While Bishop Emeritus Richard Pates was a seminarian for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in Rome in 1968, he visited the African country of Malawi, located in the southern half of the continent and bordered to the north by Tanzania. He and two other seminarians were invited to Malawi by a priest from that country they met in Rome. Bishop Pates and his companions served for an entire summer at a parish in Malawi while they were transitional deacons.
Bishop Pates never forgot the trip. He now says the experience “developed a place in my heart for Malawi.”
That sentiment has fueled action in recent years. In 2018, he connected with another priest from that country and the two discussed the need for a school in the Archdiocese of Blantyre in Malawi. They worked with Archbishop Thomas Msusa, 63, who leads the archdiocese, to build and launch a school. It came to fruition this fall, with Bishop Pates attending the dedication of Our Lady of Namulenga High School on Oct. 25, 2025. On Sept. 22 that year, the school opened with 127 ninth graders and will add the next three grades over the next three years. Bishop Pates said the goal is 800 students in ninth through 12th grade. The rural village of Namulenga is located about 40 miles from Blantyre, a city with about 800,000 people.
“The Church has always been missionary in character,” said Bishop Pates, 82. “And wherever the missionaries went, they established education. There’s a terrific need here (for new schools) because this is the third poorest country in the world. So, we can help them. What more (of a) gift can you give than education? It can never be taken away. Once it’s there it’s always there.”
The idea for a high school in Malawi sprouted in 2017 while Bishop Pates was serving as apostolic administrator for the Diocese of Joliet, Illinois. There, he met a priest from the Archdiocese of Blantyre who was studying at a Catholic university in Joliet. The priest, Father Benedict Zele, was a former high school teacher in Malawi and explained how a shortage of high schools in his native country meant that 19,000 youth of high school age could not continue their education past eighth grade at that time.
Bishop Pates and Father Zele teamed up to add another school. They formed a nonprofit called Transformation Through Education (TTE) and went to Archbishop Msusa with their idea of building a Catholic high school in his archdiocese. Archbishop Msusa enthusiastically endorsed it. He himself was a product of Catholic education. Not only that, attending a Catholic elementary school led to his conversion from Islam to Catholicism. Eventually his parents and siblings also became Catholic.
“I’m so happy, extremely happy, because such a dream has come true in the Archdiocese of Blantyre,” Archbishop Msusa said of the new school. “That means that we are able, as a Catholic Church, working together with the government, to answer the needs of our young people. Especially, the young people from the rural areas, the remote areas, will be able to come to learn, to study, in such a beautiful school.”
Along with having a school to attend, students at Our Lady of Namulenga will get financial assistance, thanks to the fundraising efforts of Bishop Pates and his partners in the project. To date, a fundraising campaign has raised $5.5 million. Bishop Pates said that, because of the poverty in Malawi, including the Blantyre archdiocese, families are only able to cover about 37 percent of the cost to operate the school. Continued fundraising is needed to finance tuition for future students and additional buildings to accommodate the full capacity of 800 students.
Bishop Pates, who is no stranger to fundraising campaigns, so far has tapped into donor sources in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, where he served for decades as a priest and auxiliary bishop before being called elsewhere. He also served as bishop of the Diocese of Des Moines, Iowa, from 2008 to his retirement in 2019. After his official retirement, he served as apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Crookston and the Diocese of Joliet.
Peter Mark, a 2014 graduate of St. Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights, joined the project in 2021 and now serves on the TTE board of directors. He has been to Malawi twice, most recently for the October school dedication. Mark is hoping to establish a relationship between St. Thomas Academy and Our Lady of Namulenga. He has spoken with leaders of both schools about a possible partnership. The idea is in the “exploratory phase,” he said, and he plans to continue talking with leaders of both schools.
Mark said his passion for helping to build Our Lady of Namulenga was fueled by visiting Malawi for the school groundbreaking in August 2022. It is a trip he will not forget.
“It was eye-opening, to say the least,” he said. “The thing that struck me the most, I think, was the happiness and gratitude of the people. They were so happy that we were there. … They didn’t expect anything. They were just so happy to see that people cared enough about them to help.”
Mark’s entire family, including his parents, have financially supported the project and solicited donations from others. Because of the support, the school is on its way to providing high school education that could one day lead to religious vocations in a country that already has a flourishing seminary. Bishop Pates noted that two priests from Malawi are serving in the Diocese of Crookston, which is led by Bishop Andrew Cozzens, and there are plans for a third priest to arrive in Crookston in the coming months.
What’s more, giving more young people a high school education can provide the country with future engineers, lawyers and other professionals who can help boost the infrastructure and economy of Malawi, Bishop Pates said.
“The dream is really to equip the people themselves, develop their own natural gifts so they can exercise the leadership for the country and for the people and for communities,” Bishop Pates said. “You’re talking about building a country of people, an organization.”
His own Catholic education experience, beginning with Nativity of Our Lord School in St. Paul, plus his experience as a bishop both in the United States and abroad motivate him to “pay it forward” by helping others have that same opportunity, Bishop Pates said.
“America has been blessed with so much,” he said. “We have an obligation to share that. We’re all one family. It’s not just my own personal family. It’s everybody.”
Though many people have contributed to the building of Our Lady of Namulenga High School, Mark said the leadership of Bishop Pates has been instrumental.
“This project truly is the legacy of Bishop Pates,” Mark said. “It’s astounding how he made this project come together. … This project goes absolutely nowhere without his efforts.”
The inspiration provided by Bishop Pates continues to fuel the passion Mark has for being involved. When he went to Malawi for the dedication in October, Mark brought his wife, Britany, and their infant daughter, Sophia. He said it was important for his whole family to go on this trip.
“The primary motivation was to get my wife there because what I learned on my previous trip there is that it’s a life-changing and soul-changing experience,” said Mark, who noted that Bishop Pates baptized him at Our Lady of Peace in Minneapolis and also celebrated his wedding Mass in 2024. “You just have to go there (to Malawi) and meet the people. The stories that you hear completely change your outlook on things.”
Mark said the ultimate goal for Our Lady of Namulenga High School is to “empower (students) to make Malawi better.”
To learn more about the high school and to donate, visit ttemalawi.org.
Malawi archbishop reflects on conversion to Catholicism in his youth
When Archbishop Thomas Msusa was 7 years old, he came to an important realization that would shape the rest of his life: He wanted to go to school.
Growing up in a small rural village in the African country of Malawi, access to education was far from guaranteed. Even less accessible was the Catholic faith he now practices. He grew up as a Muslim and seemed destined to practice the religion of Islam for his entire life.
Everything changed when he learned about a school — a Catholic school run by missionaries — in a village about 20 miles away. An uncle had told Archbishop Msusa’s father, an imam, about the school and suggested sending his young son there. But, after an adamant refusal, Archbishop Msusa fled his village, went to the village where the school was located and sought help from his uncle to enroll.
Archbishop Msusa shared this story online in an interview posted by a nonprofit organization he now serves: Transformation Through Education. He also spoke with The Catholic Spirit about his Catholic education and his journey to the Church.
While at the school, Archbishop Msusa learned more about the Catholic faith and encountered the religious sisters who taught there. He also met the priest who was ministering at the parish. Over time, he felt a desire to become Catholic. At age 12, he asked to be baptized. He knew it likely would mean being disowned by his parents and siblings.
That’s what happened, and he not only continued his journey as a Catholic, but also started exploring a vocation to the priesthood. After attending a seminary in Malawi, he was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Blantyre, also in Malawi, in 1996.
Back home, family members and others in the village were angry about his conversion. “For them, it was an abomination for me to become a priest,” he said.
Eventually, people softened and some even attended a Mass he celebrated in his native village — Iba. In December 2003, he was appointed the bishop of the Diocese of Zomba in Malawi. On the day of his consecration, April 17, 2004, family members, including his father, and some villagers came to witness the event.
“After the consecration Mass, my father knelt in front of me and asked for baptism,” Archbishop Msusa recalled. In 2006, the baptism took place. Eventually, his entire immediate family became Catholic. Then, the Catholics of Iba formed a parish in a nearby village. People in the village later wanted to make him chief, but he told them he must work for the Church. His sister became chief of the village, and now the Catholics of that village “work together with Muslims,” Archbishop Msusa said. He called this peaceful coexistence between the two faith communities “a miracle.”
Archbishop Msusa’s conversion from Islam to Catholicism paved the way for him to eagerly receive the proposal by Bishop Richard Pates — a retired bishop of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and Diocese of Des Moines, Iowa — to build and open a Catholic high school in the Archdiocese of Blantyre, where Archbishop Msusa was assigned in 2013. Not only did Archbishop Msusa embrace the idea, but he also donated land on which to build a school. He was involved in the project all the way through, from groundbreaking in 2022 to dedication of the new school in October. He also suggested a name for the school, after the village where it would be built — Our Lady of Namulenga High School. It opened in September 2025 with 127 students in ninth grade; Archbishop Msusa, Bishop Pates and school leaders and supporters hope to reach 800 students after the next three grades are added, one each year for the next three years.
“We think God is so merciful,” Archbishop Msusa said, “that we were able to construct such a big and unique school in our archdiocese.”
