Most trips to Long Island, Maine, begin at the ferry terminal in Portland. For the Rev. Augustine Foka Kifon, a Catholic priest, the journey started more than 5,000 miles away in the highlands of Central Africa.
Kifon has served the Catholic congregations of the Portland peninsula and nearby islands for nearly two years through a partnership between the Diocese of Portland and the Diocese of Kumbo in Cameroon. As part of his role, he celebrates Mass each Saturday evening from June through Labor Day at Our Lady Star of the Sea Church, a small wooden church overlooking the ferry landing on Long Island.
Ordained in 2001, Kifon served in parishes across Cameroon and studied in both Cameroon and Quebec before coming to Maine. Growing up far from the ocean, he had never boarded a boat or learned to swim before stepping aboard his first water taxi to the island.
“The first time I had to go to the islands was very frightful,” Kifon said. “Each time I was supposed to go there, at first, I used to be afraid. But I think I overcame that. I’ve adapted.”
Kifon now frequently sits outside the pilothouse on his boat rides.
“It has been an awesome experience to get to know the people — learn to know their ways and the way they speak,” Kifon said. “It was also a challenging time, because my own accent, too, was difficult for them to understand. They were trying to understand me.” He said they “have met somewhere in the middle.”
Some challenges from the mainland, however, proved less daunting on the island. After his arrival in Portland, Kifon sometimes encountered anti-immigrant sentiment and thought, “Am I in the wrong place?”
“But those complaints, they are not very much from the islands. They were from Portland,” he said. On the islands, “I have felt very welcome. I feel at home. And many of my colleagues, also, where they are working, I think they have a good collaboration with the people.”
Peter LaMontagne said Kifon has been “a wonderful addition to the community.” The longtime resident of Long Island sees the island church as both a social center and a support network for the sick and those in need.
Kifon “really understands the community, in the sense that he understands its small-scale, rural nature,” LaMontagne said. “Father Augustine really appreciates the fact that things are simpler on the island, that we know each other, and that we spend time together.”
In Portland, Kifon works with French-speaking immigrants from West and Central Africa. On Long Island, his presence has brought a greater awareness of their story to the Long Island congregation.
“The church’s teaching of being welcoming is easier to understand when we have priests from abroad ministering to us,” LaMontagne said. “It makes us feel more connected to the new American community and helps us look at immigrants in Maine in a new and positive light. There’s this wonderful tradition of embracing people who have chosen to move to the United States, and I think having priests from abroad adds to that even more.”
Kifon believes immigrants have an important role to play in Casco Bay, even in relatively homogeneous island communities.
“Immigrants come with their baggage,” he said. “They come with their own needs. They come with their own difficulties. But then they also contribute to the growth of the local community.”
In September, Kifon will be reassigned to Our Lady of the Eucharist Parish, about 175 miles northeast of Portland in Lincoln, where he will replace another priest who will be returning home to Cameroon.
As he nears the end of his two-year assignment in the Portland area, he reflected that the Saturday boat trips to and from the island have become a bright point of his month.
“Now I enjoy the ride,” he said. “It’s like everybody in the ferry is a community, going to visit another community.”
