnic groups. Conditions for pastoral work were makeshift. Baker celebrated Mass under a baobab tree.

Moved by the plight of the people, he volunteered to work in Gambella, 500 miles southwest of the capital, Addis Ababa. He serves under the auspices of the Jesuit Refugee Service and also works with Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity, who daily provide medicine and food for more than 1,800 people.

Baker's diverse experiences make him well suited for Ethiopia, where 56 million people are divided among eight major ethnic groups speaking 70 languages. This achingly beautiful land on the Horn of Africa has just emerged from a civil war that deposed a brutal dictatorship. Like most African countries, Ethiopia is trying to build a nation within borders drawn up by European colonial powers that disregarded ethnic lands and played off traditional ethnic rivalries to maintain power.

Baker sees the Churches playing a key role in teaching people to live together in peace. Christian presence is strong. While a minority are Roman Catholic, 40 percent of the people are Orthodox Christians and 50 percent Muslim.

"The Churches provide great hope, but it's not enough to say we are Christians," he says. "The majority of Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda and Burundi were Catholics, yet they wound up massacring one another."

Baker strives to improve life. He now has a thatched chapel to celebrate Mass. Hearing the people's plea for education for their children, he has offered Maryknoll's assistance to local Church leaders to build a school in Gambella. He plans to live and work with Sudanese refugees.

Of the comings and goings in his missionary career, Baker says, "Our faith must help us cross the boundaries of language and culture. We should look at diversity as a creative force rather than destructive. After all, no matter what tribe or race we come from, in the end we are but one family."

Read more about Dick's work

     View the Gambella Photo Album    

Dick's Biography             Dick's Reflections

Maryknollers in Ethiopia