“When I was in Benin, I was available to all people, with no distinction. I was open and available to people. It’s what makes me, as a priest, to be joyful,” he says. “I appreciate people.”

Father Tougouma arrived in Maine this summer and serves as a parochial vicar of Notre Dame du Mont Carmel Parish in Madawaska and Our Lady of the Valley Parish in St. Agatha.

He is originally from Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, where he was raised in a Catholic family, the oldest of eight children. He says it was while attending St. Michael Church there that he first became aware of the Society of African Missions because the parish was served by SMA priests from Canada, France, and Italy.

 “One day, I asked myself, ‘What is happening with those people coming from other countries to share with us the word of God? Why cannot I also do that?’ That is where my vocation started,” he says.

He remembers attending Mass and then acting it out with other children when he returned home.

“When we finished Mass, we would go back home and do the same. We wore some albs, doing like the priest,” he says.

In primary school, he became an altar server and eventually became the lead server. He taught the younger altar servers and sometimes traveled to other churches.

“We would leave our parish, go to another city, stay there for one week or two weeks. All that formed me, and today as a priest, I use all those skills to work as a priest: how to work with children, how to work with youth, how to work with elders,” he says.

Ordained in July 2017, his first assignment was in a predominantly Muslim section of Benin.

“It was a remote place, a primary evangelization place. It was not easy, and after two years, I was asked to be a pastor,” he says.

As pastor, he was alone in the parish and had the responsibility for 18 churches spread throughout area villages. He says he made a schedule to ensure that he spent time at each of them over a three-month period.

“During the week, I would try my best to be with all those villages where we have our churches. I would stay with them, celebrate Mass sometimes, and then come back,” he says.

Fluent in four languages, including English and French, he says he also tried to learn the native languages of the villages so that he could better communicate with the people.

“It was not easy, but by the will of God, everything was OK,” he says. “With Jesus Christ, everything is possible. That was my motto.”

Although it was a difficult assignment, he sees it as a good learning experience.

“I’m very happy because, there, I learned many things. I learned how to take care of people and how to listen first to people. It means that those people are living their faith. We are in those places not because of us but because of the people,” he says. “If there is no priest to celebrate Mass and do all the sacraments for them, they will lose faith. They need our presence with them to strengthen them in their faith.”

He says the Christians there faced persecution but persevered. 

“It can be in your family. It can be in your workplaces,” he says. “When you want to live Christian values in this world today, you are not welcome. You are not welcome. But we need to be strong. And we, as priests, need to be with those people to help them to continue to strengthen their faith and to continue to love Jesus.”

He recently spoke in a homily about what a gift it is to be able to attend Mass.

“Here, we have freedom to go to worship God. Let us use it. Let us use it to pray for those who don’t have this freedom to pray,” he says.

Father Tougouma says Christianity should not be taken for granted, sharing the story of a Muslim man in Benin who, every Thursday after going to the marketplace, would stop by the church and ask for a blessing.

“I asked myself, ‘Why is this man coming, as a Muslim, to ask me for a blessing?’ And one day, he came with all his family: his wife and two of his children. One day, I told my fellow Christians during the homily, I said, ‘Sometimes, we do not value the blessing we have as Christians. There is one Muslim man who comes here every Thursday to ask me for a blessing. If something didn’t happen to him [as a result of the blessing], he would never come again. It means that when he comes, he knows what he has gained through the blessing received by the priest.’ It touched me so much.”

Father Tougouma says serving people allows him to live his own faith more fully. He says he keeps his own faith life strong by reading, praying the Rosary, and spending time in quiet meditation. He especially has a devotion to the Precious Blood of Jesus. 

After six years in Benin, Father Tougouma was sent to Tenafly, New Jersey, where the Society of African Missions’ American province is based. From there, he was assigned to the Diocese of Portland.