Joseph Dupont (bishop)

Joseph-Marie-Stanislas Dupont (23 July 1850 – 19 March 1930), nicknamed Moto Moto ('fire fire') by the Bemba people was a French Catholic missionary bishop, who was a pioneer in Zambia's Northern Province (then part of North-Eastern Rhodesia) from 1885 to 1911. He persuaded the Bemba, feared by the Europeans colonizers and by neighbouring tribes, to allow him to become the first missionary into their territory around Kasama. At the time the British South Africa Company (BSAC) chartered by Britain to administer North-Eastern Rhodesia was not in control of all the territory.

Origins

Dupont was born in Gesté, Maine et Loire, on 23 July 1850 to a peasant family. After a short and quite successful military service, he studied to become a member of the White Fathers missionary society, now called the Society of the Missionaries of Africa. He was ordained a priest on 21 December 1878, and took his oath as a member of the White Fathers the following year. He was then sent to teach at the College of Saint-Louis of Carthage at Thibar in the French protectorate of Tunisia, now in the Béja Governorate. He was later sent to the Karema Mission on Lake Tanganyika in 1892.