Dagara Cultural History: Cardinal Peter Poreku Dery

  In 1929, Peter Poreku Dery was about twelve years old when the Catholic Missionary Fathers of Africa first arrived in Jirapa, some twenty-two miles distant from Dery’s village (Zemopare), and began their work of Christian conversion. He was first introduced to the missionaries by his father who had come into contact with them through his work as an itinerant trader. His father was so enthusiastic about the missionary religion to the extent that he was prepared to annul the traditional marriage between him and four of his wives in order to become a Christian. This act provoked a serious religious and cultural conflict between Poreku Dery’s father and his uncle. Ritual sacrifices at the ancestral shrine as well as various acts of divination failed to reconcile the two brothers but led to a scission within the family and the emigration of Dery’s father. Poreku Dery assisted in all these rituals and felt the pain of the conflict and the separation; a feeling that helped to make him a rel