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 Father Janvier Bertin NAMA

Carole ATEBA
 

 
 
FATHER PIERRE LUCIEN BETENE
 
GOD'S NIGHTINGALE
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PREFACE BY MGR JEAN MBARGA

 
 

 
 

 
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FATHER Pierre Lucien BETENE

GOD'S NIGHTINGALE
 
 

 
 
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ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

- ACDY: Association of the Clergy of the Diocese of Yaoundé           

- ASSCEAM: Association of Catholic Education for Africa and Madagascar           

- BHQ : Brigade Headquarters           

- NECC : National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon           

- DCHOY : Diocesan Choir of Yaoundé           

- CMA : Catholic Men's Association           

- NDVC : Notre Dame des Victoires Cathedral (Our Lady of Victories Cathedral)

- ERRG :  Educational Research and Reflection Group           

- DCD: Diocesan Choir Days           

- LVND : La Voix de Notre Dame           

- IOCE : International Office for Catholic Education           

- SEDY : Secretariat of Education for the Diocese of Yaoundé           

- NASECAE: National Secretariat for Catholic Education           

- PSCE: Permanent Secretariat for Catholic Education)           

             
             

 
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PREFACE
 
Priestly life integrates each priest into a large family. He is introduced to follow
Christ in a mission of evangelization, where he brings his stone to the construction of
one and the same Church.
It is with joy that I would like to recall the memories of the moments lived with
Father Pierre Lucien BETENE, when he celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of his
“DEFINITE YES” to God in Jesus Christ. 
We experienced a comminatory life in the years 1986-1989 at the National
Episcopal Conference of Cameroon (NECC). I noticed his brotherhood and his
helpfulness. A brother in the priesthood since 1981, he has never ceased to arouse
our admiration for the joy which emanates from most of his compositions; joy,
gentleness and reconciliation can be read in this sacred African music, which he has
developed for more than 50 years. 
He knew how to find a place of choice in the service of the liturgy. He knew how
to give to the African music of beti inspiration its Christian character. It is all this man,
priest, educator and artist that the Church of Yaoundé is celebrating in this
year 2021, for a full fiftieth anniversary, radiant and turned towards the future.
Giving everything to God and letting oneself be led by the eternal youth of God,
this is what the sober man, Pierre Lucien BETENE, celebrates in order to continue to
give himself to God and to young people as an example of commitment.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Monsignor Jean Mbarga
Archbishop of Yaoundé
 
 
 

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INTRODUCTION

With his velvet voice with a humming sound fixed onto syllables, Father Pierre
Lucien Betene, who in this year 2021 is crossing fifty years in the ministry as a priest
of the Catholic Church, gives the impression of being some earthly cherubim. An
angel without wings claiming no proximity to God, but who nevertheless has flown
over the sung catholic liturgy in Cameroon for half a century with unequalled
talent. He came closest to his cultural and religious
universe, pushing the magazine "Nyanga" to say a few years ago that this prelate
was "The nightingale of God" (Ongokon in ewondo). The name of a tropical bird
whose song cuts through the voluminous equatorial forest, caressing the tops of the
great hundred-year-old baobabs to get lost in the distance as in an echo, in a large
scene where the leaves quiver under the undulations of this play of voluble notes ...
Prodigious songwriter, the ordained minister of March 6th 1971 sings the
mysteries of the Lord in the Ewondo language in an endless concert and resonates in
the choir of churches and the souls of generations of the faithful. Like his elder
brother in priesthood, bishop François-Xavier Amara, Father Betene brought the
aesthetics of negro liturgical song to its exemplary dimension after the second
Vatican Council. Sober, self-erased and stingy in extravagant statements, this
Father likes to repeat that he is very shy. The Asian physique of medium builds gives
him great ease in moving quickly, silently and sometimes stealthily with an alert and
supple step. Well preserved, the man wears his age like a nightingale wears its
plumage; a mixture of strict colors and adorned refinement of this ecclesial elegance
where details are set up as absolute lines. Father Betene in nothing, bears his inner
wounds as the Johannine Christ carried his cross to Calvary, without bitterness,
regret or resentment. The man hates betrayal. He forgave a very long time ago some
of his confreres who surprised him at the beginning of his ministry by going to
"blacken" his image free of charge with his then bishop, Monsignor Jean Zoa. He
confides thus: “I experienced difficulties sometime after my ordination on the part of
the confreres. I went to find an elder, Father Leon Messi who said to me: "The affair
in which you are engaged, if you do not have solid convictions with Jesus you will not
go far. If you don't have a personal relationship with Jesus you will never
be able to get out of it. This idea confirmed to me that Jesus is a friend that I should
not disappoint… I am sure people see me as someone who has no problem with
priests. And that's true. I don't want to hold any resentment”.
Behind his frameless glasses still shines the gaze of an octogenarian witness to
the Gospel of Jesus Christ on African lands. The fine and neat mustache, bars the
upper lip under a precisely cut of hair in black, evacuating from this figure the
ravages of time to reveal a face in a luminous African ebony. And suddenly his quiet
voice begins to flow. “The friend of Jesus” starts talking about himself in his
apartment nestled on the first floor of the Notre Dame des Victoires Cathedral in
Yaoundé. His voice soars, caressing the high walls and seems to follow the
undulations of the electric cables which circulate there. The huge glass windows
pour an almost celestial sieve of light into the room, erasing the white and gray
curtains dotted with rose designs. In the inner courtyard of the large building where
we are, we can barely hear the noise of vehicles stopping at the entrance to Yaoundé
Cathedral. Under our feet lodges the sacristy, guardian and witness at the same time
of the unfathomable mysteries which have been celebrated here since its
construction by Monsignor Graffin in 1955. Time stands still and the mountains of
papers and books which scour the room where we stand. we find ourselves
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transformed into a silent assembly to listen, to hear the dean of the priests of the
diocese of Yaoundé say in a quiet voice that he was born on July 16, 1941; the
nightingale of the churches finally decides to sing his story… The lover of writings
abandons his pen for a while to finally speak in his calm voice: “I come from a poor
and very large family of 12 children” ... In this biography, he has chosen to leave his
human journey carved out in the marble of a few pages of paper. It is his spiritual
testament.
The friend of God pleasing to listen to says he does not know the secret of this
physical and ministerial longevity. But he humbly confesses that he knows that he
owes everything to the Lord: "I give thanks to God for my fifty years of ministry ". He
has recently gone through a stroke and pulmonary embolism without trespassing
thanks to his friend Jesus: “I owe everything to Jesus. I always come back to my
motto to say straight away that it is the Lord who preserves me when he could have
called me lately. He is the master of my life, he emphasizes emphatically. "And in his
confidences he continues, hammering: "I never had the idea of leaving the
priesthood. Never! I don't want to disappoint my friend by turning my back on him…
The nightingale never turns its back on song, on what it is, on what constitutes it, on
what constitutes its essence. Father Betene thus presents the face of a strong man
of seriousness who has lived all his life and his vocation. He has recently become
part of this permanent tension between the need to do well to the end and the
impossibility of escaping the limits of this fragile body which collects itself in musical
notes in its last rebellions. The jubilee knows, however, in his multiple smiles that
each cross placed on the shoulders of an individual acquires a dignity humanly
inconceivable, and that by penetrating more deeply into the mystery of the cross,
"suffering is not so much relieved as ennobled”. However, the nightingale of God still
asks only one thing at the heart of his fiftieth years of ministry: Conserving his
friendship with Jesus.
The duty of gratitude for the great minds who have chosen to illuminate the
existence of men with their undeniable talent is a categorical imperative for our
time. It therefore seems right to us to celebrate the achievements and even the
sacrifices of these exemplary figures by fixing their memory on the granite of eternity
while they still live among us, in the name of a certain grandeur that they
embody. This is why the life of a priest like that of Father Pierre Lucien Betene
deserves, in more than one way, to be recorded in writing, so that it serves as a
tribute to a worker of the gospel, but also because it holds enormous testamentary
value for future generations. Throughout the pages of this biography, it is the meeting
with a man now dean of the priests of the Archdiocese of Yaoundé who delivers the
details of a life oscillating between the dreams of children, the ambitions of youth, the
smile of the destiny and the brilliance of providence. Father Pierre Lucien Betene
appears here as a monument and an immense heritage for the Church of Africa in
general and for Cameroon in particular. This emeritus composer of song in the
Ewondo language particularly holds an iconic posture in the movement of the
enculturation of the Gospel. This founder of the Nkukuma David choir with his
balafons brought a rhythmic and acoustic innovation in the animation of the sung
liturgy. Since the time of the senior seminary, Father Betene has produced beautiful
sacred songs which have raised him to the rank of immortal.
The profile of this man is not only limited to priesthood and to sacred music. He
has also worked for the establishment of a profound catholic education ethical code
in Cameroon, Africa and at the international level. In another dimension, he became
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an apostle of enculturation, by promoting several beti ethnic rites, which today gives

rise to a precious heritage for our local Church.
From this human and spiritual journey, from this vocation to liturgical song, we
retain that the Spirit of God rests on this man. He is, by this premature election and
his love of dance and song, the new David dancing in front of the ark of the covenant
in this festive whirlwind that only great minds know how to animate.
The structuring of this biography into five chapters and some thirty testimonies
reveals the ordinary itinerary of a servant of the Gospel, self-effacing and discreet,
sober and prudent who will have faced everything in his life: Doubt, poverty,
misunderstanding and sometimes persecution. But Father Pierre L. Betene with his
fifty years of ministry, like the apostle Peter, gives thanks to the Lord for "having
chosen him to be one of his friends" (Jn 15:15). Pedagogue and bilingual, it is a
deposit of knowledge and know-how that you will discover by reading the biography
of this priest. It flakes like the flow of notes of a subliminal song of a nightingale.

 
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CHAPTER I

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

The life of Father Pierre Lucien Betene is a mixture of grace, peace and joy. A
whirlwind of apparently contradictory events but which, inscribed in the divine orb,
draw a historical trajectory where the emotional intensity melts in a beam of celestial
light over this long existence. This collection of autobiographical reminiscences
constitutes a giant fresco, an impressive receptacle of the designs of divine
providence. Nightingale of God or poet of the cathedrals, or James Brown of the
churches, Father Pierre Lucien Betene (PLB) was born on July 16, 1941 in a poor
family in his village in Andog (Bikok), in the center region of Cameroon, at the Mefou
and Akono department with a DNA saturated with traditional Beti music. He is the
third child of twelve siblings, eight boys and four girls. His father, an Etoudi was
called Joseph Betene, and he was a chief catechist. His mother Régine Mekongo
came from the Etenga family; Mvog-Mbani. She was an ekang dancer. The
Ekang people are “an assembly of the Beti-Bulu-Fang ethnic group, this name also
designates lyrical songs sung in honor of the ekang heroes and their odysseys which
became immortal by these songs. The ekang is still a variety of dance performed by
women. These wear cords of feathers attached to the kidneys. » (Beti-French
Dictionary, 2008). Régine Mekongo, mother of Father Betene, was an adept of this
dance and an excellent dancer.
At barely three years old, his mother rips him from her breast and decides to take
him to his maternal grandmother; Jacqueline Nkoa. Little Betene thus becomes a
child given as a token of gratitude to the grandparents to benefit from the education
of these ones, a common thing done at the time. He then falls on a disciplined and
rigorous grandmother who will exert a great influence on all his career as a man. Far
from being pampered by his grandparents, little Betene lets himself be lulled by the
musical notes of the orchestra held by his grandparents. His maternal grandfather
Mesi me Fouda and his maternal uncle Assola Fouda lead a balafon
orchestra. When they organize a party in the village or in the surroundings, this
orchestra is invited with the young dancers. It is therefore in this festive environment
that the child takes his first steps towards school. But his father decides to rip him
away from the tutelage of his maternal grandparents once again to send him to
school this time to Akono.
Roaming thus begins to invade the destiny of the one who is still far from
imagining that he will be the Apostle of the Good News. Little Betene therefore left
the Mvog Mbani (Etenga), to go to school in Akono. He is registered there with his
brothers. The family difficulties then help the three elders to be very united as a block
united by love. This solidarity will be transmitted to the younger brothers and sisters
as the cement of family life. The parents work a lot, and are great farmers. They will
take all the time necessary to transmit to their offspring the high human virtues such
as work and the sense of the common good. When the small group arrives at Akono,
it is not in deficit of fraternity and at the bottom of consciences and small hearts is a
sense of duty and the fear of God.
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As for the small town of Akono, it is located twenty-three kilometers from the

village. But there is no question for the little siblings to do this route every day on
foot. The small group of children will therefore stay with the paternal aunt, very close
to the small town. In the house, discipline is the rule. We reprimand pranks better
than we cajole and coddle. It is the school of endurance under the gaze of God, since
prayer is part of the life of the small household. Betene and his brothers must
become men, it is recalled to satiety. His recollections on this subject are intact: “At
my aunt’s house, we couldn't stay asleep when it was time to go to school. She
would hit us with a rattan stick "kpe kpa, nding»; meaning rattan toothbrush. Father
Betene still testifies today to how much his aunt and his grandmother had to
influence his destiny by this maternal upbringing in which authority was mingled in a
joyful balance.
In the family of little Pierre Lucien Betene, committed Catholic parents nurture
ambitions for the small household. They dream of having, for example, a priest who
could give himself more to the cause of God better than the father who is already a
catechist. The mother sets her sights on her second son Simeon Obama Betene. For
her, he presents attitudes of someone who can become a good priest. He is calm,
respectful, obedient and helpful. Little Betene on the other hand is a boisterous and
teasing child. He does not hesitate to cause scandal with the kids of
his age. When, for example, he was hungry and another child bothered him, the affair
could end with a blow from little Pierre Lucien on the head of this unwelcome
comrade. A behavior that his big brothers resolved to correct very early on. Pierre
Lucien's sense of obedience and his respect for elders will make things easier; he will
comply with the injunctions of his family without complaining.
But in the matter of his vocation, the mother of little Pierre Lucien forgot that man
proposes and God disposes. He will give this modest and pious family a servant, but
he will remain hidden until the day when God's purpose will be revealed for
him. While mother Betene's eyes are fixed on Simeon Obama, in the shadow of little
Pierre Lucien is still hiding a character from afar who will emerge when the time
comes, at the time indicated by the Lord. It is to him that the Eternal God will speak
to sow the seed of the priestly vocation in the heart of the young child. It will be
Father Jacques Leclerc, commonly known as “Fada Yacop”. The man of God is a
Spiritan missionary who exerts a great fascination on little Pierre Lucien. "He was the
Director of the school, " he remembers with great emotion. “He was a father, or better
yet, a cheerful, kind, devoted, hard-working priest, an example that all children would
have liked to emulate. In short, "Fada Yacop" is a living image of Jesus in the eyes of
little Betene. This priest traveled to enroll students all over the country, passing
through Makak at the Sacred Heart college, or in Douala, at the seminary, etc. Father
Betene, when he looks back today, sees with philosophy and with a lot of faith the
itinerary which was his and confirms that "God writes straight on curved lines" and
that it is up to each of us to read his own line. He continues like a great African wise
man; “Each of us, faced with our own destiny, decides, discerns and makes our
choice. In each soul is inscribed a particular inclination, a gift, a talent that the Lord
has placed in each person. Some set off without really knowing where the road
leads, others do not hesitate to take a path already clear in their head. » The littler
Betene, without being the choice of his family, will feel very early on that he would
like to consecrate himself to God in the vocation of priesthood. What remained
hidden inside of him blossoms in 1957 as he prepares for his Primary and
Elementary Education Certificate (First School Leaving Certificate) and the common
entrance in secondary school. When his father asks him what he wants to do later in
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life, the young child replies: "I want to be Father Yacop", meaning of course “I want to
become a priest like Father Jacques Leclerc”. We think that it is probably on this day
that the Spirit descended on the young child as on David receiving the consecration
of Samuel. The Lord undoubtedly took hold of the young child in this luminous
profession of faith with the appearance of a prophetic oracle. Up there, that day, the
sky opened up on the young child, never to close again.
The word of God was already on the lips of young Betene during his first steps in
seminary. His father, catechist and Zomlo'o, that is to say spokesperson for the
community, already gave him the floor to exhort the faithful during catechetical
sessions called "dokten bëkristen" (Christian doctrine) of the village since his minor
seminary. The older brothers of young Pierre Lucien in particular his brother Simeon
testify how much they took care of their younger brother in Akono. Things are going
well for the young boy. He is very apt at school; his brothers understand that he
needs their support to have a good education. Later, the two big brothers Gabriel and
Siméon will stop their own studies in favor of Pierre Lucien to give him the chance to
go as far as possible and achieve his goal of becoming a priest. With their father,
they will thus help finance his studies. Of course today still, he remains infinitely
grateful to them.
Father Jacques was a missionary, vicar in the parish of Akono. Brilliant artist and
eloquent orator, he had founded a choir of young children who came to sing in
Yaoundé in 1954. Close to the People of God and to children, he exerted a great
fascination on them which mingled with the dream of being able to become like
him. He was their model since being considered the true incarnation of Jesus Christ
with his little beard that he proudly wore. Young Betene deep in his heart had loved
this man so much that he ended up taking him as a role model. Be like Fada
Yacop should be for him a human and intellectual achievement. It is with bitterness
that the pastor looks at reality today. The great desert of great minds in which our
society is immersed: “We regret today that there is no longer any model of
identification apart from musicians and footballers, it is a sign that our society is fallen
very low”.
Driven by his love for Africa and his missionary passion, “Fada Yacop” was part
of a great movement to educate the indigenous masses and a credible intellectual
elite for Cameroon. The missionary Father had enrolled several
young Cameroonians at François-Xavier Vogt College, at De La Salle and Libermann
technical colleges in Douala, Sacred Heart in Makak, Mazenod in Ngaoundéré and in
the minor seminary in Akono. Spread throughout Cameroon, this small army of
young people offered the country senior state clerks and great servants of the gospel
came out from these ranks. It was precisely he who enrolled the young Pierre Lucien
Betene in the minor seminary in Akono. He will do a first part of his secondary
studies there from form one to form four before migrating to the middle seminary of
Mva'a, in the Lékié department after obtaining his BEPC (Equivalent of GCE “O”
Level). It is there in Mva'a that he does form five, lower sixth, upper sixth and obtains
the first, then the second part of the Baccalaureate (GCE “A” Level). At the time, the
first part of the Bacc (GCE “A” Level) took place in lower sixth. So it was two different
exams; the first part of the Bacc and the second part. These exams were corrected in
Bordeaux in France. The young Betene will thus present the second part of the Bacc
in 1964 with in mind the dream of continuing to the major seminary to become a
priest. The man still remembers the two names of the other laureates of this second
part of the Bacc. These were Jean-Louis Ndongmo who continued in university and
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Jean-Pierre Ombolo with whom he entered the major seminary where they will spend
three years.  

The young seminarian

The seminary is a place of discernment where the candidate for the ordained
ministry digs into the night and the meanders of his journey, to see with his
formators, the authenticity of the call he believed he heard. Young Betene will stay
there as long as the formation will last. During these years, the candidate for the
priesthood learns religious song in Ewondo which has already existed practically
since the 1950s. He is fortunate to be picked out and becomes a choir master
through the seminary of Mva'a. The major seminarian, with his past at the heart of
musical traditions of his fathers, will refine his style and his singing technique. He
reinforces his knowledge of music and begins the school of composition: The path of
song opens before him. It will be for eternity. His first song: “Duma die a tsaman a
bod” (May his glory be spread among men) was composed in 1964 in the village
during the holidays, before he entered the major seminary. It was here that he met
Father Pie Claude Ngumu who was on visit. He assisted him in completing his first
composition. 
After independence and following the resolutions of Vatican II Council, Otele,
under the leadership of Western religious people like Father Manfried, will become
the epicenter of creativity and inventiveness of encultured liturgical songs. A form of
translation of the psalms and sacred texts, seminarians undertook to compose
musical pieces by backing creativity with the genius of our traditions. The balafon and
the Mvet (traditional music instruments) attempt their first breakthrough in the heart of
the Church. It is the birth of the Cameroonian psalmody, that is to
say; the earliest translations of psalms in different Cameroonian languages: Ewondo,
Bassa, bamiléké. “These psalms were sung with the melodies and rhythms of our
region, which was very different from the songs that the
missionaries brought” underlines the jubilee priest. For Father Betene the songs of
the missionaries were made up of the words of our languages, but the rhythms
and melodies were foreign, “these songs sinned greatly against the tonic character of
our languages and many other things. One of the first things that the Cameroonian
psalmody wanted to highlight is the obedience of melody and song to the genius of
the language”. 
For his elder Pie Claude Ngumu, “A simple small reversal of these tones makes
speak a most damaging gibberish, and say very regrettable things. It often happens
that several words know exactly the same spelling, but are distinguished only by their
tones... The result was very harmful: It made us sing misunderstandings, nonsense,
barbarisms and very funny oddities addressed to our God” (Ngumu, 1971).
It is following his illustrious elders such as the Fathers: Pie Claude Ngumu,
François-Xavier Amara, Athanase Ateba, Wenceslas Mba etc., that the young
Betene storms into the beti liturgical song. In order for him to start composing, he
learned all the songs of his elders. He says it is important to learn from his elders
beforehand to better stand on our own feet. Composer and singer, the great
seminarian that he was will work hard to offer his local church compositions with an
undeniable aesthetic and historical dimension. He worked with his comrades of the
time to give a local and enculturated color as much to the celebration of the
mysteries of the Lord as to the assimilation of the truths of faith in the local
languages.
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The young Betene, better than anyone has grasped a particular issue at the
heart of a universal. The voice of Cameroon must be heard before resounding like a
thunder in 1969 in Kampala in Uganda this sentence of Pope Paul VI: "Africans, be
your own missionaries". For the young Betene and his comrades launched into the
composition of the songs, the local church must “cover the soil” in order to better lead
and train the masses of people who flock in and are baptized from the entry of the
Pallotine missionaries on the territory in 1890. It is moreover in this vein of the
massive adhesion of the people that the first 8 native priests are ordained on
December 8, 1935. When Mgr. François Xavier Vogt disappears in 1943, we are
already talking about the Cameroonian miracle because of the many baptisms
recorded around Yaoundé, the capital of Roman Catholicism.
Gathered around a college of major seminarians, the young composers worked
together to offer songs and melodies that were the subject of first censorship. Once
the composition is accepted by the group after amendment, it will be intended for
public education to be found later in parishes where the major seminarians often
went to stay during the weekends or the vacation period. Father Betene again
remembers most of his comrades at that time: Materne Bikoa, Grégoire Atangana,
Robert Akamba, Apollinaire Ebogo, Albert Anya. They will be in this life and in this
ministry, the servants of the spiritual needs of their people.
Father Severin Zoa Obama, a minor seminarian at the time in Akono, underlines
the aura and charisma drained by the major seminarian Betene. He explains that the
village of Abang-Mindi formerly belonged to the parish of Bikop until 1970.
“I took part as a seminarian in his ordination. Very early on, he had a reputation that
would equal that of Bishop Amara.  On the feast of the body and blood of Jesus Christ in
1966, Abang-Mindi was to animate the first altar. When the young seminarian
sang “Nkukuma David anga be na'aa”, it was delirious. And that was the first time
someone would bring balafons into the church. The man quickly passed into legend…
And the name Betene was beginning to spread with a certain reputation. I just heard that
name resonate in the communities. And in 1967 when Father Eveng arrived in Bikop, he
made the Abang-Mindi village sing. I still have fond memories of this Kyrié which the
seminarian Betene “Kudu ngol” and the Gloria “Duma ai Zamba wan tege ai sug” will
sing. As he sang on the platform, we spent mass looking back to catch his gaze. He also
had the order of Mass called Betene 1, Betene 2 and Betene 3 ... I know that he visited
certain parishes like Nkol-Nkumu where he was caught by a priest of the Etoudi family
named André Noah to give singing lessons there during the weekends or during the
holidays. "
 
Monsignor Sévérin Zoa Obama believes he knows where the charisma of song
comes from in this priest and specifies:
 13

“All of Father Betene's brothers also composed songs. Betene Father told me one day
that if the singing climate prevailed in the family, it was because he himself was a dancer
of Nyëng, a variant of traditional Bikutsi. Finally, I also got to know the songs of Father
Betene through Monsignor François-Xavier Amara who already taught them when we
were minor seminarians. "
The first great thunderclap entered the life of the seminarian Betene in 1968 in
Chad. Fascinated by the Oblates of Mary, the young person undertakes there to
make an experience with them. He had to spend a year of internship in their
house. He is in the ranks of the Oblates in North Cameroon then in Chad. While he is
in this country, in the small town of Torok, the sky descends to earth and invades
him. He translates this revelation and this rapture in which he feels himself sucked by
the celestial vault and its luminous radiance in musical notes: It is the birth of "Yob la
taman a Nti" (Heaven praises God). He still can't believe it: “There were millet fields
stretching out as far as the eye could see. It was green everywhere, and we could
see the horizon. “It impressed me so much that I was prompted to write this praise to
God."
After this internship, the failed seminarian with the Oblates of Mary returned to
Cameroon to Otélé with a content in his baggage of one of the liturgical beti songs
which revealed the cantor to his people. Did God need to drag his son to Chad to
reveal him to himself and become more aware of his mission as a poet of the
cathedrals? Was he aware of already becoming quite a man for others? More than
half a century later, circumstances overwhelmingly prove him right.
In 1970, his promotion inaugurated the major seminary of Nkolbison. A year
later, on March 6, 1971, the earth trembles in Abang-Mindi, the birthplace of Father
Betene. Monsignor Jean Zoa lays his hands on him accompanied by the
consecratory prayer: he is ordained priest of Jesus-Christ.   
 
 14

 
CHAPTER II
PRIESTHOOD JOURNEY:
 
“God does not call the best but makes those he calls better. "

Ordained priest on March 6, 1971 in the parish of his village Andog in

Abang - Mindi, in the central region, located in the district of Bikok and the
department of Mefou-and-Akono, 18km from Mbalmayo and 60 km from Yaoundé, he
then chooses as his motto: "I call you henceforth my friends" (Jn 15:15). Father
Pierre Lucien Betene is attached to this motto today more than ever. It is for him the
foundation and the ultimate consecration of his attachment to Christ the Priest. This
motto is his identity as a priest, his reason for living and dying; the meaning of his
destiny, the sacrificial closure of a life in awe of the Cross. This motto is for this priest
the original foundation of the mystery of a vocation, the framework of his mission, the
substance of his vocation and the receptacle of all that he is. " The friend of
God " carries this motto deep inside him, in its essence and its anthropological
signifier, as the panther carries its special fur. It is the beauty of his dress as the
chasuble of the high priest covers the shoulders of the priest who stands in the
sanctuary with his gaze turned eternally towards Christ, the rising sun. Its motto is
the possibility of the limit to the challenge of eternity. When he speaks of it he enters
into that symbolic transfiguration which gives mortals the idea of eternity while they
are in time and space. We can no longer count the number of times we talked about
this issue. He keeps coming back to it, renewing its understanding, interpretation,
exegesis, meaning and contradiction. He gave it several times the whirlwind of
depths and the thickness of magnitudes without realizing it. At the heart of his
meditation on this motto, the Jubilee celebrant oscillates between the love of the
Father, the sacrifice of the Son and the hour of the Holy Spirit. And precisely with him
we reach the hour of the Holy Spirit in this feast year. A serious moment when the
breath of heaven pushes on the lips of a man the hidden truths which he will have
carried for fifty years without exhausting the meaning and the depths. And one
morning, he is caught in this gaze of himself whose simple history is transformed into
a profession of faith under the thrust of this mysterious wind, this Pentecostal flame
which reveals everything and consumes everything. A word that becomes breath and
energy, vocation and mission; mystery of the life of a priest, heart of duty. Father
Betene is therefore this priest, who, on his own, can understand how a phrase from
the Messiah could have exercised such a power of seduction over him and shamble
 15

a whole life. He argues at the heart of his motto and says he understood the depth of
the friendship between Jesus and Peter. From the infidelity of the disciple Peter,
Jesus responded with love and faithfulness going so far as to ask Peter if he really
loved him more than all the rest of the disciples. And Peter responds, “Lord, you
know everything”. At the heart of this motto, Father Betene embodied the spiritual
figure of Peter. Seeking to capture all the Galilean fisherman’s attitudes towards his
friend and teacher, he took as a model Peter, imitating his attitudes in his sense of
attachment to Jesus:  
“Jesus built his Church on Peter, giving him the keys to the Kingdom. Jesus knew that
Peter would betray him but he trusted him. Peter and Jesus lived a great friendship
together. “I also said I am Peter (Pierre in French). I have always prayed asking the Lord
to give me the strength to accept once and for all the grace and friendship of the
priesthood that He grants me. I recited this prayer in 1964 when I passed the Bacc (GCE
“A” Level). It was the Lord who made it possible for me to remain faithful to him when I
could leave to earn a lot of money. I chose to follow Jesus, to become his friend. While
we waited for the results of the exam, I stayed in this vein, in this waiting. Prayer has
always been the link between my friend Jesus and I. "
 
Eternal beggar of the friendship of Jesus, Father Betene faces the storms of this
ministry by relying unceasingly on the prayer of the friend towards his confidant. He
explains: "I always pray that the Lord will hold me by the hand as he did in
the past over the Sea of Tiberias when he took the hand of Peter who was beginning
to sink into the water". Him, remaining Pierre, that of the Betene family with his limits
and his shortcomings. Father Betene is not Peter the Galilean.
Proud to be a priest, he never hid this identity of giving to the hands made of
dust, of kneading on the altar of sacrifice the majesty of God and the littleness of man
in the appearances of bread and wine. Father Betene has always defined himself this
way from his earliest childhood. He says he never had any doubts about his
vocation. And the day of his ordination was certainly the occasion to confirm it. From
where the song composed on this occasion: “O në mvoe dzam (you are my friend,
you are my priest), elected since always. It is today that I confirm it to you”. For him,
this moment was a great thanksgiving for this long awaited day, a day of great joy. 
Three balafon orchestras burst into Abang- Mindi this sixth day of March 1971.
They came to the ordination feast of Father Pierre Lucien Betene. After the mass
presided over by the Archbishop of Yaoundé, Monsignor Jean Zoa, it is total
euphoria. The people of God come in great numbers throughout the department and
elsewhere to unleash the sound of balafons, tambourines and drums. The lucky
winner of the day remembers: “I danced like crazy that day. I was in such joy that I
saw myself as David dancing in front of the Ark of the Covenant. »What will inspire
thereafter, the name given to the choir Nkukuma David.
This outpouring of joy that day in March 1971 never left Father Betene. We do
not know him of any great anger. Sometimes in his daily life with his younger
colleagues, they can throw spikes at each other, some can even go a little too far, but
he never reacts sharply. His calm little smile just shows that he didn't really
appreciate it. He has a mastery and a composure that many know how to
appreciate. Some, he murmurs, go so far as to think that he has no enemies. He
laughs at it all and warns " beware of people who are too calm ". This calm, and this
maturity, are they not factors which push his little brothers in the priesthood and
young seminarians to call him "Papa Pierre", "papa Pierre»? Of course, there is age,
but much more than age, there is the character of the man. Because to our
 16

knowledge, he is the only one among the priests, who bears the name of papa,
or grandfather! Father Cyril Etoundi Djon tells us more about this because according
to Father Betene, he is the first in the clergy to have called him so, it is from him that
comes the title of "Papa Pierre or Papa Betene ". He reveals to us that:  
 
“During my two years spent in the cathedral, what I discovered more about this priest is
his simplicity, his constant smile. Father Betene is a model of priestly life. For the little
story, I started to call him that not just because he was the oldest among us, but
because he was very caring towards us and when we had some difficulties, he was a
very attentive ear. So one day it happened by itself, I started to call him "Papa
Betene ". Since his attitude and his way of being among us was that of a Father in the
biblical sense of the term Abba. He is an example of brotherhood and sociability. "  
 
Father Betene therefore begins his ministry with a beating pace in Yaoundé. The
friend of Jesus, as he considers himself so well, then embraces the cross with its joys
and sorrows. He took his first steps as vicar at the Cathedral of Yaoundé.
 
Such a long priestly journey
Having become a priest, the young Betene began to work as vicar at the
Cathedral of Notre Dame des Victoires (Our Lady of Victories) in Yaoundé from 1971
to 1976. It was here that he founded the great Nkukuma David Choir which would
embroider his legend. Assigned to the parish of the Sacred Heart of Mokolo in 1976,
he will stay there only for two months. Which will lead the faithful to wonder why the
bishop was causing them such great pain by removing from them such a talented
priest to assign him elsewhere? However, the reality was that Monsignor Jean Zoa
did not like to overburden his priests with a great accumulation of functions. Father
Betene will henceforth assume the task of Secretary of Education in the Archdiocese
of Yaoundé freed from all full parish pastoral ties. He remained at the helm of this
hard work for three years, from 1977-1980, before setting off to study in Canada. He
remembers the circumstances of his departure:
 
“I was sent to study in Canada by Monsignor Jean Zoa, but it was my Canadian
collaborators who organized this: Brother Rock Delude and Sister Huguette Fillion. It
should not be forgotten either that I was ordained deacon by Cardinal Paul Emile
Léger. And whenever I met him, he liked to say: "Here is Peter my son to whom I
communicated the Spirit". A month after his return to Canada, I received my letter of
sending to studies via the Cardinal Paul Emile Léger Foundation. The day of my
departure was a real mourning. In my family, feelings were mixed about my travelling so
far to Canada. Not because the project was bad in itself, but mainly because some
elders in the ministry had gone to this country as priests, and even seminarians, and
they had returned out of their clerical state. My family feared that I would fall into the
same trap. My people were worried that I would defrock in Canada, but I had confidence
and deep in my heart I knew that I was a friend of Jesus, and I could not take the heavy
responsibility of disappointing him. I knew he would grant me the grace of this fidelity. I
left in this vein."
 
The faithful servant speaks of this episode today with a touch of satisfaction at
having remained clinging to his motto for already fifty years without it being
evident. He retains a certain emotion when he recalls a confession by Professor Jean
Tabi Manga who said that the greatest grief he will have caused to his late mother is
 17

that after his dismissal from the seminary, we could no longer call her "the mother of
the priest". Come to think of it, Father Betene shuddered deep inside of him to be
able to inflict such suffering on his dear mother. His departure for Canada was not
only a personally significant event, but also a turning point in his relationship with his
community and his natural family. The Father specifies once again:
 
" In front of all the family I took the floor to say clearly that I cannot say "I could never
defrock ". However, I urge you to pray for me that this does not happen. As far as I'm
concerned, I don't think about doing it at all. On the other hand, I am committed to do my
best so that you can benefit from my stay in Canada. Something has to change in your
life. "  
 
And in fact, he was able to acquire acquaintances which helped him to carry out
some projects of community interest: The construction of the primary school of
Abang- Mindi and that of Bikop. In his village, a small dispensary and two drinking
water wells. Note that this was facilitated by the parish priest of his village who was
Canadian; Father Gaston La fontaine. But faced with these projects, some will think
that Father Betene is bathed in money far away in Canada. One day a man
approaches his father and scolds him that he sat on all the money that came from
Canada while allowing himself to make others work while he "ate alone." "
Arrived in Canada in 1980 precisely to undertake studies in educational
sciences, he will be marked by an episode. One of his teachers, former priest, tries to
dissuade him from his vocation. Introducing himself as a priest to this teacher who
had gone out of the ranks, he replied to the young priest who had just arrived from
Cameroon that he would see where Father Betene would go with this vocation. In
return, Father Betene replied, “Either way, I don't want to be pretentious. If there are
some who have been priests and who have resigned, it is possible that I also
resign. But, I don't think about it. I am a priest! ".
On his arrival in Canada, the young priest was welcomed at Notre Dame des
Neiges church not far from the University of Montreal where he was studying. He is a
resident and welcomes people on a permanent basis. He preaches from time to
time. But one of the reasons he came to Canada was the idea of perfecting his
English. At the minor seminary he was called "Peter" because he was already very
interested in learning english. After some time at Notre Dame des Neiges church,
Father Betene asked to be moved to an English-speaking parish. All will not go well
in the parish of St Monica which is a little far from the University of Montreal. A
misunderstanding arose with the parish priest because the student-priest asked him
to have certain responsibilities in order to be able to practice his English on a daily
basis. While the parish priest thought he wanted extra money: “You have a
scholarship and what you receive here per week is not enough for you? " " No, I want
to practice English every day" replied the young priest. Not having come to an
agreement with his parish priest, he took the initiative to address himself to the
auxiliary bishop of Montreal: Bishop. Crowley, who was in charge of the English-
speaking community. The bishop explains to him that a center for the elderly had just
lost its pastor and was in need of a new one. However, he shares his concerns with
the native of Abang-Mindi. Concerns about his ebony skin color. If the Auxiliary
Bishop Crowley agrees to access the just demands of the priest who came from
Cameroon, he fears that it will not be accepted by the senior citizens
unaccustomed to seeing color priests. Confident, Father Betene asks to be given a
chance. He is appointed chaplain of this center. The fire does not take long to
 18

catch. Father Betene will thus reside in the St Pascal Baylon presbytery located a few
minutes’ walk from this center for the elderly. He serves with dedication and
reinforces his English, and at the same time, he continues his studies at the
University.
When the founder of the Nkukuma David choir has to leave Canada at the end of
his long intellectual and pastoral sojourn, he seems to have accomplished his
mission efficiently. In his farewell to the community of senior citizens whom he was
commissioned to mentor spiritually, bishop Crowley discovers that Father Betene has
won many hearts, and he goes so far as to confess to them the fear he had. upon the
arrival of the priest. This one leaves the lands of Canada with a comfortable
popularity grade point. Bishop Crowley wrote to bishop Jean Zoa about this priest to
express all the good things he thought about him, without forgetting to recommend
him in particular.
The truth is, the young Cameroonian priest has not broken with his sober life. On
the other hand, he saves everything he receives in Canada as income and transfers
this to his village parish priest in Abang-Mindi so that his small income can be used
to start projects for the entire large village community. “We set up a lot of the
projects that we talked about above”. 
When Father Betene returns to Cameroon, it relieves many people among
which his parents. His stay in Canada was fruitful in more than one way and he has
also returned without defrocking.
 
Pastor at the English-speaking parish

In Yaoundé, the English-speaking Catholic Christian community, commonly

called the Anglophones, was getting bigger and bigger every day and the need for
them to have a parish of their own began to arise. Under the responsibility of Father
Laurent Mvondo, the parishes of Elig-Effa and Olezoa could no longer contain the
many people who flocked there. Father Betene arrives in Cameroon at the very
moment when Father Laurent Mvondo is in some confrontation with the English-
speaking community. Monsignor Jean Zoa, on the strength of Bishop Crowley's
recommendation, jumps on the occasion and appoints the newly arrived priest from
Canada as pastor of this community. The man will spend nineteen years of non-stop
work there. The faithful meanwhile are involved in a nomadism which lead
them either to Elig-Effa or to Olezoa, each according to the distance that suits
him. The new parish priest himself was not spared by this nomadism. Father Betene
celebrated Sunday mass at the Elig-Effa chapel at 8 a.m. and went to Olezoa at 10
a.m. They were independent chapels. He was parish priest of the community, and
celebrated Mass in these two parishes which were ceded to them during the
offices. Father Betene had the painful duty of reminding his community of their
situation as “foreigners” and at the same time of the need to emancipate themselves
from this tutelage. Professor Verkijika G. Fanso, faithful of the community, testifies:
 
“Very early on, the Rev. Dr Betene saw that the growing community needed a church of
its own, instead of sharing two small chapels with different French speaking
communities. He quickly approached Monsignor Archbishop Jean Zoa and land was
acquired in Mimboman, before the complaint of parishioners who found that this land
was far from town and even farther for those in suburbs. The land on which the English
primary school of Mvog-Ada was already located seemed preferable. Once again, the
 19

Archbishop granted this new site and this is how the story of the first English-speaking
parish of Yaoundé in Mvog-Ada and its beautiful architecture began in the early 1990s. " 
 
Father Betene will build St Joseph's Anglophone Parish in Mvog-Ada, the very
first Anglophone parish in French-speaking territories of Cameroon. At the same
time, our jubilee priest was National Secretary of Catholic Education in
Cameroon. Despite this heavy load on his shoulders, he devoted himself to his flock
with zeal and availability. The testimonials are clear about him. Professor Verkijika G.
Fanso adds:
 
“He was always on time for mass and confessions. He visited the homes of his
Christians when invited. He loved the good music of the traditional African Church, which
brought him extremely close to the Lamnso choir formed in 1990 which he admired,
encouraged and promoted. It is difficult to list the many accomplishments of Reverend
Doctor Betene during the nineteen years he remained the only priest in the only English-
speaking parish of Yaoundé. Today we have many full and semi-English speaking
parishes or communities of churches in different parts of the city of Yaoundé. Father
Betene preached well prepared wonderful sermons and homilies in excellent English,
injecting them with a local African humor and captivating the assembly, every time he
celebrated ".
 
Throughout his ministry as pastor, he was keen to build a Christian community
where the laity would be responsible of themselves. And since they did not have a
church, like a good educator with a degree in education, fresh from Canada, he will
mobilize human resources and start work. He also forges solid links with the laity who
will end up concluding that they were finally understood by a Francophone. During
this time, Father Betene only benefited from the assistance of an Australian vicar.
Nineteen years later, he left this parish with the satisfaction of a job well
done. But it would be too easy to say today that everything had gone very well in the
best of all possible worlds. If on the whole, the stay at St Joseph's Anglophone Parish
Mvog-Ada went well, the jubilee of this year 2021 does however have some
reserves. He, to whom it is difficult to recognize a political coloring, finds himself
embroiled in the whirlwind of the ghost cities of the 1990/1991 and especially the
irruption on the political scene of the leader of the SDF (Social Democratic Front) Ni
John Fru Ndi. Immediately, some were quick to conclude that when we were not an
Anglophone, we were against the political claims of Fru Ndi and supporter of Paul
Biya. In short, all French speakers were supporters of Paul Biya against Fru
Ndi. There were even people that Father Betene worked with who at one point
thought he was a spy. If some were tempted to consider him as a spy on the English-
speaking side, on the French-speaking side they saw him no less than a traitor. But
despite this fracture of the community, it will remain united on the whole around a
pastor aware of his mission to bring together the people entrusted to him by
the Lord. There will still be twelve more years before these misunderstandings were
extinguished. Tensions will calm down after an intervention on his part to tell them
that he was indeed a Francophone, a Cameroonian of the Etoudi ethnic group, but
above all that he was not ready to deny his origins. He later specified that Monsignor
Jean Zoa had sent him in the midst of the English-speaking community not as a
politician but as a pastor. And if by any chance, he concluded, he took an act in
contradiction with the foundations of the charge of souls, the people of God would
have every leisure to seize the Archbishop to give the appropriate ecclesial
 20

consequences. This was enough to ease the tensions. When Father Betene looks

back today, he is relatively certain that these tensions were only provoked by a small
group of ill-intentioned people, never by the large community towards which he keep
excellent relations and memories until present. 

Episcopal Vicar: The unworthy servant

In the old configuration of the Archdiocese of Yaoundé, Father Betene occupied
the place of Episcopal Vicar in charge of the liturgical pastoral care and enculturation
from 1995 to 2015, today the commission is separated into the commission of liturgy
and that of enculturation, which in this latter, he remained in charge until 2020. This
Vicariate was one of the eight episcopal vicariates of services different from the
territorial vicariates which are at the head of the pastoral zones.
Father Pierre L. Betene was in charge of two important sectors namely:
- The liturgy or public worship, with the responsibility to watch over the way in
which the liturgy must be celebrated in the diocese, in particular as regards the
celebration of the sacraments and in particular the Eucharist, the art of sacred
music, the popular piety, pilgrimages, blessings, etc.  
- The enculturation of song, body language, clothing and liturgical objects, the
work of musical instruments: Balafons in particular, the enculturation of rites.  
It is related to this diocesan charge that Father Betene organized DCD (Diocesan
Choirs Days) in July 2013. This being done with the aim of creating a dynamic
gathering of Catholic choirs in the Archdiocese of Yaoundé. The choir festival
celebrated for the first time in Yaoundé was a high quality event and a won
challenge. The events spread over several days will achieve the objectives set on the
one hand, by the number of choirs present and their diversity of expression (more
than 200 choirs from the city of Yaoundé). The objective of these days was to bring
together the choirs of the diocese and to recognize their contribution to the beauty of
the liturgy, to the meaning of having a choir and their participation to the active,
conscious and involvement of the community of the people of God (Betene,
2013). The DCDs were the result of an approach initiated with the creation of
DCHOY (the Diocesan Choir of Yaoundé) which echoed beyond national borders on
the occasion of major liturgical meetings in Cameroon or in the diocese in particular.
Take for example:
- The visit of Pope John Paul II in 1995  
- The celebration of the jubilee of the year 2000  
- The International World Sick Day in 2005  
- The episcopal ordination of Bishop Christophe Zoa in 2007  
- The visit of Pope Benedict XVI in 2009  
- The celebration of the 25 years of episcopate of Archbishop Victor Tonye Bakot
in 2012 (Betene, 2013).  
 
The military chaplain: Honor and fidelity under the clock
 21

The military chaplaincy in Cameroon was established by ministerial instruction on

October 10, 2000, organizing voluntary civil chaplaincy within the Armed and
Security Forces, it includes the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Churches as well
as Muslims. Here, the contribution of the Catholic Church through its chaplaincy
takes several forms:
- Legally, the chaplaincy participates in the respect and application of a certain
number of rights that the State guarantees to citizens, in particular, freedom of
conscience and freedom of worship;         
- Morally, the chaplaincy contributes to the formation of the conscience and to the
maintenance of the discipline;         
- Spiritually, the chaplaincy is effectively committed to the military, their families and
their training, health and other centers, to enable them to live their faith on a daily
basis;         
- In short, it is about making Christ and his Church present and active in a military
environment.         
Father Betene served as regional military chaplain from 2008 to date, the day of
his priestly golden jubilee when he retires. Faithful to his logic of unifier, he has set
up an organized and united Christian community, alive and engaged. Before being
discharged of his mission, his ambition was to gradually enhance the 2500m2 site
that a former Ministry of Defense had granted him, by building a military chaplaincy
worthy of the capital: A church, a presbytery, a children’s garden, a reception hall and
offices. But this was not possible.
We must also underline the role he played with other national military chaplains
(Protestants, Orthodox and Muslims). He was their spokesperson. He was the
one who convened and chaired their meeting which took place in his apartment’s
office. He was the one who wrote their various mails, etc. (Cf. testimonies).
The military chaplain's mission is to bring Christ to the forces of defense, to keep
a follow-up with them, to form a viable Christian community by giving them moral and
spiritual guidance to them and to their family members. Usually they are called when
the military goes to war. The diocesan chaplaincy of the armed forces and police is
located at the Brigade Headquarters (BHQ). The chaplaincy functions like a regular
parish. Thus, Father Betene celebrated masses there every Sunday, on feast days
and certain days of the week. Each time he fulfilled his priestly missions with
selflessness, zeal and patience. He will have listened to this portion of God's people
until the end in confession, spiritual direction and accompaniment, of these men and
women in uniform. In the particular context of the security and defense forces,
chaplain Betene emphasized the formation of conscience, a sense of duty and
responsibility, and the spiritual internalization of discipline. In a few words, his main
mission will have been to educate in wisdom and to permanently inscribe the fear of
God and the evangelical values at the bottom of the consciences of these soldiers
and police officers whom he had the charge of souls. Under the flag and the bell
tower, Father Betene prepared for the sacraments through an appropriate catechesis
but also by recollections, novenas and pilgrimages. Until recently he could not count
how many times he walked the corridors of our army structures such as hospitals,
health centers, prisons, schools and training centers to carry Christ there. Father
Betene in this ministry will not have built buildings. He will have built many men,
shattered lives and more consciences than anything else. The chaplaincy functioned
as a full time parish with a parish pastoral council, a council for economic affairs, and
a youth council, etc.
 22

In the chaplaincy of the armed forces, the three dimensions at least that are
known of the man have been expressed with force; the priest, the teacher and the
cantor have merged in this existence with density and fidelity to a Christ whose
friendship he has never ceased to claim.
Despite the difficulties, Father Betene never gave way to discouragement. The
military chaplain, however, faced some difficulties inherent in this profession. The
very first is the dispersal and mobility of men and women in uniform. Gathering them
together is a real struggle, amplified by the lack of a chapel for worship, offices for
the listening and follow-up service, and no meeting room. The Father still regrets
when he retires that the chaplaincy to which he has devoted himself so much lacks
real accommodation structures. He thinks that this should certainly be one of the
current priorities of the young chaplain who will take his place.
The dean of the priests of the diocese of Yaoundé, turning this page today at the
chaplaincy, remembers this flagship event that he experienced during the time of the
former defense ministers for nine consecutive years. From 2008 to 2017; when
conditions permitted; Father Betene led a delegation of officers to the International
Military Pilgrimage to Lourdes which purpose is the consolidation of peace in the
world. An initiative taken after the second World War (1945) between the Germans
 

and the French who were at war against each other. The Cameroonian officers would
go to this pilgrimage every year to Lourdes in France to pray for peace. “Each year,
more than 40 armies from around the world and more than 15,000 participants go on
this pilgrimage. It has been three years since the Cameroonian army has not been
there. This year the arrival of the Covid-19 prevented the event from taking place” he
explains. But Father underlines that the absence of a Cameroonian delegation the
two previous years was due to the lack of financial resources because of the socio-
political crises in the North-West, South-West regions and northern regions war
against Boko-Haram. This, Father Betene finds regrettable because we find soldiers
from all over the world that go to pray for peace and stability, but without the
presence of a Cameroonian delegation even if that be of only five or six people.
At the end of all these rich and long missions started in the 1970s until this year
2021, the man confirms this inventive spiritual genealogy at the total giving of
oneself. The consumerist materialism of the moment, the desire to monopolize
everything, the authoritarian drift or clericalism have always been foreign to Father
Betene's approach;
 
“I have always considered myself to be a Vatican II priest. Bishop Zoa talked about it all
the time. This implies that I am a man of the people taken from the people and working
with the people. I'm not the big boss who gives orders. I spent 19 years in the
Anglophone sociological community. I didn't care about money. We had a management
committee and I deposited the funds at the procure. The catechists took care of
catechism. I took care of weddings. I had a team of young people. I am not the boss. I
don't consider myself to be the leader in the style of the world. I work in communion with
all of God's people. I believe in participatory communion. "
 
With shy eyes hidden behind his glasses, the octogenarian priest sinks a little
deeper into his plastic chair and lets his intimate convictions explode:
 
“I keep the same functioning in the military chaplaincy where I have been for years. I
remain faithful to the doctrine of my Church. I wouldn't want to break with the orthodoxy
of my Church, but I would like to put a few downsides and bring a breath of fresh air to
 23

the heart of my most intimate convictions. I must say that I believe in canon law. I
believe in it a lot, however for many other things I refer directly to the Gospel. The
disciples eat the ears of corn and the Pharisees protest. But Jesus decides in favor of
the disciples despite the criticisms and the recriminations of the good thinking. So for
some things I lean towards the Gospel. I am convinced that the Gospel comes before
canon law. The rule of law is good, but it must be at the service of man; I hold this
conviction from the attitude of Jesus. That is why I hate hypocrisy! ". 
 
This sentencing conclusion of a man aiming after God’s own heart is perhaps
due to the decline of sincerity in our social and ecclesial universe and its relationship
to truth and authority. The gospels are however clear: “You will know the truth and
the truth will set you free. » (Jn 8:32). Had Father Betene mirrored himself in these
strong words of Christ at the dawn of his ministry? There is no doubt that in
advancing to give himself definitively to Christ, he repudiated hypocrisy and its idols
in the depths of his conscience, in order to be in the midst of his brothers the one
who serves. The truth being that, “faith is strengthened to be given to others.” 

CHAPTER III

THE ARTIST 

"To sing well is to pray twice"

To speak of Rev. Father Pierre Lucien Betene as an artist is to try to grasp at the
end of a modest pen the mass of an African baobab tree in its symbolic density and
its profusion of impenetrable dreams. To accurately say that Pierre Lucien Betene is
an artist, is to try to describe the overwhelming galaxy of these branches in apparent
contradiction but which gather in a mysterious unit in the solidity of their attachment
to the trunk without however giving the final destination of their course.
How to understand this myriad of leaves as so many works whose inspiration
have reached ecclesial and anthropological consecration on these lands bathed in
the Gospel? Father Betene is thus, difficult to grasp but easy to admire. The least we
can say is that Father Pierre Lucien Betene as an artist is an abundance of
aesthetics, the main matrix of which is the beti liturgical song. If man stops
composing, he never stops singing, for he sings as he prays. If he has stopped
composing, he has not ceased to inspire. Innocent in everyday life, this priest once
called “James Brown” or the “flying priest” because of his propensity to spin on the
pulpit when he directed a song is both a memory and an emblematic figure of sacred
traditional song in Cameroon. The man readily explains, the psalm which proclaims
"that it is good to celebrate our God, it is beautiful to sing his praise" that the function
of the song and of the sacred music in the Church is in close relation with the very
purpose of the liturgy; namely the glorification of God and the sanctification of
mankind. Sacred music allows and promotes the active, conscious and fruitful
participation of the people of God "in the most holy mysteries and in the public and
solemn prayer of the Church", he wrote in 2013 following the Congregation for Divine
Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.
 24

Born of the womb of an ekang dancer, a grandfather and an uncle who were
musicians, Father Betene in his long human journey will pass into the hands of
Father Jacques Leclerc, artist musician and those of Monsignor Athanase Bala the
then music teacher at the minor seminary. Initiated in the rudiments of music theory,
added to the first intuitions, the young person will articulate in his existence the
musical grammar received to launch himself definitively in the composition of sacred
music.
The first songs created in Cameroonian languages date from 1950. They were
hymns that were composed or translated into native tongues but which obeyed to
western melodies. These canticles were interpreted in almost all Cameroonian
languages: Ewondo, Bassa, Bamiléké etc.
His elders in major seminary composed psalms, they called this movement the
Cameroonian psalmody. They worshipped and prayed with the psalms, and father
Betene continued in this tradition. They favored the musical composition of the
psalms for the sincerity and depth of these prayers. This gives a certain nostalgia to
Father Betene who regrets that people today are pouring into moralization scripts
instead of songs which translate the Word of God. The Cameroonian psalmody
translated the psalms into the rhythms and melodies of the land, unlike the older
hymns of German origin which took no account of the tonic character of our
languages.
Indeed, our languages are tone languages. We distinguish the low tone, the high
tone, the middle tone, the low-high tone, and the high-low tone. Singing in native
languages must strictly respect these tones, since in most cases, it is the tone that
gives meaning to the word and not the spelling. For example, the word ZAM, can
have at least three different meanings which have no relation between
them: Leprosy, taste, and raffia.
The rule is clear in the composition of ewondo; the music must follow the tone of
the language. Lucien Mebenga, one of the first lay composers of local sacred music,
speaks to us in the following excerpt of the beginnings of Cameroonian sacred
music:
 
In January 1963, when he had just been appointed vicar and choirmaster at the
Cathedral of Notre Dame des Victoires in Yaoundé, Father Pie-Claude Ngumu founded
the Maîtrise des Chanteurs à la Croix d'Ebène (The mastery of singers of the Ebony
cross). Then appointed parish priest of Ndzong Mëlen, he developed and introduced the
so-called “Ndzong Mëlen” rite. Every Sunday the Eucharistic celebration in this rite
attracted crowds of the faithful and visitors from all over. And all this in the open
air. His choir had a great success in the first Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar in April
1966. The first portable balafon was introduced in the Church at the hips (Bëkelëge a
ngëdëg), a traditional type with four instruments, plus a chordophone (Mvet Oyën). To
avoid confusion or even slippages between Sacred music and folklore, Father Pierre
Lucien Betene, ranked among the great composers of the diocese, and still a deacon at
that time, invented in 1970, from his village Andog, then at the Parish of St John the
Baptist at Nkol-Nkumu about fifteen kilometers from Yaoundé, the manufacture of a set
of six modern style balafons on foot, with protective boxes and painted in African
colors. There were then two solos (small and large) with two octaves, a
first akuda accompaniment, a second omvek, a double bass and a full bass!
After the exhibition of this innovative work, this style of balafons dedicated to sacred
music will know a huge success accompanied by a very rapid generalization in the
parishes of Cameroon, Africa and elsewhere. At the same time, this same style of
balafons will be tested in Akono with, however, two major differences by another
 25

inventor of Cameroonian sacred music, Father François-Xavier Amara. Instead of

calabashes as fragile sound boxes, he introduced Chinese bamboo. In addition,
François-Xavier Amara will adopt the chromatic range (tones and semitones) thus taking
back the xylophone experienced at the time of the mission. (Betene, 2013).
 
From 1965 to 1975, almost all the liturgical songs were to be composed by
priests and major seminarians, with the exception of old Pierre Mebe. At the time,
priests and major seminarians worked in a collegial manner. The songs taught were
previously censored, amended, then adopted. After which these compositions were
taught in parishes. The written distribution method will also follow. The major
seminarians of Otele, then of Nkolbison from 1969 will distribute these songs in some
of the most famous brochures: “Olugu Ntondobe, Special Olugu Ntondobe, One
Mvom”.
In front of Father Betene looms a great shadow, that of Father Pie Claude
Ngumu who will have marked him very much. The young Betene, then a major
seminarian, attended the rehearsals of Father Pie Claude Ngumu who then directed
the famous choir "The mastery of singers of the Ebony Cross" at Our Lady of
victories cathedral in Yaoundé. The jubilee celebrant tells us that when it was getting
late, his elder in the priesthood and in sacred song took care in accommodating
him. Next to Father Pie Claude Ngumu in whose shadow this year's jubilee priest got
prepared, there are other names like Father François-Xavier Amara or Wenceslas
Mbah then in service at the parish of Mvog-Mbi. More than fifty years later, the
octogenarian priest also remembers having stayed in the parish of Mvog-Mbi to learn
sacred song there. The now dean of priests of the Archdiocese of Yaoundé specifies
that all this music nomadism will have given him a good experience for the mastery
of the sacred beti song which is now inscribed in the register of the immortality of our
Church. He spoke with emphasis recently that when the basics of work are acquired,
one can then build his own destiny. That is to say, one can trace his path and make
his way. He will not then do Pie-Claude Ngumu, nor François- Xavier Amara, nor
Wenceslas Mba, but Pierre Lucien Betene. A particular style which Monsignor Amara
reproached for playing a lot on the double octave system which he found
monotonous. To which Father Betene retorted that the impression of monotony was
rather linked to the fact that his balafon had a diatonic scale while that of his elder
was chromatic. Father Betene knows that he has his style, the genealogy of which is
deeply rooted in the Ekang rhythm in which his whole life and his acoustic experience
are steeped. With him it is little to say that the style is the man. Father Betene's style
is bikutsi toned down and modulated by the prospect of praise. But the characteristic
of bikutsi is not to be chamber music. But to be a music to jiggle and
party. By bringing this rhythm into the church with his original instruments, Father
Betene did not deprive it of its festive dimension. So the sacred music of Father
Betene is to celebrate. This man, sober in language and discreet, suddenly
transforms into a ball of energy which tears itself from the ground whenever it comes
to him to conduct one of his compositions. This did not prevent him from also
composing beautiful songs of meditation, of penance in which is expressed the
misery of a sinful man, his repentance and his total confidence in the infinite mercy of
God. The Betene style is then this ritornello of scent of balafons, this brilliant voice
screwed on the syllables and above all this festive harmony. In a unitary impulse all
the instruments spring up to shake the heavens and bring it down to earth. The
Betene style is the centrality of the word of God which marries the tones of the
Ewondo language by giving it to assume the thick divine mystery in the Fang-Beti-
 26

Bulu sound category. In fact, the Betene style without saying more or too much, is
that romanticized and spiritualized bikutsi which makes the encounter of the beti
people with God an eternal feast. The Father situates his style in a synthetic form
where eternity is said in a subliminal manner on a slat of balafon wood with as much
magnificence as on leather stretched on a drum’s skin. He himself explains the
genealogy of this long synthetic work:
 
“When we started playing balafons in church, we first worked with traditional players and
we struggled with them because they lacked discipline. These balafonists did everything
to confirm their popular image. In fact, they were seen as troubadours, people with little
credibility and lack of values. When I started training children to take the place of these
difficult adults, everyone thought that I was seriously wrong in this project. "
 
For the scorners of Father Betene who had a problem of discipline and succession to
ensure within this group of refractory balafonists, he could not trust immature and unstable
children. But he replied that "the future belongs to the youth". Today, this octogenarian priest
is delighted with this groundwork that was accomplished in the past. There is in this country
at the moment an abundance of balafonists! He had proof of this with the Choir 600 which
animated the mass at the visit of the two popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI: “There were
so many balafon players that we did not know what to do with them.” And in a local
magazine (Eyebe Assiga, Nyanga 93, 2014), he affirms that “what delights him even more is
that there are many young priests who play the balafon very well, as much as the traditional
specialists of this instrument”. 

The Nkukuma David Choir: The Acoustic Testament

The Nkukuma David choir was founded at Our Lady of Victories Cathedral in
Yaoundé in 1971, the year of the priestly ordination of Father Betene. This choir
therefore has the same longevity as the ministry of this jubilee priest. It is the work of
the young Father already famous in sacred liturgy since his major seminarian
years. The Nkukuma David choir is also in the life of Father Betene its resonating
testament and the first paragraph of a life under the dictation of fate. Dictation to
which he had neither the desire nor the means to escape, out of docility and
obedience but above all out of an intimate conviction of being under the gaze of
Providence. The man of God teaches us today that this choir first animated the 9am
mass, but for more than a quarter of a century now, the Nkukuma David choir
animates the 6:30 am mass on sundays. 
The history of this choir dates back to the departure from the cathedral to Dzong
Melen by Father Pie-Claude Ngumu. The community was therefore ripped of
beautiful liturgical songs in ewondo since Father Pie-Claude Ngumu took with him
both the choir singers and the instruments of the choir "the mastery of singers of the
cross of ebony” that he had founded. Father Betene therefore landed at the cathedral
after his ordination with a clear mission: to reconnect the assembly with the liturgical
tradition in the Ewondo language. Monsignor Jean Zoa by assigning this young priest
to the cathedral knows his talents well. The future will confirm everything. When the
young Father Betene sets down his suitcases in this cathedral, which he already
knows a little of, for having often gone there to listen to Father Pie Claude Ngumu
sing, he decides to create a choir and is joined by a group of lay volunteers whose
names he is far from forgetting. They respond massively to this call from the young
priest. This will be the first frame of the Nkukuma David choir. Mr. André Fouda, the
 27

mayor of the city of Yaoundé, will establish a base to manufacture the first balafon
and he recruited the first group of balafonists at the municipal dumping area next to
the CPDM party house. Pierre Ekobena (the Father of Mgr. Jean Claude Ekobena)
joined the ranks, Simon Ndoye (the Father of Achille Ndoye, current organist of the
great classical choir of the Cathedral), François Ngang, André Atangana, Jacqueline
Foe, Denis Ndzinga, Agnès Eyebe and many other people joined the ranks. The first
satisfaction of young Betene is to know that these people are mature Christians,
fervent believers who are neither lacking in zeal nor in availability. The first directors
of this choir were: Father Pierre L. Betene, Mr. Gerard Etoundi, Mr. Victor Emmanuel
Mendo'o, Mr. Simeon Ntonga, Mr. Pius Mekinda. Father Betene, composer emeritus,
is very happy to have trained other choirmasters and composers, such as Victor
Emmanuel Mendo'o, Simeon Ntonga, Pius Mekinda who also composed very
beautiful songs and acquired a great reputation in this field. Of all these disciples,
only Simeon Ntonga remains alive.  
He still feels the joy to have accompanied the Nkukuma David choir in Germany
for a six-week tour in 1977, and at the festival of Negro Arts in Lagos where they won
a prize. Father Betene also evokes with fond memories, the tours of the then great
“Nkukuma David” choir in the South West and Littoral regions of Cameroon.
The colors chosen and displayed by the Nkukuma David choir were a mixture of
black, red, and white. A set of colors which constitute the pictographic architecture of
Reverend Father Engelbert Mveng assassinated in April 1995. For this man of
culture, red here expresses life, joy, victory. White expresses death. Father Mveng’s
point was that, our ancestors painted their bodies in white when a member of the
community died. And finally, the last color chosen will be black. This black color
expressing trials. All these colors relate to our African cultures. For Severin Cecile
Abega, the original definition of these colors are:
 
The black color, obtained by the charcoal blackens the heart, makes it insensitive by
silencing any human feeling which could be weakened and make any man hesitate
when striking or eliminating someone, or during a contest.
Red made with mahogany red powder (baa) is the opposite of black. It is the color of
blood, of life, of great festivals and celebrations. It is the color of social life which has the
other virtue of warding off evil. Evu is the principle of witchcraft which can be used for
good as well as for evil. The dancer brushes the body with this red to “protect himself
against the evil action of the evu”.
White (kaolin) evokes the power of spirits. The dancer rubs it on his body to
appropriate himself with this power. (Betene, 2012: 14-15). 
On the choice of these three colors, Father Betene, following Father Mveng,
wants to be just as precise:
 
“These are the three colors of Engelbert Mveng's African palette. It is a board on which
the painter spreads and mixes his colors. Basically that means the three great African
colors that artists use. Then the set of colors that a painter usually uses. Red expresses
life, joy, victory. White expresses death. Our ancestors when there was a death painted
their bodies with white. Black expresses trials. "
 
As for the name of the “Nkukuma David” choir, it literally means: “The King
David choir”. Our nightingale explains to us that the name “David” comes from King
David of the Bible. King David is that great biblical figure for whom the priest has
 28

great admiration. He admits to being attached to this saint who is a friend of God, a
musician and a dancer. King David danced in front of the ark without restraint. He
reminds anyone who wants to hear him well that (2 Samuel 6:16), “as the ark of
the Eternal entered the city of David…, King David jumped and danced before
the Eternal. By also choosing King David as patron saint of this choir, he wanted to
take him as a model, a leader of men and warlord, beyond the other turpitudes that
he is known of in the face of God.  
Looking back, would it be an exaggeration to assert today that father Betene, in
his ministry which he continues, will also have incarnated, as much as he could, King
David? For those who know the history of the king, and who saw the celebrating
priest in certain functions entrusted to him, are quick to say that the spirit of this king
inhabited the body of the jubilating priest. Witnesses of his ordination say that Father
Betene danced and praised God in the manner of King David dancing before the Ark
of the Covenant. 
When the moment arrives to leave the cathedral, since assigned to Mokolo, the
choir singers want to follow him like a new messiah. He refuses this ridiculous
coronation and replies that the choir was created for the cathedral and not for the
priest. Without any triumphalism, he claims that the Nkukuma David choir still
survives half a century later because "it was, is, and will remain the work of the
Lord." 
The young Father Betene did not only create the choir for the praise of God. He
also makes it a place for learning the basics of singing, compositions, correct tones
and structure of the language. He adds elements of choreography that participate in
the aesthetics of the song with a body expression adjusted in a coherent whole, with
the view of the balafons, the pompoms, the colors and the costumes:
 
“My thesis is that African art is unitary. The dance, the music, the song, the decorations
go together and are unitary. When I embarked on the project of the choir, I said we had
to protect the calabash sounding box made of raffia bamboo. But it was not solid. After
that I used a board, but the protective case was getting very heavy. So we made a
cubic-shaped frame on four legs, the 4 sides of which are covered with plywood. The
bottom was completely open. A new shortcoming, despite the opening the sound is
muffled. To deal with this new difficulty, the plywood on the front side is replaced by a
woven piece of rattan. Traditionally, balafons are played with sticks made from the roots
of a tree called “mindi mi asseng”. Because it was not always available, we used
sponged chopsticks which are more effective than “asseng”. We decorated the balafons
and the costumes”.

Before entering the seminary, Father Betene tells us that elders like
the lay philosopher Obama had already introduced the Amara-style balafons
(the chromatic scale ones). But the man had another idea in mind. He cares about
the quality of the sound. He therefore brings into play a physics student from the
University of Yaoundé named Clement Mathieu Belinga. With him, they analyzed the
blade of the balafon in all its forms: The length, the thickness, the width, its position
on the frame which carries it, the correspondence of the sound with that of the
calabash resonance box, so many factors that play to obtain a quality of
sound. Without forgetting that the feet of the protective case must rest on a flexible or
elastic material, rubber for example. It must be said that it is a real revolution for the
improving acoustics of the balafon. It will be a new era. But the enthusiasm of the
young priest facing the balafon revolution will be dampened by some opposition. We
 29

have already reported a reaction from an elder in this area, Mgr. François-Xavier
Amara. Others were rather reserved towards this enculturated liturgy with its balafons
and choir singers dancing in the church. Father Betene remembers: “We were
accused of making women dance who shook their breasts in front of the people of
God during mass. But these reactions, let's say it with sincerity, were marginal,
he sighs.” Some said, “we have seen Saints come out of our ranks, we will see
where yours will come out from”, to say that enculturated singing could not produce
anything good. For Father Betene however, it was the Church that saved the
traditional balafon.
The jubilee priest of this year 2021 was therefore quick to find a place in
this Church from the beginning of his ministry. Depending on the circumstances and
the providence of this God who never ceases to amaze with his choices, Father
Betene takes the place left vacant by Father Pie-Claude Ngumu who left for Ndzong-
Melen. Immediately he takes the temperature of his mission and creates a choir to
better articulate his genius in a rigorous application of what he has accumulated as
experience. At the same time, he gives himself the profile of a teacher and
strengthens the transmission of his compositions: The fire begins to spark.
As a composer and above all as a choirmaster, Father Betene has a heritage
which remains memorable in his modest life as a priest. Among these achievements
is the formation and direction of the choir 600.
 
Formation of the choir 600
In 1995, during the second visit of Pope John Paul II to Cameroon, the bishops
decide to create a choir of 600 people. This choir was to manifest the character of the
Catholic Church, the family of God and of Cameroon, Africa in miniature, through the
integration and living together of the choirs. The bishops wanted a choir capable of
singing in several Western, African and Cameroonian languages. The choice of the
formation and the control of this great choir will fall on the person of Father Pierre
Lucien Betene.
He had to assume the enormous task of bringing together all the participating
choirs to make a harmonious whole. The choir will sing in beti, bamiléké, bassa,
mbamois, batanga, etc. They will also sing songs from the northern regions
(Adamaoua, North and Far North), as well as songs from English-speaking regions:
lamnso, kom, etc. During its performances, the large group of 600 people will also
sing in French, Latin, and English. Father Betene remembers one of the best
memories of his life. The day after that memorable day of September 14, 1995 during
the audience that was organized at the nunciature, the Holy Father asked him; “Are
you the one who sang yesterday?” Father Betene replies: “yes most Holy Father”,
then the Pope kissed him saying “the songs were very beautiful”.
Overall, almost everything went well, but the difficulty will not come from the choir
singers, but from the choir masters. The choir masters could not accept someone
putting himself above them to take the direction of the large choir. But Father Betene
neither lacks the charisma, nor the talent, much less the legitimacy to clarify things in
a Churchly manner. After this, it was necessary to overcome the problems of internal
organization with the system of rotations of the different groups, without forgetting the
problem of discipline that was to be maintained. Father sums it all as follows:
 
“I had to let them remember that it was the choice of the bishops who wanted to show
the character of the Church, United, with one head! I had to meet the choir masters, so
 30

that they would go and teach the songs to their choir members. To obtain a uniform
song, each master had to teach them to the choir, each in his own language. Once a
song was chosen, each teacher had to go to each group to teach it.
There was a great discipline problem. Because to work with 600 people, I had to call
each master to remind them to discipline their group. In addition to the choirmasters,
there were the group delegates who were responsible for strengthening the
discipline. We spent a month going around the groups, and it was in the last month that
we gathered all the choirs, here at the cathedral and then at the aerial base in
Mvan. Bishop Victor Tonye Bakot had been appointed as coordinator of all the choirs,
and he came once to talk to them about the objectives of the choir”.
 
Finally, after such hard work, and the religious fervor having characterized this
performance of the 600 choir, a minister at the end of the Pope's mass, comes to
congratulate the talented choirmaster of the day. Father Betene will only answer him
in the form of a question. He will say: "His excellency, do you see what we can do
with Cameroonians if we put them together? The choirmaster now thinks that the
objective of the 600 choir had been achieved. He does not hide the satisfaction that
was his: “We chose songs that were already known. The 600 choir also animated the
mass of Pope Benedict XVI on March 2009 with equal success. The songs were also
appreciated. The choirs were very motivated, they bought their uniforms and on the
D-Day at 6 a.m., they were all already gathered there!” says Father.
The note from Bishop Guido Marini, master of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations
attests that: “The celebrations presided over by the Holy Father took place with the
lively and intense participation of a great many faithful, in an atmosphere of great
dignity where everything contributed to express a deep sense of the sacred and of
the mystery: The songs, the silence, the vocal expression, the gestures typical of the
African culture, the expression of the retained but religious joy”. Following Bishop
Guido, Monsignor Victor Tonye Bakot Archbishop of Yaoundé, thanked Father Pierre
Lucien Betene with these words: “Our thanks also go to Father Pierre Lucien Betene
who has given us besides a book of songs, a very pious and very prayerful
liturgy. Thank you to the great 600 choir that he directed for very long months and
whose performance has delighted and moved all the participants at the Mass of the
Holy Father. "
In a kind of praise during the Diocesan Choir Days in 2013, the same Monsignor
will add, “At the omnisport stadium in 2009, on the feast day of Saint Joseph the
husband of Mary, in front of Pope Benedict XVI, you shone bright like a thousand
lights! ".
Of course, such a result did not come about by chance or without any
difficulties. Some choir masters, jealous of their authority over their choir, showed
some timid resistance at the beginning. There were also a few cases of
indiscipline. Father Betene, using his usual tact and his human experience, knew
how to solve these problems by empowering his collaborators. Thus, each
choirmaster will go to all the sections to teach the songs of his language while each
group delegate will take care of the discipline in his group.
The Diocesan Choir of Yaoundé (DCHOY) will therefore be born from this 600
choir. It is a mini 600 choir with the same principles. This diocesan choir has been
officially recognized by the divisional officer of the department of Mfoundi. It still
works, but at a slow pace. We remember that when Joseph Betene, Father Betene's
Father died in 2013, the diocesan choir will sing at his funeral at the cathedral. 
 31

Father Betene, a distinguished composer

The artist, famous musician, priest and teacher as we know, has
entered the legend thanks to his talents as a songwriter and performer. The man in
this trilogy was therefore more of a composer than anything else. In artistic language
we will simply say that, concerning the sacred beti music, Father Betene will have
been a creator of the works of the spirit. His composition technique remains
polymorphic. The man’s inspiration came freely, sometimes from popular music,
from older compositions, or on Holy Scripture and so on. With this jubilee priest each
song has a story. From July 1964 in his native village of Andog until May 2020 in his
apartment nestled above the sacristy of the cathedral of Yaoundé, while the whole
world was kneeling under the devastating effects of Covid-19, the man let his
inspiration speak.
It is in these abundant narratives that we were able to extract from him the
surprisingly genealogy of some of his multiple compositions. In his spatial
atmosphere, most of Father Betene's songs were born in Yaoundé and in its
surroundings, following this intellectual roaming in the seminars of Akono, Otele,
Mva'a and Nkolbison. The spatial pilgrimage also led him to this acoustic pilgrimage
where he will merge musical traditions to build a mature backbone for his
compositions which today challenge the hands of time in its historical power to
reduce to insignificance even the most beautiful works. True servant of the “inspired
scriptures” according to Saint Augustine, singing is part of the DNA of this man who
sings as he prays and who prays as he sings. With his compositions penetrated by a
mixture of a good anthropological and theological character, Father Betene gave his
letters of nobility to the enculturation of the Gospel in black sub-Saharan Africa. It is
therefore a musician priest with a successful experience who does not fail to take
the didactic and critical posture to give advice to those who want to engage in the
composition of sacred enculturated music:
 
“In fact, for this work of enculturation, Monsignor Jean Zoa, of late
memory distinguished, three main stages: Creativity-experimentation, selection based
on a good critical examination, and finally canonization, meaning official approving of the
competent authority; strictly speaking, a song can only be performed in church, the one
that bears the seal of this authority. However, there is a certain practice where a song is
composed on Saturday evening to be sung in the next morning at Sunday mass (…). My
conviction is that we must respect these three stages for our works to cross generations,
if not centuries (…), otherwise we exhaust ourselves for nothing than fire of dry leaves”.
He writes in his newly published song book. 

In this particular career as a master of liturgical songs, the man of God has
inspired a countless number of singers as much in the laity as in the holy
orders. Father Georges Philippe Balla, parish priest of Ndzong Melen St Paul,
testifies to the attraction of this priest in his childhood and how he influenced his
itinerary and his vocation, in a mixture of fascination and admiration:
 
“What fascinated me the most about him was his knowledge and mastery of music with
the great Nkukuma David choir. I liked to see him sing, to see him lead this choir which
will come to my mother's village, to animate the mass for the 25 years’ anniversary
religious life of my aunt who also worked with Father at the Cathedral. There was a
religious daughters of Mary community there in the old St Paul’s bookstore. I was very
 32

impressed by Father Betene, and since then, we have known each other and have equal
esteem for each other until today."   
 
Father Georges Philippe Balla also readily testifies concerning Father Betene’s
style. He will distinguish himself from his alter ego Mgr François-Xavier Amara by the
particular style he will give to his balafons with a jubilant explosive side quite marked
on the chromatic scale in his compositions. Let us let Father Balla speak once more:
 
“If I am a priest today, I have always said that it was Father Betene who sent me to the
seminary. He was the one who took care of us, he was the one who taught us, who
prepared us for the life that awaited us at the seminary and since then, we have never
been separated. But there was also music that brought me closer to him. I learned how
to play the balafon. At the time we spoke of two styles: The Betene style and the Amara
style. The Amara style was the xylophone that we found at the seminary in Akono but
we were already learning the Betene style as well. With Father Amara, we used the
xylophone and sharp instruments and with Betene we played with the diatonic
scale. This means that for Mgr. Amara, when we played his instruments, we looked for
the chromatic scale that best suited the singer's voice. With the diatonic scale, which is
the style of father Betene, it is the balafon that gives you the tone with which you must
sing. They were two different and very rich and even complementary styles”.
 
Father Georges Philippe Balla in his testimony here clearly raises this bipolarity
maintained by Father Betene and Father François-Xavier Amara. If both worked to
compose liturgical songs in the Ewondo language, each leaned on a particular style
with instruments like balafons, each taken in a particular technique. On the
xylophone of Monsignor François-Xavier Amara, Father Betene responded with his
balafons with the diatonic scale. The compositions of these two servants of the
Gospel thus reveal the personality of each one. As much as the jubilant whirlwind of
eternal feast seems to be the essential theme of Father Betene, the insistence on the
quiet rhythm and the meditative aspect seem to permeate the compositions of Mgr
Amara. A result of which Father Georges Philippe Balla spoke of two "schools", we
can say that both of these styles of singing masters brought to the Cameroonian
sacred music in general and especially in the beti music, a variety of expressions that
current generations do not shy away from.
As we will underline below, behind each song of Father Betene is a hidden story,
an adventure or an anecdote related to its genealogy. We are attempting here an
arbitrary selection of some of Father Betene's compositions in order to try to extract
from them some key aspects which were at the background of their composition.
 
Minkunda bëengles (Exultet)
This proclamation of the feast of Easter sung on the paschal night was inspired
by Father Betene from a child's fable tale when he was a major seminarian. He will
thus compose and sing it as a deacon for Easter 1970. He is at the parish of Nkol-
Nkumu, not far from the city of Yaoundé. When this hymn splits the paschal night, in
the twilight of churches to announce the victory of the crucified over death, we
understand better why the work of redemption is above creation. Father Betene here
dared to sing on the holiest night of nights in the fang-beti-bulu categories giving
Christians a vigorous catechesis on the history of salvation. What used to be heard in
Latin will now be understood in the Ewondo language. The dialogical character
between the choirmaster and the choir, gives this Exultet the impression of a
 33

magisterial lesson in catechesis which crosses Egypt and the Red Sea to reach its
fulfillment in the victory of Jesus on death. “At St John the Baptist of Nkol-
Nkumu, inspiration comes, I set myself off to work and the song came out”.
The same parish of Nkol-Nkumu will see the birth of the sublime song dedicated
to the priestly ordinations entitled “Onë mvoe dzam”, translated as “You are my
friend”. It was precisely on the occasion of the priestly ordination of Father Betene in
1971.

O në mvoe dzam (You are my friend)

“O në mvoe dzam” is a title based on of his ordination motto (Jn 15:15). There is
therefore in this song such an emotional charge that gives it such mystery and such
depth. His mystery was revealed again when we met this Jubilee priest. When asked
if he was aware of the emotional charge that this song has wrested from a myriad of
ordains since the day it was revealed to the people of God during his ordination in
Abang Mindi on March 6, 1971, Father Betene lets himself be dominated by a flood
of memories. He has barely begun his story when we see tears coming out of his
eyes behind his glasses; the emotion chosen to pay homage to the destiny of this
man of God. But these few tears which pearl in his eyes, then become for us like a
real river, like the Jordan in which Jesus bathed his body in the past in order to show
solidarity with the sinful nature of man. These tears of this priest do not have the
same flow as the waters of the Jordan, but they have the same symbolic intensity
which can make believe that in this flow of tears, hides the testament of a man who
will have baptized an entire Church and a generation of Christians in the waters of a
liturgical song of memorable significance. In these tears, the emotion of a sinner
chosen by Jesus for his service definitively seals his friendship by signing in the
register of emotion the reconciliation of a brother from heaven who came down to
earth. In the room, we can see what was for this man, the day of his ordination. A
new birth? A dive into the mystery of God the Father with a mother’s heart? An
accomplishment?  
Obviously Father Betene returns to this event of March 06 with a good dose of
faith, aware that God has been at work in his personal life since the day he was born
on July 16 1941 and that on March 06, 30 years later, could only be a partial
confirmation of this particular election. Fifty years after this ordination, he can look
behind and ahead, his eyes full of tears. Tears of emotion but also of gratitude and
deep gratitude. Do these tears in Father Betene's eyes arrive at this moment to
plunge his entire gaze into the waters of a new baptism? How then is he baptized
with his own tears as he celebrates fifty years of priesthood? The answer to this
question will undoubtedly remain hidden in God. For now, he speaks of the day of his
ordination with a certain nostalgia and at the same time of this memorable song
dedicated to religious ordinations and consecrations:
 
“I never lost the emotion I had on that day. The Lord told me, you are my friend, I chose
you from your mother's womb, it is today that I confirm it to you. As I have never ceased
to repeat it over and over again, this song reminds me of my ordination every
time. People were amazed that day by the performance of the choir. It is the father of a
priest today, Jean Baptiste Edzoa, choirmaster of the Nkol-Nkumu choir where I was
doing my internship as a deacon who animated the mass that day. The people have
given this song such a welcome! As for the balafons, it was quite another thing” he
describes. 
 
 34

The dancing rhythm of this song and its harmonies, often transform Father
Betene when he executes it into a wingless archangel who tears himself from the
ground to fall so soon on his feet. The man of God thus becomes the “flying priest” of
whom the legend speaks, which roars around him to describe his performances. This
song known to all, often taken up in chorus by the people of God during ordinations
or professions of religious faith, tries to show that the vocation of a servant of
the Gospel remains a free choice of God towards whom he chooses, independently
of our personal merits. It is a free choice. The friendship of the Lord with the chosen
one is exalted. The chorus chants it to satiety, giving a form of insistence to this
spiritual intercourse between the Creator and the creature. At the heart of the text
there is a call from God to the prophecy of the chosen one. He must be a prophet
forever. This song is thus situated in the triad by its author: Based on a biblical text
(Jeremiah 1, 4-8), the melody inspired by an old chorister who asked Father to offer
her a beer after the rehearsals by mimicking a local song "Fada ane mben a tol ma
elè", freely translated as "the priest is good when he offers me a glass of wine". And
finally comes the feast of his ordination with a backdrop of his motto and a translation
of his ideas, his feelings and above all his emotions. That day, it is Father Apollinaire
Tsoungui as parish priest of Abang Mindi who organized this ordination. Among the
people of God was the Prime Minister Simon Pierre Tsoungui who was Father
Betene's brother-in-law. That day during his homily, Monsignor Jean Zoa will recall
that he chose to put aside the period of Lent to ordain a young priest in his parish of
origin with a view of also doing apostolate work. That is to say; to try to arouse
vocations within the community through the ordination of the young Father Betene.
In fact, the Archbishop of Yaoundé wanted vocations to flourish as a result of
such events. In Kampala in Uganda, in 1966, Pope Paul VI had called for a new
missionary vocation on the continent: "Africans, be your own missionaries, he
proclaimed from his Roman magisterium". The young Archbishop of Yaoundé Jean
Zoa, seated in his cathedral, had to give this prophetic invitation density and depth by
working to arouse vocations within the Church. Ordering priests in their parishes of
origin thus became a catechetical itinerary and a call to young people to engage in
seminaries to give the presbytery a more local flavor. The ordination of Father
Betene in the heart of the great equatorial forest in Abang-Mindi thus participated in
this desire of the guardian of the faith of the Church of Yaoundé to spread vocations
in his diocese. And when the song "O në mvoe dzam", "you are my friend" was
sung, with its repercussions in the Christian imagination today, we measure what
was the ordination of Father Betene for our local church and the beti people in
particular. The blaze lit in Abang-Mindi in the heart of our local Church on March 6,
1971 is far from being extinguished. Archbishop Jean Zoa chose to ordain Father
Betene the first one in that year, at the time of Lent, so that he could be free to sing
and animate the rest of the ordinations scheduled to take place that same
year of grace 1971.
 
Bodogo të ma (Lift me up)
Another composition that would deserve our attention would undoubtedly be the
canticle dedicated to Mary Magdalene which has become a classic of the Lenten
time. It is entitled "Bodogo të ma", loosely translated “Lift me up”. It is inspired both
by Psalm 42 and by the episode of the Gospel in which Jesus forgives Mary
Magdalene for her sins; (Lk 7: 36, 8: 3). This song was composed in 1971 in the
parish of Nkol-Mëyang while Father Pierre Lucien Betene was staying there as
 35

interim parish priest. The elegiac tone that this canticle professes, gives it a very
great sensitivity, and an emotional charge which adds to the sincere repentance of
the sinner who begs for the mercy of the Lord and asks for the help of his
grace. There is such a rupture in the cheerful environment of the compositions of
Father Betene that one is surprised that this composition is from him. We are
accustomed to his productions on the theme of joy. Obviously "Bodogo të
ma" ultimately translates the whole backstory of this jubilee priest's relationship with
the Lord Jesus; he is a forgiven sinner chosen by the Master and Lord. Speaking of
this hymn, Father Betene will explain the theological and catechism which structures
it: “My spirituality is my friendship with Jesus. I extol and celebrate it. But this
friendship with him does not mean that I am no longer a sinner. This hymn is for me
the confession of faith of the poor sinner that I am. It can also be structured in two
main parts. The recognition of the sinner, the confession of the sinner. Father in this
composition offered an internal structure in which the sinner in the misery of his sin
enters into dialogue with God to recognize his situation. He explains himself: “The
verses are divided into two parts. The first is the cry of the miserable sinner. This first
part goes to verse number 6: "If you abandon me where would I go?" "In verse 7, the
sinner asks the Lord to bring him his light and his truth: " Za yë mfié woe yë bëbëla
woe bi lëdë ma zen ... ". In verse 9, the plaintiff changes his tone altogether and
gives rise to the hope of climbing the mountain of the Lord while dancing in joy. This
means that the second part of this song corrects all the long lamenting of the sinner
to henceforth open up to hope. 

Zaa a Efae Ntondobe (Veni Creator spiritus)

This “Veni Creator” is one of the most popular songs dedicated to the Holy Spirit
in the Beti language. The Father tried to translate the Latin text into beti, without
giving in to the literal temptation of word for word translation, but trying to grasp the
idea and the general spirit. This song was composed in May 1973 while he was on
leave in Afan-Oyo near Yaoundé, with Father Pierre Mani. This hymn has undergone
many deformations due to a poor understanding of the language by some choir
masters. Father Betene remarks that while we should be singing “za'a!” they
sing “za?”. He returns with insistence on the tonal character of the language. "Za?”
means who?  In the question form and “za'a!”  means “Come!” in the demanding
form. Here we invoke the Holy Spirit and the “who?” has no sense. Apart from this
remark which relates to the good execution of the song, the rest has no problem.
         
Concerning this composition, Father Betene thinks that the melody came to him
from his rich past at the heart of the musical tradition of his family: “As for the melody,
I was inspired by a tune from my home. I grew up with my grandparents who had a
balafon orchestra”, he explains. Some things come back to me like that in
the background that I'm not necessarily aware of. We know by listening to Father
Betene that his thesis is clear: it is God who gives inspiration. Thus, beyond the work
of creativity to which the composer is bound, it is first and foremost God the true
source of inspiration.

Dum 'la yean e wò ! (Gloria)

One could say without any exaggeration that this "Gloria" is the best known and
the most popular in Cameroon. It was composed in July 1970 while Father Betene
was on convalesce at the Catholic mission of Nkol-Avolo with the community
 36

of Sister Marie Claire Atangana, nurse. The latter belonged to the Congregation of

the Daughters of Mary of Yaoundé. This song is dedicated to Sister Blandine Ntila,
Daughter of Mary, the spiritual mother of Father Betene. “It is a ritornello of my
brother Alphonse Fouda Betene who inspired me the melody of this song. He kept
mimicking this melody during his manual work. This is where Duma layean ai
wò comes to mind!”, remembers the Father. He adds; “My brother loves singing a lot
and only stops when he's tired. It is from there that I learned “eeeeh duma layean ai
wa'aaa. " And he adds: 

“It is to my brother that I owe this inspiration. Instead of making verses, I put a dialogic
construction in them to give the people the opportunity to sing in an active, conscious
and community manner. It is in fact a translation of the Gloria. It is better to be as close
as possible to the original text. I chose high tones, impressive tones, to give grandeur,
majesty and solemnity to this song of the angels. "

It is moreover this majesty and this solemnity that the man will seek in the
specific architecture of this song. When in the couplets, between the Father and the
Son, he introduces a long balafonic sequence in which the soloist of the balafons
entices his colleagues in scents and acoustic arabesques which add to the jubilant
atmosphere. At the very least, this Gloria is not without drawing tears from sensitive
minds to the greatness and majesty of the God of Jesus Christ. The singers call this
Gloria the “papal Gloria” because it was sung at the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1995
and in 2009 at Pope's Benedict XVI visit.

O nyëbëgë a dze a (How beautiful you are)

It is a hymn of free inspiration on the occasion of the Assumption in 1971 in Nkol-
Mëyang. This canticle extols the beauty of Mary, and her election before God. The
composer's idea here is that God is great but that he has made himself close to us,
and that our model is Mary. Father Betene therefore explains that “in this canticle we
also celebrate the purity and beauty of the Virgin Mary. She is the image of
the disciple of Christ who follows her son. 
In the structuring of the verses, Father Betene has them end each time with "Wo
ntud ngono", that is to say literally "you the Virgin" for the needs of rhythm, because
the hymn is composed on a rhythmic Ekang style. A variant of bikutsi whose festive
intensity we hardly suspect. This hymn begins also with the momentum of jubilation
in which a large overall movement, all the instruments are involved, then emerges
the voice of the choir master in the midst of fireworks in the honor of the mother of
God.
 
Yob la taman Nti (The sky tells the glory of God (Ps 18h 19))
One of the most famous songs of the ordinary mass. Composed in 1968 in
Torrock-Chad, where he was doing his pre-deacon training. In a letter addressed to
Father Pie-Claude Ngumu, Mr. Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Voltaic, associate professor of
history wrote this: "I will come back, if it pleases to God, to take part in this
mass!" But already, today I have communicated intensely with this community which
knows how to vibrate together, as only Negro-Africans still know how to because this
is their Society! Without knowing the language, I understood the song “The heavens
declare the glory of God”. (Ngumu, 1971). This professor of history certainly did not
 37

know that it is a composition of Father Pierre Lucien Betene which was performed in
the parish of Ndzong Melen with Father Pius Claude Ngumu as parish priest.  

A Zamba wam, eyë wa dzoge ma ya (My God why did you abandon me (Ps
21))
When the evangelists put an extract from this psalm on the lips of Jesus, the
tortured one of Good Friday, the tragedy of the cross reaches both its twilight
paroxysm and its redemptive force. In the cry of the crucified, humiliated and visibly
abandoned Son, will resound the suffering of our humanity torn by sin and delivered
up to suffering, but also the distant announcement of a new life of which the blood of
the cross will be the vital seed.
This composition is a hymn of suffering and abandonment where God seems to
be on trial as the sinner's lamentation is strong. However, this lamentation is
inhabited by the request for forgiveness chanted by the speaker: "yënë ma
engongol", "have mercy on me." Here we feel the cry of the man who has touched
suffering with his finger but who does not stop there. The coda says it all. Moreover,
beyond this coda we have verse 8 which shows confidence and verse 9 which will
lead to hope: "I will arise and I will see the Lord with my eyes of flesh". It is therefore
a long cry which ends in the great hope in this God who forgives and gives life; A
God who never abandons his child overwhelmed by suffering. This hymn was
composed during the Holy Week in April 1974 at the Cathedral of Yaoundé.
When we pointed out to Father Pierre Lucien Betene that most of his
compositions were made between 1960 and 1970 and that thereafter, there is
practically only one song in 1985 before his resumption of 2019 (mod a nyëbe a
dze) and Mass IV which dates from 2020. He finds the justification in his studies in
Canada and his work at the Catholic Education Secretariat. He explains: “There were
studies, and then Catholic Education. The composition also depends on the climate
and the environment in which we live. Having the choir by my side has helped a
lot. In Nkol-Nkumu, I had a choir, and here at the cathedral, Nkukuma David. No
longer having this striking force, I slowed down a little. "
After his stroke, a few months ago he will again call on his muse to give thanks to
God.
 38

CHAPTER IV
THE PROFESSIONAL OF EDUCATION
 
A priest, an artist, a musician, a composer, a choir master and creator are not
enough titles for the fairy tale that Father Betene seems to be living in his long
human journey. He is also a professional in the domain of education. This native of
Andog by Abang-Mindi was appointed for the first time Secretary of Education of the
Archdiocese of Yaoundé including Obala before the creation of the Diocese of
Obala in 1977. When Monsignor Jean Zoa calls him to serve his Church in the
educational field, he explains his lack of expertise in the field: “I am only a balafon
dancer, what will I be able to do in education?” He dares to say to his
bishop. Monsignor Zoa will therefore ask him to go and find Father Ferdinand
Azegue, the former Secretary, to tell him what to do.
Father Betene full of life, would occupy this first post from 1977 to 1980. Then,
after his university studies in Canada leading to a Masters and a PHD in educational
sciences, he was appointed National Secretary for Catholic Education (NASECAE) in
 39

1987 until his resignation in 2000, despite the efforts of the bishops to maintain
him. He will have the opportunity through his bilingualism to hold the position of Vice
President of the International Office for Catholic Education (IOCE) and Regional
Secretary General for Africa and Madagascar, and create the Association for
Catholic Education in Africa and Madagascar (ASSCAEAM), without forgetting his
brief stay as principal of Stoll College in Akono. All these responsibilities have
enabled him to travel all over the world: Africa, Europe, Asia and America.
Father Betene's journey with the world of education begins six years after his
ordination. In 1977, the young priest was appointed Diocesan director of schools of
the former Archdiocese of Yaoundé which at the time included the current Diocese of
Obala. He fulfills this task for three years. The former student of the Catholic school
of Akono passed into the hands of Father Jacques Leclerc and now this priest will
become a pedagogue. He begins to feel the grip of other sectors of the ministry
taking over his desire to concentrate entirely on liturgical song. The passing of the
law of July 8th 1976 changed the names of the former Directorate of Schools to that of
the Secretariat of Education of the Diocese of Yaoundé (SEDY). Father Betene is
appointed secretary to replace Father Ferdinand Azegue who will become
Permanent Secretary for Catholic Education (PSCE).
Immediately the young priest sets to work. He has on his side a Canadian nun,
Sister Huguette Fillion, and a religious of the same nationality, Brother Rock Delude,
and a certain André Edzoa, Cameroonian. The four will form a hard-working
group. They are not reluctant to innovate and travel the diocese to improve, maintain
and even rebuild and build schools. He created the first bilingual Catholic school in
1979 at Mvog-Ada in Yaoundé. It is at the heart of this fruitful collaboration that a
scholarship was awarded to him via the Cardinal Paul Emile Leger foundation. The
man flies to Canada to learn the sciences of education. He stays there for five years
and returns to the country with a PHD in educational sciences.

NASECAE
In 1987, two years after his return from Canada, he was appointed Permanent
Secretary for Catholic Education (PSCE); currently called National Secretary for
Catholic Education (NASECAE). He held this office for 13 years, "I accomplished my
task for thirteen years without any derogation of moral principles but also with good
governance, transparency and above all accountability". Despite his explanations,
the legend surrounding this discreet and sober priest suggests that he would have
enriched himself in this position in view of the large sums of money he was called
upon to manage.
Remembering that it was in his personal bank account that the State’s grants
towards the Catholic private schools was paid; he underlines, "it was considerable
sums of money that I was responsible for redistributing". The man of God starts with
a great burst of laughter when he is told that people say he is a rich priest who has
amassed enough during this long period at the head of the National Secretariat for
Catholic Education. In this regard, he explains:
 
“State subsidies were given for teachers' salaries. However, some of these teachers
earned 15,000 FCFA, so I was not tempted to touch this subsidy money because, what I
would have taken for me would have been subtracted from their account. I strongly
believed that taking money under these conditions for myself was doing enormous harm
 40

to the sometimes poor teachers. But many around me, in the moral posture that was
mine, said that I was both crazy and naive.”   
 
Father Betene will formulate the new name of PSCE in NASECAE to conform to
the new official name: National Secretariat for Catholic Education. It is not useless to
specify historically that, before the PSCE, the National Structure of coordination for
the Catholic Education was designated from 1950 to 1976; National Directorate for
Catholic Education. But Decree No. 76/385 of September 3, 1976 establishes a
Permanent Secretariat headed by a National
Representative. The National Directorate for Catholic Education has become the
Permanent Secretariat for Catholic Education. We have therefore gone from
denominations to internal changes in vision and education policies. In the list of the
seven secretaries or national representatives for Catholic education since 1950 until
Father Betene at the birth of NASECAE in 1987, we can clearly see the passage of
an expatriate of colonial Cameroon and a certain “nationalization” of the structure,
with native priests at the head from 1961 onwards. We then have Father Augustin
Berger (1950-1961), Monsignor Pierre Ngote (1961-1962), Ab. Thomas Fondjo
(1962-1969), Ab. Pierre Mviena (1969-1977), Father Ferdinand Azegue (1977-1983),
Ab. Jerome Owono Mimboe (1983-1987), Ab. Pierre Lucien Betene (1987-2000). 
It should be noted that the arrival of Father Betene at the heart of this structure,
appointed by Monsignor Jean Zoa and his colleagues in the episcopate, was part
of the educational policy of the Archbishop of Yaoundé and his peers. They thought
at the time that the educational sector should be one of the secular arms of the
pastoral action of the local Church and reinforce the bishops themselves as
educators, opened to the rationality of improving living conditions of the popular
masses. In fact, Father Betene was to constitute an essential resource for the new
educational system of Archbishop Jean Zoa and even of the whole Church of
Cameroon.
In 1987, Father Betene's mandate as NASECAE did not start off well because
his predecessor Father Jerome Owono Mimboe was already expressing his
concerns. Father Jerome Owono Mimboe will occupy the post of National
Representative of Catholic Education in Cameroon until his appointment as Bishop of
Obala on July 3, 1987. He will be consecrated on September 6 of the same year. The
economic context at this time resulted in meager enrollments and school
closures. Financial resources were very limited. The teachers no longer had stable
salaries. Several other state dysfunctions in educational policy negatively affected
Catholic education until the question arose "of the survival of Catholic schools without
pupils and without money." (National Secretariat for Catholic Education, 2000: 5). In
1989, a Pedagogical Research and Reflection Group (PRRG) was set up to carry out
a study on the situation and needs. It is on the strength of this that a National
Educational Project for Catholic Education defining the identity and mission of the
Catholic School in Cameroon was published in 1991. 
The work at NASECAE has not always been easy for Father Betene. On the
contrary, throughout his stay in this structure he will have worked with a thorn in his
side. He clearly perceives that there is an injustice done to those who have freely
chosen Confessional education. His goal will thus be to denounce it. He also had to
remember at all times that Confessional Education was a service of general interest
and not a for-profit enterprise. In 1987, the President of the Republic said in an
interview, “Certainly the initiative is private, but those who take this initiative provide
Cameroonians with a service of general interest to which the State cannot remain
 41

indifferent. » (Permanent Secretariat for Catholic Education, 1992: 95, in Cameroon

Tribune, n. 3804 of 02/20/1987). However, the general environment, the normative
and institutional framework with Law No. 87/022 of 17/12/1987 on private education
and the economic crisis will have disastrous consequences on private
denominational education in Cameroon: drastic reduction in subsidies granted by
the State, difficulties for parents in paying school fees, the drop in enrollment in
Catholic schools (Permanent Secretariat for Catholic Education, 1992: 177), and the
law advocating the liberalization of schooling rates. For the Church, liberalization of
tuition rates is unfavorable for the poor and makes religious instruction a for-profit
enterprise, while the State seeks to disengage itself financially while maintaining
control over private institutions. The hearing that the Head of State will grant on July
15, 1988 to the four Archbishops of Cameroon will allow a better revision of the rates
of tuition fees and that of the subsidies allocated to primary and nursery schools,
relieving school officials, students and parents.
In 1991, the NOAPCE (the National Organization of Associations of Parents
of Catholic Education) was created and the adoption in 1996 of the concept of
educational community gave rise to a new definition of the Catholic School. This will
put the pupil “at the center of the educational action. He is the main actor in
his learning. Parents are the primary educators of their children. The school is one of
the structures which help them to assume this responsibility… Parents and the
school form a community united around a project. » (Permanent Secretariat
of Catholic Education, 2000: 11). For 10 years, from 1989 to 1999, a new
pedagogical approach, mental management, was developed to help students
succeed and integrate in class and in life. During his tenure, at the head of
NASECAE, Father Betene will allow the production of important educational and
didactic material. Contextualization experiences and the performance of the
education system will give rise to cycles of secondary and vocational training. We will
then speak in particular of sectors such as rural entrepreneurship, agriculture, cattle
rearing, beekeeping, carpentry, decoration, pottery-ceramics, wood carving,
electronics and IT, education of life and love, environmental education, learning of
national languages etc. In 1999, for a better evangelization in the name of Jesus
Christ and to help young people fulfill themselves, the NASECAE created a National
Commission for School Catechesis called to promote evangelization in schools
through an adapted catechetical pastoralism. Decentralization of the decisions taken
in this committee will be effective through the organization of meetings and technical
field trips with education secretaries, school heads, parents’ and teachers'
representatives, and those responsible for education, catechists, educational leaders
and advisers, financial agents, etc. During all these
years, professional conscience has been developed within NASECAE because
emphasis was put on responsibility and trust, each carrying out his task in a
consensual manner. 
Despite the difficulties of the first years of Father Betene's mandate, the man will
work unceasingly. The reward for all these efforts will not wait long to be paid off. The
number of students will not stop growing until the end of the term of his office. The
NASECAE grew from 1994 to 1999 from 281,680 students to 363,025, an increase of
81,435 students in five years (National Secretariat for Catholic Education,
2000: 16). This growth, being due to a relationship of trust between families and
Catholic education, especially with supporting results recognized by the State itself,
with the ranking at the top of Catholic secondary schools. In the daily Cameroon
Tribune published on January 30th 1995, Marie-Claire Nnana wrote: “With regard to
 42

general education, denominational private education holds the gold palm. Among the
first 20 schools, at least half belong to Catholic Education” (National Secretariat for
Catholic Education, 2000:17). Until 1998/1999, the results were kept well above
average. On a practical level, the projects instituted by Father Betene have helped
the school to become a place of meeting, dialogue and collaboration.  
Although having garnered such encouraging results, Catholic education will
nonetheless remain subject to a few challenges, and not the least. In particular, at
the level of budget deficits, arrears of salaries, financial mortgage, accumulation of
charges and functions etc. In short, the problems of Catholic confessional education
were not ready to end despite the efforts and sacrifices made by men and women
supported by bishops and supervised by a priest who will only be a man of duty and
mission before God and his brothers.
Man at the heart of his concern
Responsible for Catholic education in Cameroon, Father Betene gave priority to
the human person in his educational project. He is a founder of human educational
system and above all, of anthropocentric education. By thus favoring man at the
heart of his approach, he makes sacred human relationship and insists on the
fraternity which elevates the relationship with others to the rank of a "sacrament of
the brother", that is to say the strong and patent proof that we are a humanity made
up of the brothers of Jesus. Fraternizing all relationships will be his leitmotif at the
head of Catholic education in Cameroon. He was telling teachers what he would
recall more than two decades later in the magazine Nyanga that; “The pupil you have
in front of you is full of qualities. So instead of beating him up, giving him excruciating
punishments, try to take out the best of his abilities. Seek to make him a man”
(Eyebe Assiga, Nyanga 93, 2014). In short, Father Pierre Lucien Betene practiced
love in the Christian sense of the term. A fervent activist of non-violence, he prefers
to negotiate and convince than to impose himself. He therefore embodies all the
necessities of a rigorous discipline.
Father Betene in his educational philosophy is aware that man is capable of both
the best and the worst. He is capable of doing a lot of harm but also a lot of
good. That said, the Jubilee priest will work so that the good opens and unfolds in the
world, especially in the context of education. The educator who supervises the young
person has the obligation to help him promote the good which is in him. This position
of this man of God will be reinforced in one of his publications entitled "The Force of
Forgiveness". Only the title of the work is in itself evocative from a catechetical
perspective. Father Betene tries to make forgiveness one of his personal
qualities. He tries to walk on the path traced by the models cited in this little book of
which he is the author: King David and Nelson Mandela. In this booklet, he shows
how these great minds were able to forgive their enemies. In this catechetical
reflection steeped in advice, Father Betene leads us on the capacity of man to forgive
and teaches us on the spiritual strength that is derived from it.
In his pedagogical magisterium as the head of the NASECAE, Father Betene
alongside other representatives of private education in Cameroon, will work for a real
separation between the State and the possibility for families to choose freely and
legitimately the education of their children according to their scale of values and their
religious convictions. Because of this, parents had to be avoided a double
contribution made of taxes and tuition fees (National Secretariat for Catholic
Education, 2000:13). 
 43

Career within the IOCE and ASSCAEAM

Father Betene at the beginning of his term as NASECAE, he became a
prominent member among Catholic National Secretaries at the international
level. As a simple member of the IOCE, he already won the trust of the general
secretaries of this Roman institution, particularly with regard to the secretaries:
Brother Paulus Adams and Father Andrès Delgado Hernandez. Father Betene had
greatly assisted these secretaries’ general of the IOCE because of his bilingualism in
French and English. When there was a general assembly in a country, the president
of the host country usually attended that meeting. Father Betene therefore toured the
world as an educational priest. He offered his expertise for the education of the
masses in general as much in the Catholic confessional framework as in the secular
world as well, aware of the universality of the Good News of Jesus Christ.
By the early 1990s, he held the positions of Regional Secretary General of the
IOCE for Africa and Madagascar and vice-president of the IOCE. The president of
the office holding an honor rank. The improvement of consultations and
collaborations at the national level had fostered better collaboration at the
international level. Father Pierre Lucien Betene will work to promote this cooperation
on a continental and global level. He will be responsible for proposing internal
regulations for the IOCE (cf. Appendix: Letter to the Secretary General of the IOCE).

The Association of Catholic Education for Africa and Madagascar

(ASSCAEAM)
 
The relevance of his reflection will lead to the birth of ASSCAEAM (Association
of Catholic Education for Africa and Madagascar). The pedagogue priest had the
privilege of having been elected the very first secretary general of ASSCAEAM in
large part because of his bilingualism, speaking fluent French and English. All
the national Catholic education secretaries in African countries had gotten into the
habit of meeting. The habit of getting together between Africans was an admirable
thing which offered a greater opening of mind and pushed everyone like Father
Betene to think African wise and no longer Cameroonian wise. The secretaries had
the opportunity to meet in Kinshasa, Harare, Johannesburg, in Accra in Ghana,
Egypt, Tanzania, etc. These education professionals met regularly for reflective
assemblies.
In fact, ASSCAEAM was the African branch of the IOCE. It brought together
the national secretaries of Catholic education of the continent. It had the mission to
put together the common share of experiences, projects and difficulties faced by
secretaries. In these continental consultations, the members of the ASSCAEAM were
given the opportunity to reflect on solutions to be brought to the various difficulties
faced by the Confessional Catholic education on the continent.
The man of God, who is preparing to blow out his fifty candles as a priest, has
left great marks in the educational world, of Africa and in Cameroon in
particular. Trustworthy for Monsignor Jean Zoa and all the Bishops of Cameroon, he
will give everything to his task, without saving prayer or his personal efforts, but
having put aside his liturgical activities as creator of songs. A sacrifice worthy of
another, Father Betene will immolate himself on the crucifix of Christ over a long
period, in the name of evangelization and education of the masses through school
and through the spread of the Gospel. He looks back today with full of sincerity that
he will only have been an unworthy servant.
 44

Principal of Stoll College in Akono

It was through Stoll College that Father Betene was going to conclude this
journey in the educational world. He was appointed Principal there by Monsignor
Victor Tonyé Bakot to replace the management of this great Catholic college at the
head of which the Canadian Marist Brothers have stayed for a long time. Now it is
time to pass the relay to the local clergy. The heritage of Stoll College in Akono,
about fifty kilometers from Yaoundé, is enormous and full of symbolism. Akono has
long been the great intellectual capital of the forest region around Yaoundé. In
addition to the famous seminary where he himself went, there is the Stoll college
which will form a large part of Cameroon's political and administrative elite in the
years following independence. Monsignor Séverin Zoa Obama keeps the memories
alive of this event:
 
“We were so happy to finally see civilization coming to us. At the official inauguration of
this college, of which Father Benoit Ze Yeneng will be the very first principal, it was a
great moment for the populations. I was in class three at that time in January 1969. We
stayed in Akono until six o'clock despite my village being eleven kilometers away. We
felt that our future was going to come out of the ruts. We knew our fate was going to
change. People were practically leaving Olama to come to Stoll. This college was our
childhood dream. The current President of the Republic was present that day as a
representative of the government. I believe that at the time he was secretary general of
the presidency. So it was a great event.”
 
When Father Betene drops his bags in this school of more than a thousand
students nearly half a century later, he is happy to land there to give back what he
had received; the sciences of education made up of the Christian mystery. He also
happens to be at his birth place. Monsignor Severin Zoa Obama also underlines that
Father Betene "knew Akono like the back of his hand" and that his family was also
settled there. But the man of God is far from imagining the torments that await him
despite the joy of serving. After taking up service, misunderstandings do not take
long to begin: An indigenous African priest has the misfortune of replacing expatriate
white people. Father Betene, in the modesty that we know of him, refuses to give
details of the wounds received at Akono, sparing adjectives so as not to cast shame
on anyone or to seek at all costs to exonerate himself; the mystery of the cross is
thus, he must keep everything. He will nevertheless have had the opportunity to
improve the image of the college by renovating the boarding schools, and by
increasing the number of enrollments and above all by bringing back to the school
several prizes received among the best in the country. He will not leave the world of
education without an honorable distinction attributed to him by the sub-division officer
of Akono.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 45

 
 
 

CHAPTER V
THOUGHTS ON ENCULTURATION
Father Pierre Lucien Betene during his career as an African priest has so far
joined the link between Christianity and African cultures. A movement known as
the "enculturation of the gospel. Father Leonard Santédi1 in La Croix Africa (an
African catholic website) defines enculturation in an original way in these terms:
 

1
Father Leonard Santédi is a Congolese priest, professor and theologian, former member of the International
Theological Commission and rector of the catholic university of Kinshasa, june 2018.
 46

“Enculturation is the Christian message and culture, understood as a way of inhabiting

the world. In this perspective, the Gospel message encounters a culture, makes it fruitful
and transforms it by allowing it to deploy all its harmonics. But at the same time, this
culture, by welcoming this message, enriches the ecclesial heritage” (La Croix
Africa in La Voix de Notre Dame 18, 2018).
 
If we need to clarify things further, let's say in very simple terms that
enculturation is the meeting (or if we want marriage) between a culture and Jesus
Christ and his gospel (Eccl. In Africa n ° 61). In this process, there is a double
movement or better, a double reception which precisely results to that meeting or
marriage.
- On the one hand, culture opens up and welcomes Jesus and his gospel, it is the
enculturation of the gospel: people convert, become Christians and adopt a style
of life inspired by the gospel of Jesus Christ.  
- On the other hand, following Jesus, the Church welcomes and integrates the
authentic cultural values of the people, it is the evangelization of culture:
The language, African art, certain rites, a certain vision of the world find their
place in the life of the Church of Jesus Christ.  
The African synod considers “enculturation as a priority and an emergency in the
life of the particular Churches for a deep enrooting of the Gospel in Africa, a
requirement of evangelization, one of the major challenges for the Church in the
continent at the approach of the third millennium” (Fr. Betene in La Voix de Notre
Dame, 2018, in Eccl. In Africa n ° 59). As priest and responsible for enculturation in
his diocese, he aligns himself with the view of the Fathers of the African Synod cited
above, being convinced that the first theological basis of enculturation is none other
than the incarnation of Jesus in a well-defined people, with a history and a culture,
and residing in a very specific territory.
The ordination of Father Betene in March 1971 came very well after the Vatican
Council II, when there was the question of enculturation. The Gospel of Jesus Christ,
carried by Africans themselves, was called to incorporate the land’s
customs. The enculturation of the liturgy of the Roman Catholic-Latin Church will
have been experienced for more than thirty years after independence in our diocese,
until Archbishop Jean Zoa qualified it as “an erratic experiment” and therefore, to ask
for the emergency of a liturgical service which would address the various questions
of enculturation, in particular that of Esani (Jean Zoa, Archbishop of Yaoundé,
circulatory note n°16/97 in Betene, 2005: 44). The works that we have on hand today
are therefore the result of a long process of matureness which will give birth to
great works such as the of songs of Father Pierre Lucien Betene.  
This opening of the Gospel to local cultures with especially the translations of
sacred texts from Latin into African languages will be a subject of great concern on
the part of certain indigenous priests, including Father Pierre Lucien Betene. We
cannot say it enough that the liturgical song of this priest is for the most part made
up of translations of the psalms and of the word of God in general. His genius will
make him add local melodies to put a personal touch. Monsignor Severin Zoa
Obama thinks that Father Betene will have been “in the zone”: “While some were in
favor of a slow evolution, the young Father Betene will go for it and bring in
balafons hitherto poorly accepted in the Church but also the gestures and the
choreographies of the singers. A true magical spectacle. Father Betene also had the
advantage of beginning his ministry during a decade when there was little left of the
 47

cultures of his great grandfathers. The urban life now exercised a harmful attraction
to village cultural heirs and so many rites and values were lost. This elder in the
ministry had the advantage of deeply knowing our cultures and the Christian mystery
to which he had sworn in. He can boast of knowing both local theology and
traditions; Suddenly he was able to operate this connectivity that he uses in his song
which is both praise to God and at the same time, a popular African festival. The
work that Father Betene does today remains attached to the inspiration of His Most
Holiness John Paul II who said that: "A faith which does not become culture is not
fully accepted, entirely thought out and faithfully lived". As president of the
Diocesan Commission for Liturgy and enculturation, Father Betene ensured that
enculturation became “an intimate transformation of authentic cultural values through
their integration of Christianity and in the various human cultures”. 
It must therefore be underlined that, the Christian message, even if it is lived in a
culture cannot be limited to this culture because the message of the Good News of
Christ transcends in itself all cultures. When the message of Jesus embraces Africa,
it gives it a richer form for the benefit of the Church. And servants of the Gospel on
the continent like Father Betene through substantive work and synthesis will make a
major contribution in the right understanding of this spiritual marketing between our
secular traditions and the semen of the gospel. It is therefore right to speak of him as
an Apostle of enculturation. Father Betene and the commissions of enculturation
went back to the African traditional sources.
God uses our cultures, our languages, our traditions to speak to us. God,
entering our cultures, takes everything except sins. The concept of enculturation
therefore reflects both a rupture and a continuity. In all cultures there are deviations,
the Gospel comes within to transform and fertilize cultures. All its richness is then
expressed as it contributes to the worship of the Lord. But the anti-values must be
put aside. In enculturation, there is a death of all anti-values. (Father Leonard
Santédi, in La croix Africa, 2018 in La Voix of Notre Dame 18, 2018).
Recourse to our ancestors
When mentioning the recourse to our ancestors, Father Betene means reference
to their culture which has come down to us today through generations. It is part of our
roots that we lack when we embrace everything that comes to us from abroad. He
deplores, for example, the fact that an African family whose father and mother speak
the same language have children who only speak French or English. These children
have lost their roots. When they go to the village, they are strangers to their own
family, meaning: Their grandparents, uncles, aunts etc.
Of course, recourse to ancestors is not the rejection of everything that comes
from the outside. Times change, so do contexts. “My grandparents lived in huts
whose walls were made of tree barks (mënda bihin in ewondo). They went to Kribi on
foot.  Society has evolved today”.
Dancing in the Church
As far as dancing in the Church is concerned, this precursor of
enculturation thinks that dance can represent a distraction for some, but for other
cultures, it can be a way of praising, of magnifying with one's body. In many cultures
spread across Africa, dance can be found at the birth of a child, at the death of a
person, and in family meetings. From the point of principle, dancing obeys to what
Father Engelbert Mveng calls the unitary character of African art. Music calls for
dance. The body follows the song and the two go together. In other words, the
 48

melody, the rhythm, the words, in short the kind of music automatically calls for a
given kind of dance.
If we accept this unitary character of African art, we better understand the place
of choreography and body language in the Church, and suddenly it is not just any
dance that is performed, nor at any time. We would not see the priest dancing during
consecration… The dance must correspond to the theme of the music and uplift it. It
must also correspond to the nature of the rite being celebrated. This applies to
everyone who is a faithful of Christ, whether he is a priest or a lay Christian. But
beware of the jiggles which obey only to the rumbling of the tamtams or the
bewitching rhythm of the balafons, and which only express a worldly feeling, the kind
that we find in bars or in secular music. In fact, as much as there is a secular music
which is distinct from sacred music, so is dance. It can be secular or sacred. (Fr.
Betene in La Voix De Notre Dame 18, 2018).
Sacred music
Father Betene worked in his domain of predilection which is sacred music, so
that it obeyed to the criteria of holiness. Because it has a preponderant place in the
life of the Church. It must keep and increase its role in the celebration "taking into
account the specific character of the liturgy as well as the sensitivity of our time and
the musical traditions of the various regions of the world" (Rev. Pr. Antoine Essomba
Fouda in Betene, 2013 in Jean Paul II; apostolic letter Spiritus et sponsa …). Father
Betene's work consisted in making “sacred music, an art of true sounds” (Rev. Pr.
Essomba in Betene, 2013).
 
Before and shortly after the Second Vatican Council held in Rome from October 11,
1962, two kinds of sacred music animated the liturgy in the Archdiocese of Yaoundé,
namely: The Gregorian Song and the European Canticle. The missionaries took a
remarkable zeal to inculcate the melodies of the Gregorian song and the European
Song to their faithful. Also, these music knew flourishing moments with us. Every
Sunday and feast days, religious services were celebrated with a strong participation of
the people of God. This can still be seen in parishes where this tradition
persists. Verification made, this participation was not deep. The language of Gregorian
chant was Latin; the majority of the faithful, if not all, did not understand it and they
pronounced the words wrong. The European Canticles were translated into the local
language, but its melody in no way respected the tonic requirements of this
language. Unlike European languages, our African languages require rigorous respect
for their natural tones. A simple small reversal of these tones makes speak a most
damaging gibber, and say very regrettable things. This work could not truly penetrate
the African soul with such superficial means. This is why our elder diocesan priests
thought well by taking authentic African music from each tribe and adapting it to
Christian worship while respecting the natural genius of African languages.” (Mebenga,
L. in Betene, 2013: 29-30).

Apart from enculturated song, Father Betene the disciple of enculturation has

made the Church grow through his modest participation in the translations of the
missal into the Ewondo language. He is one of the liturgical translators with some
elders including Father François Xavier Amara. In his depth of mind and thanks to his
initiatives, without forgetting all those who contributed to this research, several of his
publications gave rise to the adoption of traditional rites in the local
Church. Writings on Beti rites such as Esani, Christian widowhood, Eva’a mëtè etc.,
have given rise to the patrimonial enrichment of the Church. Some of these rites are
 49

performed in our local church exactly as he suggested, and still others are in
development.
Studies carried out on Esani have been integrated almost completely into the
Christian liturgy. This distinguished form of appropriation of the gospel to make it
anchored in our customs and traditions in order to transform us from the inside, has
been successfully achieved for us Cameroonians. Thus in research conducted on
certain aspects of this tradition in accordance with Christianity, several priests have
given their participation. Among others, there was: Father Lucien Anya Noah, Fr.
Félix Désiré Amougou, Fr. Alphonse Mboudou Nkou, and Fr. Nicolas
Ossama. Father Betene continued the research already started by researchers and
anthropologists of late memory Severin Cécile Abega and Father Leon Messi. This
work was already completed in March 2001 but it was finally Monsignor Victor Tonyé
Bakot who, after many consultations, authorized its publication (Betene, 2005:6). The
Church has agreed to complete the work of enculturation as far the Easter
celebration is concerned, in particular that of the rite of Esani.
 
What is Esani?
Etymologically, the word ESANI comes from the verb san which means to jump,
to exult, to dance of joy. It was a dance of triumph, the dance of heroes. (Betene,
2005:7). Esani celebrates life which is stronger than death despite appearances: zòg
ekëlë eligi metin, which means, “the elephant that passes leaves traces behind”, that
is to say, the man who dies leaves a family, works and a name which prolong his life
on earth. (Betene, 2005:11).     
The different components of Esani can be classified into five categories:
 
1. The occasions for which the rite was organized  
2. The actors, i.e., those who were authorized to perform it  
3. The recipients or those who were entitled to Esani  
4. Songs and rhythms  
5. The objectives of the rite  
 
The fragile or weak people of society were excluded from the Esani, they were women,
children, slaves, customers, war captives, people deprived of dignity, nobility and
freedom, uninitiated to the so rite (mimbibin). Only the initiates of
the so rite (mimkpangos) danced the Esani: A severe ordeal at the end of which,
the survivor, the hero, was entitled to Esani. If someone was not allowed to dance the
Esani, it could not be danced in their honor either. (Betene, 2005:7). 

Traditionally, only a man who had demonstrated a courageous character,

bravery and exceptional perseverance or was of noble birth, could dance the Esani
and deserve the dance upon his death. Esani was not just a mortuary ritual.
It was a dance of war, a dance of triumph, the dance of heroes. (Betene,
2012:11). “From this perspective, the deceased does not survive only through his
descendants, but also through the deeds of his life, his achievements, his
productions and his qualities. This is why Esani sings and celebrates them.” (Betene,
2012:22). The Esani fundamentally and solemnly celebrates “the triumph of life over
death”, and the resurgence of a purified community life and therefore more united,
more harmonious and more accomplished. (Betene, 2005:11). This Esani rite is
supposed to help the dead to quickly leave this earth, in order to enter the kingdom of
 50

the ancestors, where he will have the power to return to perform acts favorable to the
living. This is why the dancers of Esani organize blessing ceremonies. Alongside the
praises which celebrate the deeds of the deceased, formulas of blessing which wish
him a safe journey beyond the endama (mythical river which flows between the world
of the living and that of the dead), there is therefore also gestures and words to keep
the dead away from the living of this world. (Betene, 2012: 21). 
 
The questions which have guided the authors of “Esani in the Christian Liturgy”
are the following:

1. What are in the Esani of our fathers those authentic values that are reconcilable with
the Gospel that we want to integrate in Christianity? 
2. What do these values give to the born Christian to facilitate his understanding, and
the full, active participation of the community in the celebration of the paschal mystery
of the death and resurrection of Jesus? 
3. Under what conditions can Esani be enculturated? 
4. What connections are there between the proposed rite and the celebration of Holy
Friday? (Betene, 2012:10).   
 
In summary, the Esani and other funeral rites constitute the action of a
community that are all accountable for the sad event having hit one or more people
(Betene, 2012: 28).  
"The Christian or enculturated Esani is essentially paschal, that is to say, it
proclaims the death and resurrection of Jesus who is forever alive and who promises
the believer eternal life, this being situated completely outside terrestrial life.”
(Betene, 2012:36). It was Father Lucien Anya Noah who had the merit of taking
Esani out of the narrow framework of funerals, to restore to it all its dimension of
triumphal dance, dance of the heroes. 
 
Because of the nobility of his divine origin, of his human qualities brought to the highest
degree of excellence, in particular his incontestable authority over people and things, his
mastery of the word and his new pedagogy in the teaching of the mystery of the
kingdom of God, the goodness of his heart open to all human miseries, his relentless
fight against the prince of darkness and his henchmen, the outstanding success
achieved in all the trials proposed to him by the tempter and above all, his definitive
victory over death by his passion and his resurrection from the dead, Christ deserves
above all, the dance of the Esani in the celebration of the Christian liturgy ... The Esani
rite facilitates the understanding and enrichment of the celebration of the mystery of the
passion, of the death and of the resurrection of Christ within the framework of
Holy Friday, where he naturally finds his privileged and most suitable place. (Betene,
2005:18). 
The originality of the whole rite lies in the introduction of certain elements such as
the Nsili Awu, the Esòg, the announcement of the death by the tam-tams, the dance of
the Esani to exalt the cross, the instrument of our redemption, the embracing of the
cross. The order of the different sequences, also obeys to the logic of the traditional
celebration as we have said above. (Betene, 2012: 62). 
 
Esani and its posterity?
 
 51

A young generation of priests took advantage of the father’s genius and got
trained alongside this master. One of these apprentices of the Esani rite is Father
Jean Marie Ondoa, president of ACDY (Association of the Clergy of the Diocese of
Yaoundé). Their first meeting took place at the funeral of Mgr. André Wouking when
Father Jean Marie was still a major seminarian. Father Betene asks him to sing the
Esani rite at Mgr. Wouking's funeral. The seminarian receives this mark of attention
during his canonical training at the parish of Mvog-Mbi. Born in a village in Bikop
where he grew up, he already knew how to play the tam-tam, the balafon, also as a
good choir singer, he sang and played songs in his native language, however,
without any liturgical rigor. With the funeral of Mgr André Wouking, it is Father Betene
who, for the first time, transforms all his songs into religious songs for the
Esani ritual. Father Betene and the liturgical commission had worked a lot on
it. Since that day, the young seminarian appreciated it. He studied this rite and
today in the diocese, he sings the Esani almost by heart thanks to and with the
encouragement of Father Betene. Father Jean Marie sang at funerals of Mgr.
François-Xavier Amara, Mgr. Jean Marie Benoit Balla among others. Father Betene
therefore leaves behind a posterity of what he himself began.
After what could be called the successes of enculturation at the level of Holy
Friday and Esani, Mgr Jean Mbarga came on his part to follow in the footsteps of his
predecessor and other research initiatives are being carried out at the level of the
liturgical enculturation commission, especially with regard to the Eva mëtè
(purification rite celebrated at the end of the year) and others under research such as
the So (rite of trial of traditional initiation serving to cultivate bravery, strength of
character and endurance).
 
The Eva'a Mëtè                              
"Evaa" is a noun derived from the verb "vaa" which means to remove, to take
away. (Archdiocese of Yaoundé, 2019). For Father Betene, forgiveness and
remission evoke the rite “Eva'a mëtè” which, among the Beti people literally means
the act of removing, erasing the saliva that one spits out when angrily shouting
following a serious offense… By forgiving, we swipe the sponge on the offense and
we no longer hold it against the offender… To take revenge is to align oneself on the
side of the enemy, to forgive is to rise above him, to pass him… Forgiveness is a
high form of love.” (Betene, 2016). 
There were four essential elements in this rite that should be included in the
enculturation of the “Eva'a mëtè” rite:
- The offense,    
- The anger of the offended person and his malicious words,    
- The repentance of the guilty accompanied by gifts,    
- The reconciliation moment where forgiveness and blessing are granted
(Archdiocese of Yaoundé, 2019).    
The Archdiocese of Yaoundé has undertaken to draw inspiration from these
different traditions and from them, to develop a Christianized rite of Eva'a mëtè. In
the Beti tradition, the Eva'a mëtè rite was essentially aimed at granting forgiveness
and blessing the one who had offended a parent, an elder or a superior.
 
Likewise, at the end of a year, we worry about being cleansed of any evil that we may
have committed during the past 12 months, and which can have repercussions on our
 52

life from any point of view: lack of chance, failure, misfortunes of all kinds… So the New
Year finds us fresh and can bring us the protection and blessings we need (…). If the
author of the offense changed his mind and returned to the offended with better
feelings, in response, the offended agreed to withdraw his malicious words and to dry
up, to erase the saliva which had accompanied them” (Archdiocese of Yaoundé, 2019).
 
The Christian realizes that he is a sinner and that, during the year which is
coming to an end, he may have offended both his fellow men and God his Creator
and his Father. This is why in this rite, there is a proper examination of conscience
and the rite of purification. The formulas of blessing are pronounced towards the
people as might an elder by invoking the ancestors to bless someone in the Christian
sense, by invoking Yahweh.
It's relative to his charges that he held as the president of the commission of
liturgy and enculturation for the local Catholic Church that Father Betene published
several beti rites particularly; the Esani in the Christian liturgy, the Eva'a Metè, the
Christian widowhood, etc. His taste for traditions as an African priest is inherited from
his father. When going to set a trap or hunting, Joseph Betene, Father Betene’s dad,
often spoke of the past. Father Betene subsequently met one of the first
Cameroonian priests ordained in 1935 who was a great friend of his despite the age
difference; Father Théodore Tsala. Father Théodore left Mvolye to visit him at the
cathedral. And the young priest made the trip in the opposite direction more often to
visit his elder. He had beautiful little stories he liked to narrate. He helped him know
the tradition more. The priest Leon Messi was also a maternal uncle of Father Betene
and he often went to visit him. These two priests knew and loved the traditions very
much. They guessed that Father Betene was also interested in customs and
traditions and made him a master of the Beti ecclesial tradition.
 
 
 
 

CONCLUSION
 
Could we really speak of a conclusion for these fragments of the life of Father
Pierre Lucien Betene that we have tried to collect throughout these pages while he
himself continues his earthly pilgrimage under the gaze of his “friend Jesus”? There
are thus biographies of certain people whose density and intensity are reluctant to be
closed by a period. If this work deserves a period, it cannot be the final full stop, but
 53

the end of a paragraph. A new paragraph that allows us to move from the idea of
having exhausted our subject matter or the contemplated model, to measure this
crippling inability of the humans that we are to fully grasp the human
mystery. To God alone therefore belongs the final full stop of this existence of Father
Pierre Lucien Betene, crowned both with half a century of ministry as a priest and
with a sublime musical aesthetics carried out by a nightingale's voice.
Four hands would not have been enough to convey the immensity of the
character who caresses the legend today with compliments at satiety. Four hands
would not have been enough to describe this monument which in its own way
overlooks the vast cathedral of Cameroonian witnesses of the Gospel, whose
reputation also sheds particular light on the movement of enculturation on the
continent. Four frail hands seeking the correctness of words and the precision of
terms in the jumble of childhood and in the priestly itinerary without doing too much
and without equally erasing or diminishing the brilliance of this man-
treasure. Capturing the winding journey of Father Pierre Lucien Betene, priest,
artist and educator, was an exercise in humility, a reading of the wonders of God at
the heart of a life so simple and discreet as that of this man of God. Hearing this
voice rise like a prayer each time to say the wonders of God in his life gave Father
Pierre Lucien Betene the rare stature which seems to suit him better: Simplicity.
The anthology of testimonies which flows in this book describes the Jubilee
father in multiple dimensions which can be brought together in a single unit of
understanding which is called admiration. The Father’s admirers have not spared the
compliments to speak as they perceive him. From these testimonies emerges an
iconic and testamentary value which gives the work of this priest a sumptuous eternal
dimension.
 

POST FACE
 
Knowing, loving and serving God.
Fifty years of a life’s time cannot be told in a few lines of testimony. The
authors of this book were forced to choose some parts of the life of the fifty years of
priesthood of Father Pierre Lucien Betene. A golden age to celebrate with a grateful
 54

look on the path of God. Several generations have heard of him without knowing him
and others see his name at the end of several texts of liturgical songs without being
able to stick a face to him. His admiration for Lucien Deiss could not make him a
copy writer of French liturgical songs, but much more, it was a source of inspiration
for a participative liturgy, responding to the needs of enculturation.
Following the footsteps of his elders and inspirers like Monsignor François-
Xavier Amara, Father Wenceslas Mba'a, Pie Claude Ngumu, all returned to the
Heavenly Father to name but a few, gave him the opportunity to make a qualitative
leap in liturgical song in the Ewondo language, while keeping a great openness to the
other languages of Cameroon for a liturgy that meets the norm of Vatican II: Sober,
simple and solemn in a participatory spirit. Others can talk about it better than I can. I
come back to this with a particular interest, that of the working method; source of
success in Christian simplicity and humility. 
Many singers today, while admiring, “stand there and gaze at the sky” to paraphrase
the Gospel of Ascension Day. Yes, they look at the sky and they stand still, staring at
the admired object without being able to grasp the opportunity of going further. We
like a classical European song, we perform it or we sing it on all occasions, without
asking ourselves what is our participation to make the meeting between the other
and I be an exchange of give and take. To hear Father Pierre Lucien sing, to interpret
one of his compositions, one does not immediately imagine a possible meeting with
Lucien Deiss; and yet, the two composers have the same concern to involve the
people of God in the liturgical celebration, the same concern for solemnity, the same
meditative joy runs through their compositions. Like the first Lucien, the second
knows how to combine simplicity and solemnity while avoiding banality. The concern
to communicate God remains at the base of the compositions. Melody and Holy
Scripture are mixed together to come out with a clear and dense message in its
spiritual appeal. The Exultet of Father Pierre Lucien for example, surrounds the
listener with a bewitching paschal joy which lulls and which makes you jubilant at the
same time, without ever stifling the message in an unceasing sound breaking and
beating of rowdy sticks. Gentleness and solemnity go hand in hand and find the right
elevation to introduce you to the paschal joy without skipping steps.   
It is a school not to be ignored, in a period when servile imitation and
plagiarism no longer bother anyone. The CDs that litter the outskirts of churches, and
parish shops across the country are often the result of a search for visibility and
money, without any innovation and without any message. A few balafon or
synthesizer noises to stir the heads of a few women ready to accompany with their
sonorous voices any musical text, from the most absurd to the most insane, provided
that the work pays off. The Church continues to insist on the need to evangelize
through song, with particular emphasis on songs inspired by the Word of God: 
 
As part of the enhancement of the Word of God during the liturgical celebration,
attention will also be paid to the song chosen for the times provided for according to
each rite, favoring the one that is clearly inspired by the Bible and that expresses,
through the harmonious agreement of words and music, the beauty of the divine
Word. (Benedict XVI, Post Synodal Apostolic Exhortation “Verbum Domini” n°
70, 2010).   

No need for sketches to understand the position of our mother the Church; the
liturgical song continues to make the Word of life resonate, giving it a melody which
 55

penetrates the heart of man and inhabits him at every moment; even more so in a
world where music keeps a sacred mark and opens up to ecstasy.  
With regard to the work accomplished by Father Pierre Lucien Betene in the
field of liturgical song in the Archdiocese of Yaoundé, it is impossible for me not to
praise the greatness of the method.
Yes, a good job is often the result of a good approach. Knowing how to set a
noble goal, take equal noble means to achieve it, have the patience required during
the effort, forces admiration. Living alongside Father Pierre Lucien, one realizes that
he is a methodical man. He troubles himself to try to understand, to ask questions, to
reassure himself that he is making himself understood in order to move forward. It
requires patience and humility. His discretion often leads him to choose the right
setting for to express himself and even the right words so as not to offend on the first
spoken words. Qualities of an elder who finds no difficulty in living among those
much younger than himself. Despite his fifty years of priesthood, Father Pierre Lucien
still takes the time to sit down to prepare his homilies, this is a man who is ill with
improvisation. He is consistent and persevering in everything he does. He remains
very organized even in the care he takes of himself. He is constant in sports, at
meals, in community life. I understand that pedagogy for him did not remain an
academic subject, it became a living hood. The greatness of man is found in his
simplicity and his obedience to the hierarchy of the Church. I admire the respect he
has for those responsible of the diocese. He approaches the Bishop and the Rector
of the cathedral where he resides with the same respect and even with a certain fear,
resulting from his faith in God and in the Church which he loves with all his
heart. These few traits of Father Pierre Lucien open to a thanksgiving which finds its
origin in the love that God shows to each of us by his urgent call to follow him. I make
these words of Pope Benedict XVI my own in VERBUM DOMINI to allow everyone to
continue their meditation around the great figure of our Local Church that we
celebrate and to draw lessons from it for the generations to come. 
 
The divine Word enlightens human existence and calls consciences to review their life
in depth, for the whole history of humanity is subject to the judgment of God: "When
the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his
throne of glory. All the nations will be gathered before him” (Mt 25, 31-32). In our time,
we often take a superficial view of the value of the passing moment as if it is
irrelevant for the future. On the contrary, the Gospel reminds us that every moment of
our existence is important and must be lived with intensity, knowing that each one will
have to give an account of his own life. In chapter 25 of the Gospel of Matthew, the
Son of man teaches as being done or as not being done to him, what we will have
done or will not have done to one of these “little ones who are my brothers” (25,
40.45): “I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to
drink; I was a stranger, and you welcomed me; I was naked, and you dressed me; I
was ill, and you visited me; I was in prison, and you came to me” (25, 35-36). It is
therefore the Word of God itself that reminds us of the need for our commitment in the
world and our responsibility before Christ, Lord of History. As we share the gospel, let
us encourage one another to do good and to act for justice, reconciliation, and
peace.” (Benedict XVI, Post Synodal Apostolic Exhortation “Verbum Domini” n°
99, 2010).   
 
Thanksgiving and Magnificat for Pierre Lucien Betene who is and remains a
precious gift for the Church of Yaounde. Thanks to the Lord for the many talents he
 56

gave him and which he knew how to make fruitful for the glory of God and the
salvation of souls.
May the name of the Lord be blessed now and forever! 
Father François-Xavier Olomo
Rector of Our Lady of Victories Cathedral
Yaounde
 
 
 57

APPENDIX

Testimonies in favor of Father Pierre Lucien Betene classified

into categories

I. The natural family

 58

SIMEON OBAMA BETENE

I am the head of the large Mvog-Betene family and the patriarch of the Etoudi
family of Andog since 2018. I am also the president delegate of the Pastoral Parish
Council of the parish of St Antoine Marie Claret of Nkol-Mekok. The parish
concession is located on the land of the Betene family, of which Father Betene
Joseph was the founder. Cecile Mbala, our grandmother (our father's mother) worked
a lot for this family to have a spirit of solidarity, she contributed in our up-raising. Our
grandmother before dying asked me to take care of the family because I looked after
the children of my brothers and sisters. Because I bear the name of my father's
father, my grandmother told our father that “you are the head of the family; I choose
my husband, to replace you as head of the family!" And that's what my dad did (He
kept her last wish) and I became head of the family. Gabriel Mesi-Betene the
eldest meanwhile died before our parents.
A difficult childhood
My older brother Gabriel, Pierre, and I schooled in Akono together. Pierre was
the youngest of the three of us, and we took care of him because we were away from
our parents. We tried to make his life in Akono easier. Mom gave birth almost every
three years. I was born in September 1938.
Sometimes we stayed with our aunt in Mfida, sometimes with our maternal
grandmother's family. The aunt (Mfegue Angèle) who was in Mfida, could no longer
keep us. We were staying with our maternal grandmother's uncle in Mvog-
Ongene; Mr. Onambele Boniface. Life was really difficult for us. Mr. Onambele
Boniface had a very good heart, but he did not have much means. He had not had a
child with his wife. He sacrificed a lot to feed us. At M. Boniface, we spent 3
years. To help him take care of us, we sometimes went to the village to look for food:
peanuts, plantains, etc., which we gave to his wife to feed us.
The three of us could not bear the walk from Mvog-Ongene to our village, so we
made a traditional means of transportation to carry Pierre. Gabriel was leading the
luggage along with Pierre inside the skate. He had to push, and I helped him on the
hills by pushing with a stick to make it easier for him. On each slope, as the skate
could roll easily, the three of us climbed on it. Gabriel was only guiding the skate.
We didn't have to pay for food anymore, since Dad didn't even have enough
money. During the holidays, we broke the palm kernels to sell, still to have enough to
buy donuts. During the cocoa growing season, at noon, we went wherever was sold
cocoa, to collect cocoa beans from the ground which could fall and which were not
defending. This collection could already give at the end of a week; one, two or three
kg that we would sell. We helped our tutor with field work for the upkeep of the house
and we would do anything he could ask of us. During the cocoa season, he offered
us a little money. We, the big brothers, always made more efforts to give more to
Peter, because he could not stand the famine. As he was brighter at school, he was
able to finish elementary school easily with the FSLC (First School Leaving
Certificate). Gabriel became a primary school teacher and the two of them continued
going to school. At the time, when you obtained the FSLC, you could easily find
work. So Gabriel could take care of Pierre while he finished his primary cycle. 
Peter's call
It is I, Simeon, whom our mother had destined to be a priest, when observing my
behavior. But school was not easy for me in order to become a priest. Pierre's results
were remarkable and he was the one who took the entrance exam to secondary
 59

school. I stopped going to school and looked for a small job, and that's how I was
very useful to Pierre. I added my small salary to that of our elder brother Gabriel and
to the efforts of dad himself so that together we could contribute to the studies of
Pierre. We all wanted to have a priest in the family. And this priest will be Pierre,
since I did not have this vocation. 
Pierre at first was a bit rowdy, if a child bothered him when he was hungry, he
would hit the child. We had to correct that in him and we did it. It was our big brother
who kept an eye on us. When he saw that attitude in Pierre, he brought him to order
and he obeyed. He's an obedient little brother. He accommodated himself with the
discipline of the family. When it was time for rural work, even if you had a soutane,
for our parents, you had to go to work. Even his classmates and their white teachers,
when they came to the village, they had to go to the field farms, even if it was in a
soutane.
Pierre had a great will to learn. Despite being gifted, he sacrificed a lot by
working hard in his studies. We noticed that he could be a man in the family, so all
the goodwill people in the family supported him. So that's how he had never repeated
a class since his first elementary courses. It gave the whole family the motivation and
the joy to help him continue his studies. Everyone agreed that he should become a
priest.
The temptations of the people of the village
When he had already obtained all his diplomas, people tempted him a lot,
especially in the village, asking him why he only wanted to become a priest. And why
not enter the government to give his little brothers job positions. He always rejected
these requests, he insisted on becoming a priest. His whole heart was bent towards
the priesthood so that he could be the servant of God.
When he became a priest, he spent all his time devoting himself to the
Lord. Because the family wanted him to do personal things like employing the
family. He always rejected it, saying that it could prevent him from better fulfilling his
profession as a priest. He did not want to do anything else apart from the work of the
priest. As for the family, he took care of the family, parents, brothers and nephews
and nieces. Every time I fall sick, he is the one who takes care of me in the hospital
as a priest. With the posts he held in the diocese, he shared with us the concerns of
the formation of our children, he never abandoned us. The parents gave us an
education of solidarity and he struggled a lot to manifest this spirit. Whether it was
for the training of children and everything that we could do as a family, he gave his
contribution.
When he went to Canada, we prayed a lot because many seminarians and
priests changed their vocations. But he made us proud because he maintained his
idea of being a priest. We cannot forget Father André Noah who supported him a lot,
Father Léon Messi our maternal uncle.
Now that we are getting closer to the grave with our old age, I want him to
continue to believe faithfully in God. May God always be his only support, his only
hope, until his last day.

Music: A posterity in the family 

To talk about the family music wise, the whole family took an interest in
music. This is why we have balafonists in the family. Our children play balafons well
 60

thanks to Pierre’s training. There is Solomon, the son of Gabriel who was among the
balafonists when the Pope came in 1995. My little brother André also composes
songs that Pierre corrects. Simeon, my namesake, and André's other sons play the
balafon well. Bindzi Messi Liboire the son of Gabriel, directs the choirs wherever he
is; in Abang-Mindi, in Bikop, etc. This is to say that, thanks to the work of Pierre, the
family took an interest in religious music. There is also the son of Angèle Mfegue our
little sister who was ordained in 2019; Mathieu Betene, he is the namesake of our
little brother.
 
 
II. Men of God
 
1. The priests
 
Father Georges Philipe Balla (Parish priest of Saint Paul of Ndzong Melen)
Father Betene is in fact a father to me, considering the fact that when I was a
very young student, at Our Lady of Victories primary school in Nkol-Ewoe, he was a
young vicar at Our Lady of Victory Cathedral in Yaoundé. We resided in Mvog Ada,
therefore dependent on the Cathedral parish, under the spiritual guidance of Fathers
Adalbert Ndzana and Pierre Lucien Betene. They were the two young vicars of the
Cathedral in the years 1972. It was Father Betene who took care of those who
wanted to enter the seminary. Father Adalbert Ndzana, who later became Bishop,
came to Nkol-Ewoe on Thursdays to celebrate the Eucharist. So he was like the
school chaplain. Father Betene was at the Cathedral in charge of young people
wishing to enter the seminary. This is where I first met him.
What fascinated me more about this man of God is his knowledge and mastery
of music with the great Nkukuma David choir. I liked to see him sing, to see him
direct this choir which will come to my mother's village, to animate the celebration of
the 25 years of religious life of my aunt who was a nun and who worked with Father
Betene in the pastoral team of the Cathedral. There was a daughters of Mary
religious community in the former Saint Paul’s bookstore. Father made a big
impression on me, and since then, we've stayed in touch with each other.
If I am a priest today, I have always said that he was the one who sent me to the
seminary. He was the one who took care of us, he was the one who gave us lessons,
who prepared us for the life that awaited us at the seminary and since then, we have
not really left each other because of that relationship, and there was also music that
brought me closer to him. I learned to play balafons by his side. At the time we spoke
of two styles. The Betene style and the Amara style. The Amara style was the
xylophone that we found at the seminar in Akono but we were already experimenting
the Betene style. With Father Amara, we used the xylophone, and instruments with
sharps and flats. With Betene, we played with the diatonic scale. This means that for
Monsignor Amara, when we played his instruments, we looked for the scale that best
suited the singer's voice. With the diatonic scale, therefore the style of Father Betene,
it is the balafon that gives you the tone in which you must sing. They were two
different styles and very rich and even complementary. Father Betene remained
close to me because every time we met, we were happy to meet again. He is
therefore a father for me, we have never left each other since my ordination in the
village after Nsimalen where he was present.
 61

Father Betene is someone I admire a lot because he remained very young in his
head, and respectful of the priest. He is not someone that you will find holding big
conversations against his young colleagues or against another colleague. Very self-
controlled, and if you really see him speak, then he must speak. He does not speak
unnecessarily. He is really a fine teacher and that does not surprise me because for
a long time, he worked in the school’s education of our diocese. So he's someone
who knows about the other and he respects others a lot.
To see his outstanding shape, we would not give him his age, because I also had
the opportunity to do sports sessions with him at the Cathedral. Father François
Xavier Olomo, current Rector, opened a small gym for us. I was at the Bitotol parish
on the road to Nkoabang. I joined them in some evenings. There was a fitness coach
helping us in our gym and I assure you that if you weren't really strong on your legs
you couldn't compete with Father Betene to use the bike, in weightlifting, etc. He is a
solid person who is concerned about his health, concerned about what he eats, very
careful about it. He is not at all excessive. I think it's earned him this beautiful old age
he's going through.
Father Betene is a self-erased person. He really doesn't show up. He is not too
demonstrative, yet when he led the Nkukuma David choir, when I was very young,
when I saw him, he was nicknamed "James Brown on stage", by his way of beating
time, of leading the choir. He hopped at the time with small jumps, things that the
liturgy has decreased today, because the concert is one thing, and the Mass is
another thing. So at mass, we have to make people pray, we do away with all the
very ostentatious gestures that are more like show performances than anything
else. Father Betene really doesn't show up. If we don't tell you that it is this
gentleman who composed such and such a song, you may not realize it. He is a man
of God who does not want to impress. He is someone quite humble, and quite
withdrawn.
Father Cyrille Etoundi Djon (Parish Priest of the Holy Spirit parish of
Mbankomo)
I met Reverend Father Betene in July 2011 when I had just been assigned to the
cathedral as a deacon. In fact, young in the “Sequela Christi”, I had heard of him
before as far as his musical compositions are concerned. But, it was during the two
years that I spent in the cathedral that I really discovered him. What is striking about
this doctor in sociology of education is his simplicity and his constant smile. He
embodies a certain rigor, a discipline of life, always well kept. Very well preserved,
Father Betene is a model of priestly life. For the record, I started to call him “Papa
Betene” not only because he was the oldest among us, but also because he was
very caring towards us. When we had any difficulties he was a very attentive
ear. Moreover, when he found himself among us, we could not imagine that his age
of priestly life was more than our birth dates. So one day it just happened, I started
calling him "Papa Betene", “Papa Pierre”. I began to call him like that because his
attitude and his way of being among us was that of a father in the biblical sense of
the term “Abba”. He is an example of brotherhood and sociability. It is always a real
pleasure to live with him. I can only finish my remarks by saying thank you for
everything he has taught us and thank you for being a priest in our midst. And happy
golden jubilee in the priestly ministry!!!!  
 62

Father Apollinaire Bertrand Ndzoumou Mendo (Priest in charge of

communication in the Archdiocese of Yaoundé and spokesperson of the
Archbishop)
I know Father Betene through my father, Victor Emmanuel Mendo
Ndzoumou. My father introduced us to each other and it didn’t just end on that
note. The bonds of mutual acquaintance were so great that, since Father Betene
could not be my godfather as a priest, it was his little brother who became my
baptismal godfather. After dad met Father Betene, Father Betene will make him his
spiritual son in liturgical music. It was Father Betene himself who entrusted my father
Victor Emmanuel Mendo Ndzoumou with the fate of the Nkukuma David choir, whose
activities he carried out for a long time, in the absence of Father Betene who had
travelled to study abroad in Canada. They had a very good relationship. From time to
time Father Betene came to the house. I saw him often as a little child, even as a
toddler. I believe that one thing leading to another, it was also through him that my
father had the intuition to send me to the seminary. This is why I dare to call Father
Betene "my grandfather", and he calls me “grandson”. I suspect that it is through him
that dad decides to send me to the minor seminary of Mvolye where he played a big
role. I am in lower sixth when dad dies and it is Father Betene who will take care of
the school fees that year. He will be responsible for collecting the funds that the choir
masters had decided to contribute to support the family. It is then Father Betene who
will deposit this money for the seminary tuition.
He is a priest for whom I have a great deal of esteem and affection given the
affection he had for my father. He guided him a lot from what I received as
testimony. When he meets daddy, he's a bit of a wandering man and, through him,
he became the man I knew and the man who brought me into the world. I also have a
lot of affection for him because one of the things that struck me was that Father
Betene when I was very young in a bilingual high school, spoke fluent English. It
made me want to learn the language. I consider that he is an accomplished priest in
what he has done, from a liturgical point of view, especially for sacred music. I also
find that he is a priest with proven values. When we see him live, we realize that he is
a priest who knows how to keep himself and who has life principles.
He was a mentor to my father, and then the meeting between my father and my
mother was made through him. In the usual negotiations, he was the one who spoke
on behalf of my father's family. My parents got married in 1983 and my father relied
heavily on his assistance in many ways. In 1983, I was in my mother's womb and
when I was born, daddy chose Father Betene’s brother to be my baptismal godfather.
Father Guy Marcelin Avouzoa Etoundi (Former student of the Stoll college
in Akono and currently a priest at Our Lady of Victories Cathedral in
Yaoundé)
Former Stoll student of 2002-2007, I was admitted in form One. That year, the
principal of the college was brother André Côté. During that year, unfortunately the
religious Canadian who had left us for health issues, had been called by the Lord to
his House. The following year, we had the privilege, with the agreement of Mgr.
Victor Tonyé Bakot, to have the first Cameroonian principal; who was Father Pierre
Lucien Betene after the departure of the Canadians. I'm in form two when he  

arrives. He spared no effort to continue and enhance the work of brother Côté. We

felt comfortable as if we were still with brother André Côté particularly in terms of
human formation and even intellectually and spiritually.
 63

On the material level, Father Betene rearranged the playing fields, the boarding
houses, and for the first time, there were chaplains in each boarding house, it was
really a close accompaniment by formators that we received that year. Each one of
them tried to keep up with each internal student. Academically, Stoll College was
successful. I remember the dictation contests organized every year and we
were among the best with the “College de la retraite”.  Stoll College was thus
honored.
Father Betene started a project on his arrival called “Clean Campus” for the
Cleanest Boarding House. At each gathering the cleanest boarding school was
proclaimed. On the spiritual level, we will never forget the daily masses and we saw
in Father Betene a pastor always behind the students to instill in them the Christian
virtues. Behind the religious song, we saw in it a relentless pastor who cared for the
religious worship in song. I will never forget the harmonization of the great
song “O në mvoe dzam” We harmonized this song, and it was very beautiful with the
band and the instruments. On the spiritual level, each boarding house had its turn for
daily masses. We would go to the priests' residence for the daily celebrations. And
when school resumption arrived, we first had the back-to-school mass and then we
had the mass for the end of year exams. They were really times of faith, times of
spiritual sharing. We felt a pastoralism of proximity in the boarding houses. When the
time of lent arrived, the stations of the Cross were animated by the “stollese
students” themselves with their chaplains. We did the stations of the Cross in each
boarding house and Father Betene kept an eye on that. Father Betene really placed
an importance on the spiritual level, discipline and work were not left out.
Father Betene put a lot of emphasis on hard work and discipline and when the
two came together, the results were successful. For him, studies were very
important. He organized extra classes for those who had had an average of 10. He
advocated excellence. He was always behind the teachers for the follow-up, good
behavior in the classrooms, discipline as I said. He is a great teacher. And when
success came, he would only exclaim saying: “well done! well done!”. When he had
cases of indiscipline, he did not dismiss them but led the student to understand that
Stoll is a framework for leaders, for children who want to succeed.
When it comes to me the vocation to become a priest in form two, it is with
Father Betene that I speak first, and he said to me, "go and join the choir". I went to
the college choir. He also asked me to buy a Bible and start reading the Bible. When
Father Mathias Etoundi arrives as the new principal, it is he who continued the
spiritual accompaniment and here I am a priest today. I can only thank these two
principals who directed me during my journey in Stoll. Father Betene was close to his
pupils and we will never forget “Christmas together”. The day students certainly did
not have the opportunity to benefit from the paternal warmth of this zealous and
athletic pastor. However, we who were interns perceived him that way.
The first year after the departure of brother André Côté, Father Betene gave
everything to enhance the level of the school with a stability in the
results. The college was always in the headlines in major academic events in
Cameroon such as the dictation competition. We were always represented among
the junior deputies in the National Assembly and on days such as the day of
the African child.
Now as a priest, I am very happy to see the priest, the trainer, the father that I
had in form two and who had campaigned for the success of the child. Father Betene
is a very great educator. He didn't dwell on failure, even when the child had failed he
 64

encouraged him to keep working, and you yourself as a student could get galvanized
to do more. Once I arrived here at the cathedral as vicar, he became a brother in
priesthood, a patriarch and we still have a lot to learn from him. He remains for us a
monument. The being Betene has not changed much, he may have changed his
function in the Church, but he remains a priest. He remains a pastor, he always cares
about a job well done.
 
Father Ondobo Ekae Celestin Xavier (Former pre-diaconate intern at Stoll
High School Akono and currently Priest to CNDV)
I have been a priest since May 14, 2005. I have known Father Betene from my
early childhood because I heard about him all the time. Today he is one of the icons
of our diocese and I am going to get to know him personally at Stoll High School in
Akono. In 2004, he was called upon following the death of Brother André Côté,
principal of Stoll high school in Akono. He is called to be the new principle of the
school. Having found himself there alone, we too were sent. We were in the major
seminary and at the end of the 3rd year of theology. We were 5 young seminarians at
the end of training. We were in a pre-diaconate internship and we were going to do
this stage with him and then the next stage which will be the diaconal stage to be
ordained priest. It is therefore in this context that I know him in a special way.
In college he was the principal, but he was both the father of teachers and
particularly ours as future priests, we were under his leadership and it was he who
had to guide us, accompany us, introduce us to a kind of integrated internship to
access the priesthood. I knew him as a very orderly worker. Already by looking at his
desk we realized that nothing was placed randomly, everything was in its place. A
hard worker, when he wasn't resting, when he wasn't doing his little daily sport, he
was in the office. Especially since we were staying in Akono because the roads were
not tarred as they are today. So going up to Yaoundé was not easy. He was a hard
worker and we had to follow his pace as best we could. When he had a concern or a
need, we had to do it urgently in order to allow his work to progress. He was loved by
the students, who called him "Father", not only because he was a priest, but also
because he had a strong emotional side. Whenever we had problems with students,
it was difficult to hit hard. We as young people always wanted to make our powers
and our presence felt. But he always had to come back to say that you have to be
patient with children, it is not always because they are ill-willed that they make
mistakes. He also had key sentences that he liked. He said “When a child is
expelled, it is not necessarily his failure, very often, it is the failure of the trainers who
have not been able to put him on the right track". This is something that had marked
me in him, this concern of the disciple. He had a great concern for the pupils, to
always remind us of our duty to be patient and to tolerate these children. And I really
liked it. The fact that he reminds us that with a child who has failed, we must always
look firstly at the trainer, because the trainer must always find ways and means
according to the child, to understand him, and to know what to put on his training so
that the child does not get lost. So, I will have kept this image of him.
He had a dual vocation as a priest and a teacher. I believe if he was good at one
thing, he was good at both. Besides that, as a priest, I would have
kept some particular things about him at Stoll. About preaching, he told us one thing,
and that I really remembered it, and I really put it into practice and I believe that it
bears fruit. He was always appreciated in his homilies that stuck in the head. They
were not bombastic, but not exuberant say knew the precise thing. We admired his
 65

art of speaking ewondo and we asked him what his secret could be. For a long time,
we had believed that a good homily was full of proverbs, but we could see that when
he spoke, he could sometimes use a proverb when he wanted to emphasize a point,
but he did not overdo it in his words. It was very simple and understandable.
He was asked how to produce such beautiful homilies? He told us that at the
homily, when you have an idea, you have to repeat it enough so that all the audience
can understand. If, for example, you have remembered that “Christ is good”, you
have to repeat it in such a way that everyone on the way out can say “Christ is good”
and that is what people remember. So I really kept that from him and over the year
we learned a lot of things like that from him.
Today honestly speaking, Father Betene is an icon for me in the
diocese. T lways to liturgiq map eu, I 've had the pleasure when testing began
on Esani of being with him, because he was one of the initiators if not, the main
initiator and we exercised at stoll in 2005 for the first time, the new Esani rite. It was
he who finalized it, and he taught it to us when we were around him. I would have
noticed that from a liturgical point of view, he was an outstanding liturgist, and he has
a very great respect for the liturgical thing and he made efforts to help us understand
that as a priest, the liturgy was one of the focal points of our mission. I must say, at
the end of my training on the path to the priesthood, Father Betene was a very
important contribution. We had an admiration for him, because he already carried an
intellectual baggage which always made a big impression on us. We were also very
appreciative of his mastery of English and French. In college, when there were
meetings with parents, he could handle both languages well. We stood there
stammering English that we didn't even speak. So it was a great experience for me to
have met such an accomplished man at Stoll High school.
He had already been secretary of education in the years 1977. So he had a lot of
experience in the field of teaching. Lots of people coming; inspectors and others
for SEDY controls (Secretariat for Catholic Education of the Archdiocese of Yaoundé)
they found an experienced man who mastered what he was doing. We kind of
dreamed of being like him, of mastering a certain number of things. And from the
point of view of the management of men, he was tactful. He knew what to do when
sometimes we, in our youthful ardor, we were taken to a little more severity, it
is he who knew how to say the right word and the problem was solved. He was a
respected man, we saw everything that people had around him as gaze, as
admiration and esteem. And that makes you love growing up next to a man like
that. At that time, we were completely dazzled by his personality, by his simple,
determined, firm and orderly character, we were only learning, and in that school, we
had an exceptional time.
This man has greatness of mind and the qualities to understand the other. We
were young, but we had the freedom to express our thoughts. He is a man who has a
free and open mind, you have something to say, he listens, you say it and you can
debate it, this I have rarely seen in men at this age of 64 that he was. It makes us
work in complete freedom. If we could talk about decentralization of power, he would
be a master of that process. For example, I managed maintenance and had parallel
funding that I managed. I reported without any restriction, when there was the
possibility of handling a crisis situation. I had the latitude to manage as I thought. We
had no problems because the control was good and there was no exaction. But I
would like to admire this that, he was not on my back all the time to check if I did this
or that. It wasn't just because I was doing it well, but he had this openness to
 66

understand. And never ever, I never appeared before him one day without having an
answer to the problem posed: in terms of management, in terms of advice or any
other thing. So he is a man who trains in freedom. We were formed in freedom and
freedom is the respect of the rules. We approved that of way life and sometimes, it is
difficult afterwards when you meet other people much younger than him, to whom we
have difficulty expressing ourselves in terms of what we have learned and what we
want to give of ourselves for the good of others. But with him, we had that
latitude. He set the goals, and then he waited only for the results. He wasn't there
every day to see if you got up at a certain time in the morning. All he cared about was
the results and when the results weren't good, we could come back and take stock
and see where things were going wrong. Really I have rarely seen at the religious
level and in other plans, men especially of that age with such open-mindedness,
such greatness. That is to say, he is a man of lights with an enlightened mind.
I return here to the Cathedral of Yaoundé in 2012, in the meantime, we remained
father and son. He went with us, we were ordained. I l we accompanied s in our
priestly beginnings and we kept a very good relationship, respect, and when I am
assigned to the Cathedral in 2012 we are once again together. And here at the
Cathedral, he has remained this icon.
The Cameroonian liturgy in éwondo wears his brands. He was at all the
discussion tables on liturgical questions. He has accompanied us a lot here on the
application of certain things in the liturgy. He is the author of several brochures on
Christian widowhood, on Esani where he has been with other people, on body lifting
etc. From the point of view of song, he is the author of multiple songs, we have his
records that we listen to. When I got to the cathedral, I also find this man who is
discreet, tidy, organized. He did us a great service here as an episcopal vicar at the
time and as a military chaplain to confess people with reserved sins. 
We had a gym done, and he was the only one going to the gym every day. He is
the cathedral's greatest sportsman. He goes to the gym more than all of us put
together.
Father Betene has always been the great counselor. I arrived at the time of
Father Antoine Evouna. They had a special relationship. I saw Father Evouna
running to Father Betene every time he had a puzzle, a concern, and wanted to ask
certain questions. This is what we ourselves have always done. He continues to work
with choirs. We see this meticulous man who continues this work. Here, all the
priests call him “papa Pierre” because he is really our papa. We tease him, and even
when we tease him, he always laughs, rarely has he been seen with a frown on his
face. He kept this youth side because he is certainly a formator, an educator who has
remained very attached to one of his vocations, which was to train young
people. When it comes to making a joke on him, he laughs like everyone
else. Sometimes some have gone with huge pikes and when he's embarrassed he
just smiles. He doesn't make a big deal out of it like other grandpas can do, but be
careful when he's going to throw his own "bomb"! He is a special man, he is truly one
of the examples that I can present to myself and to others who are even younger. It
can be a joy if the Lord grants it to us, to reach that age, to be able to bring this
vitality there too to other people and especially to young people.
The father is a man of culture. I believe that the many cultures he has known,
since he has been abroad, and the parishes he has made, make him a man of
experience. For all this, he uses it today wonderfully, and when you meet him, he
is standing, his mind always alert and lively. When there are reflections, he will
 67

always speak up, give his point of view, which is very often relevant. We do not even
see in his mind how he ages, he remains with that intellectual acuity that
characterizes grown-ups who are people dedicated to humanity and who always
want to accompany others. So, he puts his expertise and his experience at the
service of the community at the Cathedral of Yaoundé and that's not me who can say
the opposite. The rector talks about it. For him it is really a living library, from which
he can draw inspiration, he knows the diocese. He knows a lot of things in the
diocese. When sometimes we need to address certain issues in the diocese, we
resort to him calmly. And I really like his intellectual sincerity, his honesty. When he
doesn't know, he says he doesn't know and he advises us to look more in another
direction. He is not in competition with anyone to assert himself, he is value-proven,
he is an accomplished man. We are not saying that he is Saint, but at our level, he
remains an example and an icon for us as a priest in the diocese.
 
 
Father Jean Marie Ondoa (President of the Association of the Diocesan Clergy
of Yaoundé, ACDY)
I have been a priest for 17 years. I knew Father Betene when I was still a major
seminarian. The first contact takes place when Father Betene asks me to sing the
Esani at the funeral of Mgr. Wouking. I was on pre-diaconal training at the parish of
Mvog-Mbi. Since I was born in a village in Bikop, where I grew up, I was taught to
play the tam-tam, the balafon, being also a good choir singer, I played songs in
native language but not in a catholic style. At the funeral of Mgr. Wouking, it is Father
Betene who, for the first time, transforms all these songs into religious songs for the
Esani rite. They had already worked a lot on this. Ever since that day, I have taken a
liking to it. I tried to study all these songs and today in the diocese, I sing the Esani
almost by heart thanks to Father Betene who really encouraged me. I sang at the
funeral of Mgr. François-Xavier Amara, and Bishop Jean Marie Benoît Bala among
others. He is an elder who has a good mastering of the Beti culture.
The Gospel is the light which should precisely enlighten our cultures and Father
Betene understood this very early on. In terms of enculturation in Yaoundé, he is a
pioneer. It was he who showed us how we should go from the Gospel in order to
enlighten our cultures. This is why today we cannot bury a priest without singing the
rite of Esani. Father Betene plays the instruments, he sings, and encourages us
too. He masters the enculturation rite of Esani. He left a posterity to us to also
continue what he has started. We must continue this work of which he is a reference
for us. Each time we are blocked, it is to Father Betene that we ask " what should we
do?".
In liturgical song, he is also a pioneer because they have the advantage of
having created their songs from liturgical texts and the Bible. Father Betene takes a
psalm, and inspired by the Holy Spirit, he creates a song in his own words. He is a
genius in regard to liturgical music. That's why he was able to lead the choir that you
saw when the popes came here. These are not the kind of songs we sing
today. There are things that I cannot accept to be sung in a church as a priest. What
they sing today is a bit like bikutsi music. However, for Father Betene, we go from the
Bible and from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we make a song. This is the
difference. Today what we sing is not biblical. 
 68

Monsignor Séverin Zoa Obama (Parish Priest of Saint Anthony of

Padua Parish at Etoug-Ebe)
The village of Abang-Mindi, where the first parish was in 1970, of which the
present Andog was part of, was a very dynamic and active village in the parish of
Bikop. She will have a great influence because even the chief catechist will
come from Abang-Mindi. I had the impression that the priests were working with
everyone, even the most distant ones. There was this desire to bring people
together, so that they felt part of the parish. This is why we will have received a lot
from the great innovations and achievements of Father Betene because he always
taught new songs during the holidays in his parish or at his parish central-post as it
was called before. This is why many of these songs are signed by Nkol-Mekok,
Andog, etc. But these songs were also beginning to move up towards the parish. And
that's how I remember that in 1966, they had taught "Nkukuma David". It was the first
time I heard this song there, and everyone gave the impression of having already
learned it, whereas it was a new song that had just been taught. The day of the
procession of the Blessed Sacrament there really was a great joy. As they often
animated the last altar in the parish of Abang-Mindi, it is there that they introduced
this song. We were really amazed at the melody at first because, at that time, the
balafons were not permitted in Church. It was still the tam tams that were allowed,
but not the balafons. And it is that year that they will really arrive with the balafons at
the parish of Bikop, and with the new songs that Father Betene had already started
to teach there. We now understand why there had been this great surge with the first
compositions he has done, and then, the music was so close to the great epics of the
Mvet2. This is what I admired in his style that included the participation of the people,
which broke clearly with Latin tradition. Before, the people had an only small
congruent part in the liturgy. But thereafter, we really had songs with the participation
of the people, and then this proximity to the sacred texts. But I discovered them very
late when I was in the seminary or as a priest. One time I was received into his
family. I asked his father the question why, how, did the whole family become
musician? It was there that I learned that he himself was a great Nyëng dancer. He
knew Nyëng songs, he was a professional of traditional music dance. This is
certainly why all the children at a time when this music was broadcasted, they could
learn a lot from their father. Each child has inherited from this in his own way.
The great cry that there was at the end of the Second Vatican Council for a true
enculturation needed people, and people to take care of enculturated songs. We
could see the difficulty, to take the case of Pie Claude Ngumu, we can see the
difficulty he had after becoming a parish priest and all the production he did before. It
did not have the same cultural value because there, he had to take care of souls, he
also had to take care of the music. He was almost alone, especially since he was in
charge of the ad experimentum at Ndzong Mëlen. So for some time, there was a
void. Father Betene gave the possibility of going beyond when he was appointed
vicar at the cathedral and having all this background. Father Betene gave a new
impetus, not only with the melodies, but also with the texts. Bishop Ama did not hear
this with a good ear. He wanted a slow evolution. For the little story, Mgr. Kounou
went on a pilgrimage to the holy land and then there were new Betene fanatics,
including Father Isidore Balla Oyé, who had just been ordained a priest, he will
replace him during the vacation. He makes balafons. In the meantime, Mgr. Kounou
returns from the pilgrimage. He arrives in his parish, he sees all this gear, he says, “I

2
Traditional Beti music instrument
 69

think the devil has settled in my parish!!!". He is going to destroy all the balafons,
saying that we must not do like Betene in Yaoundé. Of this generation of priests,
Betene did not have it easy. They looked at him a lot with reserve, as someone who
brought an ideology.
Father Betene immediately with “Yob la taman Nti” and his first mass “Duma ye
Zamba wan tege yë suk”, gave another color to the liturgy with the gestures and
everything he did. On the day of his ordination I was there, I was in form two. After
mass, he came to join the choir, I want to say, it was difficult to get the people
going. Because not only was the choir well dressed, it was something really new, it
was something we hadn't seen yet. It is unimaginable what happened in Abang-Mindi
that day. Despite the poor condition of the road, despite all the difficulties there was
to access Abang- Mindi. I have always seen him as someone who wanted to
reconcile the two, with the possibilities that the ministry gave him. Until 1972 the
Exultet was still sung at the Akono minor seminary in Latin. It was in 1973, when I
spent the Easter feast in the parish that, I saw Father Ambassa Minfoumou Philippe,
a seminarian, sing the Exultet in ewondo. And it was a catchy song like the great
epics of Mvet with the participation of the people and that made the song go very
popular.
I am fortunate to have known the Amara style and the Betene style and to have
been initiated by Amara himself at the seminar. He also started another type of
enculturation. The practice of Amara style was possible because he had a stable
population. The seminarians were there and he himself also took the time to teach us
how to play the balafons. But he wanted to keep the mystery in his style. It is not the
popular dance. So Amara's songs are not songs where you can jiggle happily. There
are measures. I remember the dispute there was over the Easter sequence. Many
said that Amara wants to stay in the climate of waiting, when the joy was already
there. Betene was on the path of joy, while the other one would have remained in the
climate of expectation. An anxious waiting. That was the big problem at first. And
then with Amara, we played Mozart with his instruments. But he did not have a
parish. Betene had the advantage of being in a parish, which allowed him to make a
distant preparation which continues until today. Not only did he found the Nkukuma
David choir, he also recruited professional balafon players. When Amara took a
popular song, he made it a new song like "A yaya mayi ke woe". This is why the
balafonists quickly solicited Father Betene, while the genius of the balafonists
was almost subdued with the Amara style. You had to adapt to him, whereas with
Betene, I think he let people adapt to the rhythm of the song, and he let them be
artists who create by playing instead of just repeating what the choirmaster had said.
I cannot say that I came very close to him when he was vicar at the cathedral, or
at Mokolo, I was still too young. I hardly came to town. I was still in the minor
seminary. I arrived here in 1976. I got to know him closely as the secretary for
catholic education and then as a permanent secretary, then, as military chaplain. I
believe he is someone who is always available. For example, one day, I have
someone who is from Andog and he calls me to tell me that his mother is really sick. I
tell him that my brother, I am very busy, I cannot move. Try to call Father Betene,
maybe he would be more available. Father Betene did not know him. I said call
him and see, but tell him anyway that you are of my family. So he came for that
mother's sacraments. He anointed the sick and everything... It was only after that,
that he revealed to him that my mother was from that area. Her brother is such and
such. Then he told me I sent him his nephew. I on the other hand, didn't even know
the man.
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Extract from a letter from Bishop Joseph Akonga Essomba

I come back today to express my gratitude to you because, it is true that you
have indirectly been one of the determining factors in the maturation of my
vocation. Indeed, as a young seminarian in Akono, I had the opportunity and the
privilege to attend your priestly ordination in Abang Mindi. It was for me a key
moment in my long journey towards the altar of the Lord. I admire in you the devoted
priest, the great musician and source of inspiration for several generations
of musicians and choirs of our local Church. I am one of the musicians trained by the
young father François Xavier Amara in Akono. I even had the privilege of being the
first soloist of his choir. Need I remind you that at this moment, I am being soothed by
your Yob la taman Nti, 2012. This opus takes me back to my youth and makes me
rediscover the finer points of our culture ...
Allow me one or two points; … Some devious minds wanted to discredit all of
your work a few years ago. What a waste, what a loss that would have been for our
Church! Your commitment to reflect on the situation of our Church. Several people
are there for titles, to devalue our Church, for their selfish interests… Although this is
only my personal opinion, but I know that I am not alone in thinking it.
Your work, your inspiration, in short, the judicious highlighting of the talents that
the Lord has entrusted to you, will remain a great pride for our Church, for the Beti
people.
May the Lord, who has enabled you to accompany the prayers of thousands of
Christ's faithful, grant you all kinds of graces and allow you to live a very long time.
Your younger brother and colleague,
 
FADA AKONGA ESSOMBA YOSEF
Ongola, July 18, 2013
Abë Mbòs Ediň Fada P.L. BETENE
 71

Letter of recognition from the English-speaking parish signed by Mgr. Joseph

Befe Ateba of late memory
Most Rev.Fr. Pierre Lucien Betene,
I have the honor and joy to announce to you, after the deliberations of the Parish
Priest-in-Council, considering your efforts and contributions towards the creation of
the first Anglophone Parish in Yaoundé and in the French speaking Cameroon, your
name will be immortalized in the Parish by naming our new Parish Hall after your
name (Fr. Betene's Hall) as a token of gratitude on the part of the parishioners.
I want to bring this to your notice before you leave for Canada in the next few
days in case you will not be in when the ceremony will be performed.
Be assured of our prayers and may our Mother Mary continue to intercede for
you.
Sincerely yours in Jesus and Mary.

Monsignor Joseph BEFE ATEBA

Vicar General / Parish Priest Yaoundé, July 29, 2007
 

Extract from the homily of Monsignor Victor Tonyé Bakot (On the

occasion of the Diocesan Choir Days, July, 2013)
… This celebration brings me back to that Pierre Lucien, major seminarian and
classmate, whose talent as a composer and cantor we admired, a talent that you
have never lost and that you know how to put so well at the service of the whole
Church. How can we forget your beautiful performance in front of Pope John Paul II
in 1995, when the Airplane Base, crowded with people, sang with one heart? And
recently at the omnisport stadium in 2009 on the feast day of Saint Joseph, husband
of Mary, in front of Pope Benedict XVI, you shone like a thousand lights! I always
admire your humility, which accompanies the greatness of the talent that is
yours! May the other choir masters follow your example! And, once again, thank you,
dear classmate! ...
You are revalorizing there, the role of the choirs which is becoming so common
that we no longer even realize the sacrifices made to keep up with a beautiful
liturgy...
The Church in the exercise of the liturgy, particularly the sung one, has the
exalting mission of continuing the work of salvation, initiated by the Holy Trinity. The
Vatican Council Fathers, in the dogmatic constitution of “The Holy Liturgy”, do
nothing other than remind us of the need of song in our faithful relationship with God,
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when they declare that: “In the earthly liturgy, we participate in a foretaste of this
celestial liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem, to which we aspire
like travelers, where Christ sits at the right hand of God, as Minister of the Sanctuary
and of the true tabernacle; with all the army of the celestial militia, we sing to the
Lord the hymn of glory (…)”. Allow me also to recall once again the very important
work carried out by Father Pierre Lucien Betene present here.
Father, thank you for continuing to give your time and all your energy to the
liturgical service in the Archdiocese of Yaoundé...
Singing conveys tradition and carries culture. We often see false discussions like
“You sing the village, you make hou hou hou”! These are considerations of
ignorance! Each language gives the joyful tone of the encounter with God from its
conception of greatness, of thanksgiving, of supplication. This is the beauty of unity in
diversity. The Lord loves you all and invites you to perfect joy through sacred
music. (Betene, 2013).

2. Men of God of the military and police chaplaincy

 
Sheikh Mohama Oussani (Waziri); National military chaplain of the Muslim
faith
I am the first national chaplain of the Cameroonian armed forces of the Muslim
faith, appointed in 2015 (before there were only chaplains of the Catholic and
Protestant cults). I was also National President of the national order of private
education for the Islamic faith when Father Betene was no longer in service. I have
known Father Betene indirectly for more than 22 years, in the context of confessional
private education and in a direct manner for 5 years, as part of the collective
of national chaplains of the armed forces.
At the level of Catholic education, the reforms brought by Father Betene were
copied by Muslims. He restructured private Catholic education and gave it a
boost. Father Betene had an open mind and a spirit of tolerance that nowhere here
you will see. He put Man at the center of his concern and did not consider whether
you were Catholics or not. He gave facilities in Catholic schools located at the
Briqueterie quarter to Muslim children. My children also went to Catholic school
thanks to the reform brought by Father Betene, particularly in terms of monitoring,
teacher training and the quality of the courses provided. When a child finished his
secondary school, he was well trained. In the Briqueterie area, nearly 80% of
Muslims attend Catholic schools thanks to the love of neighbor and the reforms
issued by Father Betene. He left a strong and lasting foundation that still has an
impact today. My son is a lieutenant and he went to Catholic school. He received the
quality of teaching and the follow-up of the Catholic education. 
Thanks to Father Betene's reform of Private Catholic Education, most Muslim
children have had a Catholic education and are senior clerks today. Most of the
children in this country and many Muslim children who have been educated in these
schools owe it to Father Betene as National Secretary.
He was a nice gentleman, but firm. He is endowed with intelligence. The
structure he had put in place worked very well with a certain rigor. In our schools, the
tuition fees were at a discount because of financial difficulties, but it was still hard to
make the parents pay for them, but the same parents paid more in Catholic schools
thanks to a pedagogical system and approach that Father Betene had instituted. The
 73

grants could go for two or three years without being paid, but Catholic schools
had fewer problems than ours. He had succeeded in setting up quality education by
recruiting well-trained teachers with a tuition rate that paid the teachers,
notwithstanding the subsidies. This man of God was the turning piece in private
education, and presently, he is still the turning piece in the chaplaincy of the armed
forces.
In the classification of the army, the national chaplain comes after the general
officers. We don't depend on ourselves, we depend on the high command. Our role
comes in the moral and spiritual guidance of our defense forces and their families. In
other words, when they need us, we come, and we entertain the elements. 
The collective of national chaplains of the armed forces in Cameroon lives in
harmony as in a family. We spend a lot of time together, we have exchanges and
fraternal meetings, we reflect together on peace, on living together between
Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and Orthodox. We meet regularly at the cathedral
(twice a month) because Father Betene is the spokesperson for the collective. Very
recently at the feast of the sacrifice or Tabaski, I invited them, we prayed together at
the mosque of Briqueterie. It was a first, we had never seen it before. We wanted to
send a message to a Muslim community like that of Briqueterie in order to change
some minds and mentalities, especially in this period of closed mindedness. Men of
God owe it to themselves to come together to change the mind and mentalities by
leading by example. We are the very example of living together. We believe that
human beings are men of faith and that every human being believes in God.
Islam of the 7th century looks a little bit like Islam that is practiced in Cameroon
today because in our country, there is a living-together and religious
tolerance. Elsewhere these meetings are impossible. The comparison of these times
serves to make a similar comparison with Father Betene, the other chaplains and
myself. We are also really trying to put us together today so that Cameroonians can
get to know each other and get closer.

Reverend Father J. Dimitri Téné, (Archpriest, Orthodox National Military

Chaplain)
I am the Most Reverend Father Joseph Dimitri Téné, Archpriest of the Patriarchal
Throne of Alexandria, former Rector of the Orthodox Saint Mark Seminary in
Yaoundé, former Vicar General of the Holy Orthodox Metropolis of Cameroon,
National Orthodox Chaplain of the Defense Forces, currently parish priest of Saint
John the Baptist “The precursor” in Bonaberi Douala.
I got to know Father Pierre Betene in Yaoundé 17 years ago, him as a Roman
Catholic priest, writer, composer and I, a new Greek Orthodox priest. I have been
collaborating since 2016 with Father Betene as part of the function of National
Chaplains of the Defense Forces since he represents the Metropolitan of the Roman
Catholic Church; Mgr. Jean Mbarga in this function. Father Betene is to me an
exceptional man, a humble man, a patient man, a hard worker, that is how I can
describe the man. Our secretary, our president, our dean in our group of five National
Chaplains. I thought I was his elder, too bad, he's a year older than me. Father Pierre
Lucien Betene is a unifier. Does one of us make a mistake? He brings us together,
we reflect, we make arrangements, we recover, we forgive. Is Father Betene ill? You
will only know it when he says to you: “I do not eat this because it is not good for my
health”, or when we are in his apartment where we work together especially on
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Tuesdays, we notice that he takes some tablets. I testify that Father Pierre Betene
has received God’s Call, he is a man of God. May he be blessed.

Pastor Bassoung Beti Guy Merlin (National Military Chaplain for the
seventh day Adventist Church)
In the year 2016, I was appointed national chaplain of the armed forces on behalf
of the Adventist Church and this is indeed the year I met Father Pierre L. Betene who
had already been serving for ten years as regional chaplain of the defense forces for
the Catholic religion. It was he who was generally on the ground. I would like to say
that he acts as a gift of God in his hospitable character. Already at the level of the
collective of national chaplains, he was established as dean. He knows how to calm
the atmosphere when it is tense. He has this ability to listen, he gives consideration
to others. He very rarely gives his personal position, because he always manages to
give a proposal that fits with the Holy Scriptures, a position that fits with ecclesial
doctrine, that fits with logic, with living together, with benevolence. He was kind
enough to offer his space so that the meetings of the collective of national chaplains
could be held at the cathedral. This is how the atmosphere has always been very
friendly. There has never been any discussion that the Catholic Church should be the
first and the most widespread; he knew how to balance our relationship, how to
share, and value the other. He really knew how to embody the values of Christ, and
he still does so today. All the chaplains are at the same level, we have the same
value, and I am the youngest. They are about thirty years older than me. I assure
you that the Cameroonian government could take advantage of the atmosphere that
there is within the national chaplains of the different religions. We have always known
how to make the truth prevail, and never the doctrine. The truth is above the doctrine
and Father Betene always knew how to ensure that there is no disagreement
between us. He knew how to keep his posture of elder and dean.
I remember when he left for France for treatment, because he was sick. We felt
the importance of his presence by his absence. After he left, we had some
problems. We had never had a time of disagreement like the one we had after his
departure: At the level of organization and at the level of relations with officers and
even between us. But fortunately, the Spirit of God knew how to guide this collective,
nevertheless, we felt his emptiness, and we were able to understand what is called
the theology of presence; that is to say, the person is not only what he can say,
what he can do, but the person is above all what he is.
Father Pierre Lucien Betene is a humble man, truly humble. He has a spirit of
fraternity; he does not have a spirit of suspicion or a spirit of ridiculing the other; he is
truly an inspiration. This is the first time that I get along so well with a priest, it is the
first time that I see a priest caring about me without looking for any interest. He has
always known how to incarnate this quality of father, this quality of servant of God,
this quality of social man.
It is on his inspiration that the collective will be set up. There were none. For the
first time, we see Adventists and Catholics together because it is not easy to see
Adventists allying themselves with other people, but he demonstrated this spirit of
sharing Christ, this spirit of the love of Christ. We did not put in front what separates
us but we put first, and in the middle, and in the end, at the front and back, the truth
as it is presented by the Holy Scriptures, as presented by Christ.
Father Betene marked me for the first time during one of his virulent
interventions, where he shed some light on his point. He had truly behaved like a
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teacher. Thanks to this collective of chaplains, we can interchange between

chaplains. That is to say; a Catholic chaplain can work with an Adventist soldier just
like a Muslim soldier, an Orthodox soldier, a Presbyterian soldier, or a Catholic
soldier can work with any chaplain and vice versa. Sometimes in the impossibility for
one of us to be able to serve, or to meet the expectations of a soldier, we are able to
contact one of us, because we represent at this level the same values.
We have developed a platform such as cannot be found elsewhere. In military
jargon, we talk about inter-religious worship, everyone says their prayer, so that no
soldier, no gendarme, no police officer will feel left out. If something happens on the
disciplinary level, it is the chaplains that we turn to.
I pray that God will grant Father Betene many more days so that we may benefit
not only from his experience, but from his wisdom. His presence is personally
beneficial to me because I learn the attitudes of a shepherd, the attitudes of a social
man, the attitudes of a responsible man, I learn a lot from his self-control, and the
ability to gently express an opinion. Father Pierre Lucien Betene is truly a source of
inspiration.
 
III. The faithful of the Church
1. The military chaplaincy
Colonel Aboui Veronique Hortense (President delegate of the Pastoral
Council for the Chaplaincy of the military and security Armed Forces)
I have been President of the Council since 2010. In my time in the chaplaincy, I
noticed that Father Betene is very tidy, and works in scrutiny. He doesn’t like failure
and is a perfectionist. It does not bother me so much because that is how it is in the
army, we make sure that everything is done well. We work on his side despite the
fact that the chaplaincy is not really supported for the simple fact that the soldiers of
Yaoundé do not live in barracks. The soldiers are found in all the parishes of
Yaoundé; they are scattered everywhere. There is just a small handful of people that
Father Betene works with. The community is very small and mostly young, in spite of
this, he still works to try to organize it like a parish, and we work as in a parish. It is
worth having a chaplaincy because officially, when the army wants to organize
something related to the Catholic faith, we call for the chaplaincy. Even if we address
the bishop directly, the bishop will direct us to the chaplain. And even whenever there
is a funeral, it is the chaplain who is called, and it is he who organizes the wake-
keeping. The chaplaincy is necessary, even if the soldiers are scattered, we do with
the little that there is.
The chaplain celebrates weddings, and all the sacraments. If a soldier lives in the
district where the chaplaincy is located, and he wants to celebrate a ceremony of
stripes, with a mass, he will call the chaplain.
There is an annual military pilgrimage every year at Lourdes organized by the
French army. All the armies of the world are invited. But with all the commitments that
there are in the Northern, North-West and South-West regions of Cameroon,
finances are a bit strained. When we go there, we go on a mission for the
Cameroonian army, it is the minister who takes care of the trip. With limited finances,
it has been two years since we have not gone, but this year, the Corona virus
prevented us to go. We don’t go in a large delegation, but a small delegation that
could carry the flag, because each country marches with its own flag.
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To conclude, military chaplaincy is necessary for the military, especially for the
environment in which he lives. God is the God of armies, and the military has such a
difficult job, he needs spiritual support, and sometimes alongside spirituality, he
needs a psychologist. Sometimes only a chat with the priest can get someone out of
a situation. And God only knows that the military knows a lot of
situations. Everywhere in Cameroon where there are soldiers, there are
chaplaincies. The soldier may tend to forget this spiritual side, so the presence of the
chaplain can help him undergo difficult moments. There have been more than one
cases of conversions among the military and Father Betene gave them the
sacraments.
 
2. The Cathedral
Charles Ateba
I have been attending the Cathedral in Yaoundé as a parishioner since my early
childhood. I was baptized there, and I took my first Holy communion there. At the end
of the 1960s, I met Father Pierre Lucien Betene without anything remarkable. My
primary school studies took place at St Joseph’s primary school at Mvolye where I
received my confirmation from Mgr. René Graffin. At the same time, I was taking
doctrinal classes from the parish priest, as an aspiring seminarian.
When preparing for my second baccalaureate session at the Catholic mission of
Nkol-Nkumu where Father André Noah and Father Betene kindly welcomed me, I got
closer to Father Pierre Lucien Betene, still a major seminarian at Nkolbison. He came
to do some "ministry" in Nkol-Nkumu with his uncle; Father André Noah. He assisted
the parish priest and more remarkably, he directed the parish choir and above all, he
made it famous. His performances generated fame and attracted many people from
the parish and the city of Yaoundé more and more every sunday.
I participated in this activity as a seminarian; younger class mate of Father Pierre
Lucien Betene, collaborator of Father André Noah. The activity of the choir becomes
very important in the parish to the point where this choir welcomes more and more
people, especially young people!
It was at this time that I had a great admiration for this choir and that despite my
return to the seminary and/or rather to the Lycée Leclerc, I continued to be interested
in it because of my friendships with Father André Noah, and Betene. This is how I
follow the preparations for the Christmas and Easter ceremonies in particular. And
the preparation of the Mass on Holy Saturday is taken very seriously. Indeed, the
introduction will be made in Ewondo language and no longer in Latin as usual. In
particular, the blessing of the fire, the Easter candle, the entrance procession, the
installation at the altar with the singing of the “Exultet” performed in
ewondo; “Minkunda Bëengles” (we had prepared this for a long time). It was
this song that struck me the most because it was sung for the first time in the
Ewondo language, and had completely conquered the audience who understood
nothing in previous years when it was sung in Latin. 
After the blessing of the fire and the Easter candle, the deacon usually sang what
in my opinion, is the song of the great joy of final deliverance: “Exultet” in Latin. That
year, he had decided that it would be sung in ewondo as already mentioned above.
For Me, the “Exultet” is a deep inspiration of a strong feeling. A song coming
from the bottom of the heart and which meets the expectations of Christians. A
simple melody that emerges from the depths of the womb. Right words of visceral
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inspiration. An expression of strong and deep feelings of sensations. A certain

wondering, pure and candid towards the words of God, of Mary and of the
Lord. Candid expression of a marveled child, attached to his father the Creator,
grateful for his wonders and confident of his benefits. A song exuding a strong
fidelity, a deep and pure faith, strengthening and inspiring. Therefore, a song leading
to exultation, or exaltation (Exultet). This song is a deep expression of a feeling.
Father Betene truly praises God in the manner of King David. His way of
composing resembles the psalms of King David. When he was still conducting the
Nkukuma David choir, he seemed to be, to embody King David himself. His way of
dancing accompanied his gestures. For me, no one praises God today in the manner
of Father Pierre Lucien Betene as when he was still choirmaster. And he knew what
he was doing, he could beat time just like his song called for it.                  

Carole Ateba (How did I get interested in talking about Father Pierre Lucien
Betene)
I am one of the children of Charles Ateba mentioned above. I already knew
Father Pierre Lucien Betene and I knew he was a singer. I got to know about him
when the Rector announced his Christmas album a few years ago. There was also
his poster published at the Cathedral with his face on it. I had never listened to the
album. Then I learned that it was the same one who made masses at the Cathedral
on Thursdays at the 5:00 p.m. mass. In short, I had noticed that he did a lot of
evening masses. That's all I knew about Father Betene, nothing more. With the
weekly creation of the parish newsletter of; La Voix de Notre Dame (LVND) on
December 17, 2017, I started to get interested in this legend, because for me, he is
one. First from the presentation of our pastors in the first volume of the parish
newsletter. It is through this newsletter that I got to know Father Pierre Lucien
Betene. He gave us his resume, where I had learned, among other things, that he
was the founder of the Nkukuma David Choir, and that he had participated in the
translation of the Sunday missal into the ewondo language. It touched my mind but it
was still far from impressing me until the days I was preparing one of my older
brother’s liturgical songs for his wedding. I was talking with one of my sisters and my
father was standing next to us. He listened to us appreciating the famous "Duma
layean ai wa" song especially after a very sad Kyrie on feast days, and especially
after the time of Lent or Advent when we have already spent several weeks without
hearing a "Gloria".
My sister and I were delighted at this Gloria (Duma layean ai wa) without
knowing his composer. My father listened to us without saying anything. It was then
that he was surprised that we did not even know Father Pierre Lucien Betene. He
revealed to us that he was often with him when he was writing his songs. He had
gone to prepare for his exams there because it was quiet in Nkol-Nkumu where
Father Betene was residing as a seminarian. It was at this precise moment that I
suddenly had a very great admiration for Father Pierre Lucien Betene.
From that day on, during the following meetings with Father Betene, I told him
what my father had told me. I told him that I am Charles Ateba's daughter, and that
he told me about him. He told me that he was often with him when he was
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composing. It was Father Betene who told me more about his friendship with my
father and with my father's family; my aunts, my uncle and my grandmother who was
like his mother. Father Betene told me that my aunts and my uncle were among his
first choir singers in the Nkukuma David choir, they were still children and
teenagers. In fact, I noticed in his way of talking about my family that he really loved
my family and especially my father. He also knew my mother, and he was surprised
every time to hear that my father already had many grown children.
There are also several things that struck me about Father Betene, he was one of
the few if not, the only priest who always dropped his work on time for the Voice of
Our Lady (La Voix de Notre Dame parish newsletter). He was also very meticulous in
his work. I was not the only one who noticed it, it was however, the director of the
newsletter Louis Colins Mawoung who sent me to write articles with him, or
to obtain certain information about him since he had noticed that father Betene was
not only up to the task, but he was quick to get the job done.
After the death of Mgr. François-Xavier Amara, I also learned that he had been a
great composer; I did not know him, but I knew him through his famous songs, the
author of which I knew after his death. LVND therefore released editions that
concerned Mgr. Amara after his death. And I said to myself, why always wait for the
death of those great men, those giants, the legends that we still have among us to
talk about them after their die? I spoke to Father Betene who agreed and encouraged
me, saying that it is always better to talk about someone when you can have the
original information. Two years later, I made the commitment to start a sort of
biography on Father Pierre Lucien Betene, but above all, to bring out his rich liturgical
heritage. It was little by little while writing in La Voix de Notre Dame that I learned
more about the life of Father Pierre Lucien Betene, and not only through my
father. Every time I met Father Pierre Lucien Betene, I learned something new about
him that marked me.
At the beginning of the creation of the parish newsletter, Mgr. Amara dies, I am
greatly astonished to find out that he had composed marvels like “A ya ya, mayi ke
we” and many others! Mgr. Amara is gone and his list of compositions remains
averagely known. I said to myself, Father Pierre Lucien Betene is still with us, he has
had almost the same itinerary in the field of enculturation as Mgr. Amara. I already
knew him a little, my father knew him closely, and he knew my dad’s family well
enough in the past that, he once told me my grandmother was like his mother. Today
I am here, and I would like to put his legacy in writing. I don't know if it's a
coincidence, but I know that with God there is no coincidence especially when it
concerns the affairs of God. Because this whole story does not only concern Father
Betene, it is also a question of showing how our talents can be used for the greater
glory of God. What amazes me more is that as I write, he himself told me a few days
ago that he composed a hymn to the Holy Spirit that goes "Zah eh eh eeh », A song
that is never missing when comes the time to invoke the Holy Spirit in the Ewondo
language. I am sure that Father Betene was truly inhabited by the Holy Spirit when
he composed his songs, just like the authors of the hymns found in the Bible. We can
thus say that it is God himself who used his hands in the composition of his songs.

Henriette Essomba (President of the Ekoan Maria (Holy Mary confraternity)

of the CNDV)
I cannot speak of Father Betene without speaking of my late husband; Roger
Emmanuel Essomba, because he was the one who made me know Father Betene.
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Father Betene was his idol. He talked to me about him all the time. Father Betene
was my father-in-law's friend. He often went to my father-in-law, but I wasn't there
yet. I don't know what relationship Father had with my husband. All I know is that he
held him in very high esteem and he loved him very much.
To tell you the little story, when my husband was a child he liked to celebrate
masses with his brothers and sisters and he said he was Father Betene. When I got
married, he kept talking to me about Father Betene. I knew Father Betene without
knowing him, and when I arrived at the cathedral, one day I introduced myself to
Father as the wife of the late Roger Emmanuel. He had been very happy to see me
and since then, I have become his daughter. I made it a duty to introduce myself with
all my children to him, and from time to time he talks to the children. We are already a
family.
When we were kids, people always talked about him everywhere, all the time. He
was like a celebrity; I couldn't even imagine that I could ever speak to him.
I keep the image of him as a father of faith. You know that Father Betene is a
great personality, but when you approach him, he is always the one who welcomes
you, who puts you into confidence. He is an example of humility, very humble and
very welcoming. He's a role model for me, and I've always wanted to follow in his
footsteps. Because when we serve God, we are called to make God live through our
person, that is to say; "To see the Lord through the person who is in front of
us". Father Betene is always the first to approach the other to embrace him. He's our
grandfather.
What to say about his songs, they reflect his faith in God. His songs are very
edifying, very deep and these songs give us the image of its author. When you listen
to the gloria "Dum layean ai wa", who does not know that gloria? I mean to say
how he exalts the blessings of his God. We see his songs like: “Vaa Nti enyiň dzoe
esë, vaa nye mindzug mie misë emen a yi wul u yë wò o, a yi mvaman ai wò o,
otoan fidi hë nye”, which means; “Surrender your life to God, discharge all your
troubles, he himself will accompany you and watch over you”. It's a song that helped
me a lot when I lost my husband. I sang it every day when I woke up. Now I have my
daughter who sings in the Nkukuma David choir that he founded. It has also helped
her a lot. We can say that Father Betene replaced the grandfather she did not
have. His support allowed us to move forward. There is also his book “The Strength
of Forgiveness” which he gave me himself. It allowed me to convert myself and I use
it a lot for the catechesis of the Ekoan Maria (Holy Mary confraternity).
 
Jean Basile Ngoa (The Dean and Choirmaster of the Nkukuma David choir
of the CNDV)
I got to know Father Pierre Lucien Betene four years after his priestly ordination
at Our Lady of Victory Cathedral in Yaoundé. He was leading a great choir which he
created and gave the name Nkukuma David. Father Betene gave the pleasure of
listening to beautiful music and beautiful singing which I liked, but being an
apprentice car electrician, I finished my training at the garage at late hours. After my
apprenticeship, I also came to be a member of this choir. I want to talk about the little
time I spent with him.
I saw a worthy person, who led the large group of men, women, and children, he
spread a family spirit and love in the choir. He is a great songwriter, composer of
beautiful songs, beautiful gestures, and of sacred dance, which the faithful loved to
see and listen to.
 80

A great trainer, Father trained soloists. Many are choirmasters, religious people

and priests today.
Father Betene created a set of six balafon instruments different from the
xylophones and balafons used in the village, and most choirs copied this
example. His human and professional qualities have made him stand out at the
diocesan level and has been entrusted with the task of animating certain major
diocesan celebrations.
- Liturgical preparations and animations for the consecration masses of the
bishops; Bishop Athanase Balla in Bafia and Jean Baptiste Ama in Yaoundé at
the Omnisports stadium.    
- The Mass for the second coming of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to Cameroon
in 1995, the ordinations of priests and the perpetual vows of nuns;    
- Cultural tours of the South-West and the Littoral regions of Cameroon.    
- Participation in the great festival of Negro Arts in Lagos, Nigeria with his
choir Nkukuma David which was classified as the first choir of Central Africa,
and won a prize.    
- Cultural tours by invitation of “Miséreor” in the Federal Republic of Germany for
two months, always accompanied by his choir Nkukuma David.    
When he is appointed Episcopal Vicar in charge of liturgical pastoralism
and enculturation of the Diocese. He created without delay on the recommendation
of Mgr. Victor Tonyé Bakot, a large multilingual diocesan choir (CHODY), which will
animate all major liturgical events, with statutes and internal regulations.
The work carried out by Father Pierre Lucien Betene from 1971 to 2017 marked
his desire to encourage young singers and seminarians to move forward, to
persevere in the service of the Lord. His state of health no longer allowing him to
exercise many activities, he was replaced by one of his sons, a young priest, former
choir member of Father Betene; the current parish priest of the Sacred Heart parish
of Mokolo: Father Joseph Bikoula Ateba.
What joy indeed for a pastor to see the next generation growing on the horizon!
I conclude with these words, Father Pierre Lucien Betene is an artistic leader
whom I have seen setting up the most beautiful constructions of contemporary
art. We needed such a man to follow his human and professional qualities.
 

3. The English-speaking community

 
How Father Betene helped build today’s strong, united and purposeful
Mvog-Ada anglophone community

The few lines in the following pages best encapsulate the consideration of
Anglophone Catholics, beyond the Mvog-Ada fraternity, of the gargantuan task
carried out by this self- effacing prelate, in gathering the pieces after a long period of
incomprehension due, largely to the difficulty of getting a priest who could best
address the specific problems of this burgeoning Christian community. Anglophone
catholics, be they transferred civil servants or the growing numbers of university
students coming to Yaoundé to further their education, had wished they could
worship as they had always done back in the English-speaking part of the country.
 81

Priests able to continue the “anglophone” worship tradition were hard to come by.
And even when some came over to say masses in uncertain English, relations often
quickly ran into conflict zones. The priests were seen to be overly interested in
money and, in the process, somehow downplaying their spiritual guardianship which
many Anglophone catholics say is the primordial role of pastors. Father Lucien
Pierre Betene' s appointment at the helm of the St Joseph’s Anglophone Parish
arrived at the ultimate moment of a key situation with the spiritual leadership which
had come very close to implosion. His new leadership style saved the Parish from
disintegration. It also definitively brought back serenity in a way Anglophone
Catholics would like to see a community of believers, with the underlying principle
being that all parishioners are each other’s keepers. That is why this 50th anniversary
of Father Betene' s priestly ordination is perceived by most parishioners at Mvog-Ada
as a divine vindication of all the good they think of him. The testimonies that follow,
speak volumes about the huge influence of his 19 year stay at the helm which still
continues to be felt; to the extent that such has been immortalized by the naming of
the main hall of the Parish after him.

"Father Betene, an open and receptive priest"

On the occasion of the celebration of the Golden Jubilee of the priesthood of
Reverend Father Pierre Lucien Betene in the Universal Catholic Church, I am happy
for the opportunity given to me to pay homage to him for a very successful service. in
the vineyard of God. Although I had heard of Father Betene in connection with the
cathedral's Nkukuma David choir, I first saw him in person when he was appointed in
1986, to take over as pastor of the English speaking community which occupied two
different chapels in Elig-Effa and Olezoa. He came at a time when the community of
Elig-Effa was dislocating itself from their priest over questions of administration and
finances. Father Betene came with a kind heart, open and receptive, and quickly
brought the chaotic situation back to normal. Very early on, Reverend Doctor Betene
saw that the growing community needed a church of its own, instead of sharing two
small chapels with different French speaking communities. He quickly approached
Archbishop Jean Zoa and land was acquired in Mimboman, before parishioners
complained that the location was remote and even more remote for those living on
the outskirts of the city. It was then recommended that the land that the community
had acquired for a school in Mvog-Ada could also accommodate a church, if a
particular adjoining land was acquired and added.
The Archbishop again gave his blessings and the land was acquired. Thus
began the history of the Mvog-Ada Anglophone parish and its church in the early
1990s. Father Betene quickly organized a new executive pastoral council, with
commissioner Boniface Pasha as president, Bernard Ayuk as vice president,
Professor Robert Leke for the finance section/treasurer and myself as
secretary. Dominique Morfaw led the team of catechists. It was under this executive
that the church began to be built, supervised by technicians such as Omer Sendze,
Emmanuel Batoko, Michael Alemanji (chief), Simon Nchinda Forbi (Hon) and many
others. The community began to worship at Mvog-Ada in the open air as the church
building progressed. Father Betene was parish priest at the same time as National
Secretary for Catholic Education. Despite the heavy workload on his shoulders,
Father Betene was fully committed and very available to his parishioners. He was
always on time for mass and confessions. He visited the homes of his Christians
when invited; he visited my family several times on the occasion of a child's first
 82

communion or confirmation. He loved the good music of the traditional African

Church, which brought him extremely close to the Lamnso choir (formed in 1990)
which he admired, encouraged and promoted.
It is difficult to list the many accomplishments of Reverend Doctor Betene during
the nineteen years where he was the only priest in the only English-speaking parish
of Yaoundé. Today we have many full and semi-English speaking parishes or
communities of churches in different parts of the city of Yaoundé. Father Betene
delivered his short but well-prepared sermons and homilies wonderfully, in excellent
English, injecting them with local and African humor and captivating the congregation
whenever he celebrated mass or baptized new Christians or presided over an
occasion in the Church.
I congratulate Father Betene and wish him for this 50th anniversary celebration of
his ordination and pray that God, the Almighty, continues to protect the last years of
his service on earth in his Holy Catholic Church.
Professor Verkijika G. Fanso

"Father Betene as head of the parish council, during the deliberations"

Father Pierre Lucien Betene was pastor of the English-speaking St Joseph
parish from 1986 to 2004. However, his first contact with this parish took place in
1978 when the English-speaking St Joseph primary school in Mvog-Ada opened. He
was at the time Secretary of Education of the Archdiocese of Yaoundé and
choirmaster of the Nkukuma David choir of the cathedral of Yaoundé. Thus, he
became the first educational administrator of the school. As Professor Daniel Lantum
said in his book “Our Catholic Heritage”; He appreciated its peculiarities, namely that
the school was English-speaking, run by the parish, run by the pastoral council with
its school board and linked to the GCE (General Certificate of Education) progression
system". He approved the creation of an English-speaking parish with its elementary
school without any qualms, in his easy-going humble and gentlemanly
composure. He had no problem with English speaking Catholics wanting to have
their own parish to worship God in their own way. Shortly thereafter, he traveled to
Canada to improve his English and acquire more knowledge in educational
administration between 1979 and 1985. On his return from Canada, he was
appointed pastor of the English-speaking parish of St Joseph in 1986. The parish had
no permanent base, no church, or presbytery. Priests were sent from time to time to
care for English-speaking Catholics before Reverend Father Betene took up his
duties as parish priest. His appointment was, in the first place, a blessing for the
parish which was facing a social crisis. His predecessor openly opposed the parish
council, which plunged parishioners into a sort of confusion or obscurity. The
presence of Fr. Betene as pastor of the parish brought to the parish the light which it
badly needed. He quickly put the pieces together and progressed this way for 19
years. 
He established and practiced a true democracy making each parishioner an
important element in the progress of the parish. To underline this, I quote again
Professor Daniel Lantum, “In 1986, Father Pierre L. Betene was appointed pastor of
the English-speaking parish of St Joseph, Mvog Ada. He had been used to the
English-speaking Christian community and fully understood their difficulties, their
aspirations and their determination to participate in the development of the parish
both physically, psychologically and spiritually. He was a good preacher, educator,
musicologist, organizer and manager, and he did his best using all of his talents. He
 83

reorganized the parish council, strengthened and blessed the creation of several lay

apostolates to involve as many parishioners as possible, in order to strengthen their
spirituality and promote the deepening of their faith. During his long service, the
primary school project had reached maturity; the church project was conceived and
executed with the realization of the main structures; the community moved from Elig-
Effa and Olezoa and used it as a house of prayer and for social functions like fund
raising for the final completion”. His mode of administration made the parish council
more powerful because almost all the decisions on the projects were taken in the
said council which was composed of representatives of organized
groups (apostolates). Each group was autonomous, electing its executive
members. The parish council was made up of two representatives from each group
(usually the president and the secretary). In this way, the instructions of the parish
council approved by the parish priest were easily transmitted to the base and the
suggestions for action were formulated in the same way. This made
the ordinary parishioner feel useful and important. Each member of the parish gave
all the energy the parish needed to move forward. He never dictated any
instructions. He simply suggested ideas for discussion and adoption to the parish
council. Although he as the pastor was naturally the head of the Council, he hardy
presided its deliberations. He allowed the board members to lead the discussions of
the meetings, even in his presence. He was content to cut back on excesses, correct
misconceptions, and firmly emphasize the spiritual guidelines of the Church in his
easy way. He never, in public, reprimanded or denounced a parishioner but corrected
him quietly. His little book “Le Conseil Paroissial” of June 1986 revised in May 1996
in the light of the post-synodal exhortation “Ecclesia in Africa” by the Holy Father
Pope John Paul II in Yaoundé, on the 14th September 1995, illustrates everything I
have tried to highlight in this appreciation note.
Today we have other versions of what the Parish Council or the Parish Pastoral
Council should be, but the basics of the matter by Reverend Father Pierre Lucien
Betene remains uncontradicted. Parishioners were encouraged to play fully
in synergy due to his gentle nature. The decision making of the parishioners was very
very high.
He often confessed that he had never before experienced situations that did not
require his physical and energetic participation. He forgot that his spirit of synergy
expressed by his easy going nature was a very powerful and lasting driver.
The CMA (Catholic Men's Association) introduced to Mvog-Ada by his first
mentor of late memory; Rev. Bro. Patrick Adeso, was welcomed by the parish priest
with great joy. During the inaugural celebration of the feast of Saint Joseph,
Reverend Father Betene declared, “I hope it will not be like the fire of banana leaves
which blazes furiously from the beginning but which flames extinguish quickly”. This
was said using his Ewondo language, a linguistic expression which he later
translated.  
No wonder, that one of the most magnificent church houses in Yaoundé was
built, followed later by the presbytery and the parish grew like a mushroom.
Several years after his departure, the parish hall in the basement of the church
building was named “Father Pierre Lucien Betene” which he joyfully inaugurated. It is
a concrete and worthy tribute to the nineteen significant years spent in Mvog-Ada.
Emmanuel A. Batoko
(President and Initial Project Manager
of the church of Mvog-Ada at the time, technical committee).
 
 84

"He promoted autonomy and co-responsibility between the priest of the parish

and the community"
I attempt this testimony as an eyewitness and privileged observer of the
transition between Father Betene and his immediate predecessor (s) and successor
(s), having lived and participated in the activities of this special sociological parish of
the Archdiocese of Yaoundé for 40 years. Father Pierre Lucien Betene succeeded
Father Laurent Mvondo, and unlike the latter, especially when he exercised
concomitant episcopal functions, and national secretary for Catholic education, and
consultant to the local curia, he granted the English-speaking Catholic community a
certain autonomy and considerable freedom in the management of activities within
the parish. In line with the spirit of Community development and self- reliance which
have characterized much of the heritage of life in the present-day North West and
South West regions, and as we all look forward to the opening of a new era of
decentralization in our country, this autonomy and this freedom aroused great
enthusiasm and favored the participation of the faithful in parish and diocesan
activities.
Of course, this enthusiasm has prompted the faithful to take bold initiatives such
as the construction of the current premises of the English-speaking Catholic parish
of Saint Joseph at Mvog-Ada in Yaoundé as well as to inspire other projects of
ecclesial premises elsewhere in Yaoundé.
This autonomy and this freedom were in a way challenged and verified by the
successor of Father Betene; Reverend Father Joseph Befe Ateba (RIP)
who, recalling the essential references of Canon Law, had to stress that the parish
priest is not an employee of the pastoral council of the parish but rather, the head of
the congregation. But Father Betene accepted to be a kind of spiritual worker and
humble missionary servant guide, which is why the memories of his 19 years in office
have never really faded.
It was very rare that Father Betene, as a preacher always straight to the point,
did not begin his sermons without a local proverb inspired by anthropology first
rendered in the Ewondo language before giving the English version. It was a way of
relating to the theme of the readings of the day. This made him an ardent defender of
acculturation and enculturation; which are the means of the Ecclesia in Africa to
domesticate the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to strengthen the foundations of the
Christian faith in our cultures and traditions, and therefore to promote effective
evangelization.
Without a doubt, with his passion for the choir and, in particular, his experience
acquired with the famous choir in the days called Nkukuma David (King David) of the
Cathedral of Yaoundé, Father Betene was the principal choirmaster of the composite
diocesan choir of 600 members which honored the visit of the Supreme Pontiff, Pope
John Paul II to Cameroon in 1995. And indeed, some groups who had felt intimidated
by his predecessor, such as the Lamnso choir and community, regained the
enthusiasm and dynamism that are still visible today. This choir of 600 members
sang in many local languages including Ewondo, Bassa, Bamiléké, Fulfulde and
Lamso, in addition to our two official languages. At least we remember the legendary
procession of the lectionary in 1995 by the Lamnso Choir on this historic papal
visit. In the practice of enculturation, the dominant spirit was that of multiculturalism
as a means of fostering unity. Father Betene could therefore be considered a
precursor of multiculturalism.
 85

In short, the mandate of Father Betene was characterized by the collective

autonomy of the English-speaking Catholic community and the co-responsibility with
the parish priest, as he always reminded us, and all were enthusiastic about an
autonomy and substantial freedom, but all of this with sustainable checks and
balances such as regular internal audits. Happy Golden Jubilee Anniversary to
Father Pierre Lucien Betene in the priesthood!
Chef Fritz Gerald Nasako
“Congratulations from the bottom of my heart! "
I have the honor and the privilege of being one of the founding members of two
Catholic lay apostolic associations of the Anglophone St. Joseph parish namely;
Caritas (1996) and as founding president of the Catholic Men's Association (CMA,
2000) to convey our warm congratulations on the occasion of your celebration of fifty
years in the holy priesthood!
It is undeniable that these two movements (not counting the others at Mvog Ada
parish) formed under your spiritual direction and mentorship have continued to grow
stronger over the years. The CMA which heeded your wise advice at the beginning
"not to become a mere chimera of dry plantain leaves" is a strong and
palpable force within the Christian community not only in Mvog-Ada but in the
parishes of the Archdiocese of Yaoundé and beyond. A good seed having taken root
and spreading today by leaps and bounds!
It is our fervent prayer that as you age, the Almighty God will continue in his
generosity to guard, protect, strengthen, bless and inspire you for evermore fruitful
work in his vineyard! Ad multos annos!
 
Germanus Canisius Nchanji
 

"Rev. Father Betene: A true Father, teacher and leader”

In 1986, I arrived in Yaoundé as a student at the University of Yaoundé, as a true
Catholic Christian. I immediately joined the Anglophone Catholic Community of
Yaoundé, of which Reverend Father Pierre Lucien Betene was the leader: Parish
priest.
In 1987, I joined the catechetical team led by the Reverend Sister Herma
Kammanan kada. Working in the catechism team gave me the opportunity to get to
know Reverend Father Betene better. My first impression of him was his gentle
nature, secondly his punctuality at Mass and all activities 30 minutes before the hour,
to prepare spiritually for the celebration. Reverend Father Betene was a leader who
took the time to explain his every action and educated parishioners to be rational,
objective and systematic in everything they did. He often asked the question "What
are you about to do, how does it help you and the community to grow spiritually?"
Father Betene was a real teacher for us at Olezoa where I was the sacristan and
we used to prepare the liturgy together, the Father made sure that I and the
others understood what was to be done, what was needed and why. He explained
each liturgical action to be performed during the celebration. Before
each liturgical period, he took the time to inform us about the attitude to adopt and
the prescribed colors.
 86

For 19 years, Reverend Father Betene led the English-speaking community of

Yaoundé and under his leadership, they conceived the idea of a large English-
speaking parish which they realized together: The English-speaking Saint-Joseph
church of Mvog - Ada, one of the most beautiful in Yaoundé. He was a motivating
leader; one who believed that in the community everyone is important and should be
taken into consideration. He coordinated the meetings of the parish council in love,
consideration, objectivity and collaboration, he is a good listener.
He put the committee’s interest first and the development of the Anglophone
community was his primary motive. Although he held two positions at the time, as
National Secretary for Catholic Education and Parish Priest, he always found time to
be with his parishioners, especially at times of spiritual need, confessions, visitation
of the sick, etc.
He was a wise man and a good advisor. For example, he used to say that when
a husband and wife have a problem, when you listen to the husband you may be
tempted to think that the wife is a devil and when you listen to the wife you may be
tempted to think that the husband is bad. It is therefore better to listen to both before
any advice.
He often used to say that if two people live together and they never disagree or
argue, it means that one of the partners is not normal, because if both are normal,
there will be a disagreement one day. For Father Betene, it is normal for people to
disagree, what matters is how they overcome their differences. Father Betene loves
the beautiful liturgy and always wants an ideal place of worship for his Christians. He
provided spiritual, moral and social knowledge in building a large English speaking
community in Yaoundé. As the English speaking population of Yaoundé grew, new
English speaking churches began to emerge, which aroused fear among some
English speaking parishioners of Mvog-Ada, but Reverend Father Betene was very
serene and his idea was; “Make your church more beautiful, run your liturgy in a
meaningful and beautiful way, and you will attract many more Christians”. Finally,
one can say: for our sake Father Betene was an Anglophone, with us he was
transformed and together we progressed and developed.
Dominique morfaw
"Beriwo taa chu wor !!" *
Please accept our sincere congratulations and encouragement. During the years
spent at Elig-Effa, you have become so dear to us. Our prayer is that the Good Lord
will give you good health and many years to continue serving in his vineyard.
The Lamso Mvog-Ada Choir, created in Elig-Effa on December 25, 1990, came
when you were parish priest. You love us particularly so much that you invited us to
animate liturgical services in many parishes and on other occasions here in
Yaoundé. For example: During the celebration of the centenary of the arrival of
the Catholic Church in Cameroon, you chose us to lead the procession of the historic
lectionary in Mvolye and during the second visit of Pope John Paul II at the Military
Base of Mvan in Yaoundé with the great “Allelulia ven ku a yov a suiri sa Nyuy
Tar”, to highlight one of the terms of the post-synodal exhortation “Ecclesia in
Africa” and more precisely the aspect of enculturation.
As a priest, you have always been with us, teaching us, advising us and warning
us. As a man who loves culture and the balafon in particular, we cannot count the
number of times you were always there to teach us. If we manage to animate the
Masses well today and to use balafons, it is thanks to the concern that you had for
us. You liked some of our songs in Lamnso such as: “Taata eemo-o man ajay
 87

ver” (one of our Kyrie), “Taata ver wiy woo sii”, (one of our songs for the
offertory) and “Alleluia ven ku yov suiri sa Nyuy Tar”, (our great lectionary
song). Your calm mood and lifestyle was so appreciated by most of our members
and it won our hearts. It is thanks to your long and pleasant stay with us that the
English-speaking Church of the Mvog-Ada Parish of St. Joseph, where we pray
today, came into being. We never forget your struggle and the follow-up of this
church construction. We will never forget you both in our prayers and in our daily
life. We ardently wish our parish to grow more and more.
Your concern for us was so enormous that on October 19, 2003, during the
launch of the Lamnso Choir Association in Mvog-Ada, you warned us with these
words; “May this association that you start here today not be like the fire that catches
the dry banana leaves that burns for a short time and goes out. It should be the fire
that catches on the trunk of an iroko, burns slowly and surely lasts for years”. We of
the Lamnso choir did not receive your advice with deaf ears and that is why today we
can count more than ten Lamnso Choirs in Yaoundé, under the umbrella of the
Lamnso Choir Associations (LACA), which you had inaugurated 18 years ago in this
parish. Please accept greetings from all members of these associations. This fire on
the iroko tree really burns and lights up everything.
As members of the Lamnso Choir, we again wish to express our gratitude to God
for always being with you. We ask him to continue to give you good health, strength
and wisdom to do his will and remain a good servant in his vineyard. We love
you. May the Good Lord bless you abundantly and give you many more years. Thank
you.

Choir St Paul Lamnso Mvog- Ada

 
* Thank you in Lamnso.
 
«Father Betene gave me my first Holy Communion"
Father Betene gave me my first Holy Communion. At the time, mass was being
held in Elig-Effa, before the Sawa community arrived. We started going to Olezoa
before finishing the construction of St Joseph's Anglophone Parish in Mvog-Ada. A
very charming man. For me he is one of the best Priests that I know, I don't know if it
is because he is the first one that I have known and noticed until today or it is due to
other reasons.
Thérèse Ghedem Towa (Young Parishioner)

IV. Farewell from the staff of NASECAE (National Secretariat for

Catholic Education)
 
Reverend Father,
We, the Staff of NASECAE (National Secretariat for Catholic Education), sincerely
come to present our thanks and our deep gratitude for all that you have done for
Catholic Education in general and for each of us in particular.
It is always with regret that we part with a Father and a boss that we
love. Reverend Father, the men having your human qualities do not run the streets.
 88

We can be accused of being egocentric if we want to keep you to ourselves at all

costs. It will not be wrong, but it is beyond our control. Those who judge us in this
way will do so because they will not have experienced what we have experienced. It
is difficult, if not impossible, to express it. We can only live it.
Reverend Father, you have become a reference for us. We will continue to place
at the service of Catholic Education, educational communities and in our families, the
rich experience that we have acquired under your guidance.
We will try to always keep high the standard of Catholic Teaching that you have
helped to raise for thirteen years. Now that the Church invites you to serve
elsewhere, we remain with you in prayer and urge you to move forward. May
Almighty God keep you and protect you.
NASECAE staff
Yaoundé, June 26, 2000
 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 89

 
 
PHOTO ALBUM
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 90

PHOTO ALBUM

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 91

 
In this year 2021: Jubilee Year
 

Priest song-writers who have contributed to the enculturation of sacred music

in the Archdiocese of Yaoundé and its surroundings

PRIEST COMPOSERS CHOIRS

Ebony Cross of Ndzong Melen & St

Father Pie Claude Ngumu
Luc de Tala

Monatele Parish Choir &

Father Athanase Ateba
Ste Cécile d'Etoudi

Grand Choir of Small Seminarians of

Father François Xavier Amara
Akono

Fathers Wenceslas Mba &

St Kisito de Mvog-mbi
Barthelemy tsila

Father Robert Akamba St John the Apostle “One

 92

Mvoe Dzam” from
Nkolbison

St John the Baptist of Nkol-Nkumu &

Father Pierre Lucien Betene Nkukuma David of the Cathedral N.
Yaoundé DV

Father Jean Marie Bodo Mbankolo

Father Gregory Atangana Ngoya

Source: Mebenga Lucien (Betene, 2013: 35)
 

Father Betene draws up the internal regulations of the IOCE (the International

Office for Catholic Education)
 93

Non-exhaustive publications by Father Pierre Lucien Betene

- Archdiocese of Yaoundé. (2008) Anë mes, anë bia, Programs of liturgical songs in Ewondo for all
masses of the year and others, Yaoundé: Sopecam    
- Archdiocese of Yaoundé., Diocesan Commission of Liturgy and Enculturation. (2019) The
Rite Eva'a Mëtè, Yaoundé: New Ed    
- Betene, PL (1980) Towards a school in the community and for the community,
Yaoundé: Imprimerie St Paul    
- Betene, PL (2013) The Archdiocese of Yaoundé celebrates its choirs, DCD Diocesan Choir
Days, Yaoundé  
- Betene, PL (2016) The Strength of forgiveness, Yaoundé  
- Betene, PL (2018) Funeral uplifting and burial ceremonies in three languages, Yaoundé: 3rd
edition
- Betene, PL (2012) Can a Christian dance the Esani ?, Yaoundé : The Reference    
- Betene, PL (2005) the Esani in the Christian liturgy, Yaoundé: Imprimerie Saint Paul    
- Betene, PL (1972) “The Beti seen through its traditional songs”, Abbia Revue Culturelle
Camerounaise  26, 43-93     
 94

- Archdiocese of Yaoundé., Diocesan Liturgy Commission. (Eds) (2007) Christian

widowhood,  Yaoundé: SOPECAM    
- Betene, PL (1998) Profile of the Secretary of Education, Yaoundé  
- Betene, PL. Messina, JP (1992) Catholic  Education  in Cameroon 1890 - 1990, Bologna: Grafiche
Dehoniane    
- Betene, PL (1987) Shoulder to shoulder: Lay people and  priests auscultate their
Church, Yaoundé: Imprimerie St Paul    
- Betene, PL (February 1983) From conflict to dialogue between cultures. A Reading of the Quest
for Knowledge - Essay for an Anthropology of Cameroonian  Education, Montreal: Les presses de
l'Université de Montréal    
- Betene, PL (1995) “Education, a force of change”, in Proceedings of the seminar organized
by the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation (Ed) Trade unionism in the democratization
process, Yaoundé: Imprimerie Saint John      
- National Secretariat for Catholic Education. (2000) The Catholic school, a tool
for  human promotion and evangelization, Yaoundé  
 

Summarized biography of Father Pierre Lucien Betene

Born: July 16, 1941 in Andog (Bikok)
1951-1957: Primary studies sanctioned by obtaining the FSLC
1957-1964: High school, sanctioned by obtaining the BEPC (GCE) diploma, 1 st and 2nd Parts of the
Baccalaureate (GCE “A” level)
1964-1971: Studies at the Major Seminary of Otele and then at Nkolbison
March 06, 1971: Priestly ordination by Bishop Jean Zoa, becomes Priest of the Archdiocese of Yaoundé
1971-1976: Vicar at Our Lady of Victories Cathedral in Yaoundé                                                
October 1971: Foundation of the Nkukuma David choir
1976: Vicar at the Sacred Heart parish of Mokolo, Yaoundé for two months           
1977-1980: Secretary of Education of the former Archdiocese of Yaoundé including the current Diocese
of Obala.          
- Opening in Mvog-Ada of the first English-speaking Catholic primary school in Yaoundé
1980-1985: University studies in Canada in sciences of education, leading to a master's degree and a
PHD in sociology of education.
1985: Return to the country
1985-1987: Diocesan chaplain for the lay apostolate
 95

- Work with Ekoan Maria on a campaign for the promotion of Christian widowhood rites. Cf. booklet
published on "Christian widowhood" in 2007.
1985-2004: Pastor of the English-speaking parish of Mvog-Ada
- Construction of the parish: Infrastructure and Christian community             
1987-2000: National Secretary for Catholic Education in Cameroon:
- SG for Africa and Madagascar, and Vice-President of the International Office of Catholic Education
(IOCE)         
- SG of ASSCEAM (Association of Catholic Education for Africa and Madagascar)          
Definition of a national Catholic educational project       
Creation of ONAPEC (National Organization for the Associations of Parents of Catholic
Education),       
Creation of the PRG (Pedagogical Reflection Group)       
Publication of “Catholic Education in Cameroon from 1890 to 1990”       
2000-2003: Development of the Higher Teaching Catholic School of Central Africa project for the
Catholic University of Central Africa 
2004-2006: Principal of Stoll College in Akono:
- Reorganization of the Stoll college in Akono into different councils and assemblies; students,
teachers, parents, support staff         
- Rehabilitation of boarding schools         
1995-2010: Secretary General of ACDY (Association of the Diocesan Clergy of Yaoundé)
1995 - 2015: President of the Diocesan Liturgy and Enculturation Commission
- 2013, Under Mgr. Victor Tonye Bakot; Episcopal vicar in charge of liturgical pastoral care and
enculturation         
- Organization and animation of the 600 Choir         
- Publication of "The Esani in the Christian liturgy"         
- Publication of "Anë mes anë bia"         
1995-to date: President of the diocesan commission on enculturation
2008-to date: Chaplain of the Armed Forces and Police with residence at the Cathedral where he
ensures:
- The spiritual direction of the faithful         
- The reception of penitents with reserved sin         

BIBLIOGRAPHY
 

Articles
- (2017-2020), La Voix de Notre Dame 18, 26, 29, 39, 49, 71         
- Eyebe Assiga, G.L. (2014, February) “Le Rossignol de Dieu” (God’s Nightingale), Nyanga 94            
 
Works
 
- Archdiocese of Yaoundé., Diocesan Commission of Liturgy and Enculturation. (2019) The Rite Eva'a
Mëtè, Yaoundé: New Ed           
- Betene, PL (2012) Can a Chrisian dance Esani?, Yaounde: The Reference           
- Betene, PL (2013) The Archdiocese of Yaoundé celebrates its choirs (JDC) Journées Diocésaines des
Chorales), Yaoundé         
- Betene, PL (2018) Mise en bière et Levée de corps en trois langues, Yaoundé : 3  edition           
e 

- Betene, PL (1992) Permanent Secretariat of Catholic Education, Yaoundé         

- Betene, PL (2005) The Esani in the Christian liturgy, Yaoundé: Imprimerie Saint Paul           
 96

- Betene, PL (2016) The Strength of forgiveness, Yaoundé         

- Betene, PL and Messina, J.P. (1992) Catholic Education in Cameroon 1890-1990, Bologna: Grafiche
Dehoniane           
- Beti-French Dictionary (2008) Yaoundé         
- Beti-French Dictionary Lyon: Imprimerie Emmanuel Vitte           
- Essono, J-M. (Eds) (2012) Language and Culture EWONDO, Yaoundé: Belles Lettres Cameroon press
and publishing company           
- Mviena, P. (1970) Cultural and Religious  Universe of the Beti People, Yaoundé: Presses de l'Imprimerie
Saint-Paul           
- Nation al Secretariat of Catholic Education. (2000) The Catholic school, a tool for human promotion and
evangelization, Yaoundé         
- Ngumu, P.C (1971) Mastery of Singers at the Ebony Cross of Yaoundé, Yaoundé: Presbook, Victoria           
- Samekomba, A.Y (2014) Mgr. Jean-Baptiste AMA EVINA, Yaoundé: Ethics Group           

 
175

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE
 
INTRODUCTION
 
CHAPTER I
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
 
CHAPTER II
SACERDOTAL JOURNEY
“God does not call the best but makes those he calls better. "
 
CHAPTER III ………………………… 
THE ARTIST 
 97

"To sing well is to pray twice"

 
CHAPTER IV ……………………….
THE EDUCATION PROFESSIONAL
 
CHAPTER V
THOUGHTS ON ENCULTURATION
 
CONCLUSION
 
POST FACE