Footballer, teacher, father, martyr: The story of Blessed Benedict Daswa

'He was a man on fire.'

Many saints have been sports fans.

Saint John Paul II loved mountaineering, as did Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, Blessed Michael McGivney was a baseball left fielder, Venerable Montserrat Grases loved playing basketball, Blessed Chiara Badano was a gifted tennis player, and Saint Sebastian is the patron saint of athletes.

Bl. Benedict Daswa. Courtesy photo.

But there is another “blessed,” closely connected to sports, who is not a household name in the U.S.

Blessed Benedict Daswa was a South African school principal, and the father of eight children.He was martyred in 1990, after opposing the use of witchcraft in his village.

Bl. Benedict, beatified in 2015, was a big soccer fan, founding and coaching two teams for local young men who played against other villages.

The Pillar spoke with Fr. John Kennedy, SVD, vice-postulator of the canonization cause for Bl. Benedict Daswa about Daswa’s life, his love for soccer, and his example as a model of lay holiness.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Who was Blessed Benedict Daswa?

Benedict Daswa was born here in the diocese of Tazneen in South Africa in a town called Mbahe on June 16, 1946. His family was not Catholic, but animist, and he got to know the Catholic Church while working in Johannesburg when he was a teenager and got baptized in 1963.

After his conversion, he became a devout, unapologetic Catholic. He was very bold in his faith.

He then became a teacher and married his wife Shadi in 1974. They would go on to have eight children, the last one born after his death. Some of his children now live abroad and some work in Johannesburg. He was a regular churchgoer and educated his family in the faith.

When he went to church, he was the first one to arrive and the last to leave the building. He was a prayerful man, and very passionate about the Gospel and the Church’s tradition. He really embraced the Catholic faith.

He was also a catechist at the church of Our Lady of the Assumption, which he built with his own hands in the town of Nweli, which was in front of the school where he served as a principal.

He also was one of the few persons with a car in the town, and he used it to transport the materials to build the church himself, and to build his own house, because he also did that with his own hands.

He belonged to the Lemba tribe and served as the secretary of the local chief, because he was a well-learned man, known for his good character, generosity and integrity, so he was made part of the chief’s council.

Blessed Benedict was a soccer fan, but it seems that his first issues in the village came after he founded a soccer team. What happened?

Blessed Benedict also used to help young people a lot.

He was the principal of the local school and took care of the children, who were very poor. He had a small garden in his house, and used the food he grew there to help the schoolchildren or employed them in the garden so they were able to make some money for their family.

He also saw there were a lot of young people in the town who were roaming around in the streets without work or study, without aim or purpose. So he collected them and formed a soccer team, and he was the coach. He taught the kids how to play, got them to a tournament in which they played against other villages on the weekends, and he coached them.

And the team was doing quite well. But it happened that after some time, the players in his own team told him that they must use muti, which is a kind of traditional performance enhancing drug that it’s believed to have magical properties and people drink because they think that would make them successful.

This was forbidden in the tournament and was also against the Catholic faith — and that’s what Blessed Benedict told them, so he refused to allow them to drink the muti.

But that led to his departure from the team, and he started a new one.

This was the first time he had a big issue because of his opposition to witchcraft, so some people started resenting him and becoming jealous, because he owned a car, he was the principal of the school, and he was well-respected.

This was the first incident, but the big one came in early 1990, when there was a storm and two houses got burned down after they were struck by lightning. The community took the matter to the chief, and they reached the conclusion that it was the work of a witch, so they needed to find out who did it.

And to do so, they needed to hire a sangoma, namely, a traditional healer, so they could burn the alleged witch. They were collecting five rand per person, which today would be something like $2, to be able to pay the sangoma.

Blessed Benedict wasn’t there when this discussion happened, but when he found out about this, he refused — because it went against his Catholic faith. He tried to explain to them that natural calamities happen sometimes and that they shouldn’t waste money in a sangoma nor trust what he said.

But this got a lot of people in the village angry. A few days later, on Feb. 2, he drove his sister-in-law with his sick nephew to the doctor, and on the way back stopped by the parish to chat with the priest.

Then, on the way back home he found a man with a large bag of mielie meal, a type of maize flour, who needed help getting to town, so Benedict drove him to his house with the groceries, even though it was already getting dark.

When he was coming back, he noticed the road had been blocked with tree branches, so he got off to remove them, and a group of men appeared and started throwing rocks at him, hitting the windshield of the car and his head in the process.

So, he ran to a nearby village and hid in a relative’s house. But the angry mob followed him and threatened to kill his relative if he didn’t come out.

So he came out, and they killed him by stabbing him and hitting him all over his body. They poured hot water over him to make sure he was dead.

According to witnesses, he died saying “Lord, into your hands, receive my spirit.”

So, in short, he was a great, holy man. A faithful, courageous man.

Bl. Benedict Daswa. Courtesy photo.

What were the marks of his spiritual life?

He was a holy man, and holiness can be seen in his character, words, and deeds.

I’ve always found it beautiful that wherever he went, he carried his Bible with him. Even when he went to school district meetings, his Bible was there with him, and even in the meetings with the chief’s council.

He also used to pray the rosary daily and read Scripture at home with his family. He read and meditated Scripture with passion every single day. I’ve found it fascinating how consistent he was in his prayer life, he was really committed to it.

As he lived in a rural area, the parish didn’t have Mass every Sunday, so he usually led prayer and communion services in the communities, and he celebrated funerals when the priest couldn’t make it. He also gave catechesis every weekend in the parish. He really took care of the spiritual needs of the people in the absence of the priest, because many times they only had one priest for a large area, so it was impossible to have Mass every week.

He also transmitted the faith to his children. Most of them remember how he taught them to pray the rosary, and the basic tenets of the faith, and how to follow the Mass.

He was a man on fire, thanks to his faith. He took the Bible whenever he went. These days, people buy a Bible to keep it in their cupboards, they never read it, but Blessed Benedict felt Scripture was his companion in life, and a source of strength and inspiration. He carried his Bible everywhere, but above all, he carried it in his heart.

How did he incorporate his Catholic faith into his work as a schoolteacher and family man? How do you see him as a model of holiness for laypeople?

He was a man of integrity who strived for holiness every day, in every circumstance, whether he was at church, at school, or with his family, he behaved as a Catholic should. He took Scripture to heart and had an intense prayer life.

He really took his conversion to heart because he became a very devout Catholic right away. His holiness was seen through his way of life, the way he walked, the way he talked, the way he behaved, the way he related with people.

We have many Catholics who behave differently at Church, with their families and in their work. They have no coherence. But he was not like that. He was a holy man all the way, he remained the same wherever he went. He was a pious, kind man wherever he went. He was a prayerful, merciful, and generous man. And you see this in the fact he was able to utter words of forgiveness when he was about to be killed.

Only a person who is convinced of his faith and receives a supernatural grace can utter such words. And only such people are able to behave with a Christian sense of coherence in both their private and public life.

But so it happens that no one is a prophet in their own land, so there were many among his own who hated him because he was different, and that he was set apart for a particular mission.

What was his family life like?

His youngest daughter was born three months after his death, and she’s very active in the Church and always gives her testimony in parishes and especially in the shrine dedicated to Blessed Benedict Daswa.

But you see that there is a tension between the anger of losing her father and the pride in having a father who’s holy, and venerated by thousands.

His wife sadly died in 2008, before he was beatified. But his mother, who also converted to Catholicism later in life, died only a few years ago, so she was able to attend the beatification of her own son.

He was a man who understood that marriage was between one man and one woman in a society in which polygamy was not uncommon in some places, so he gave a powerful testimony of Christian marriage.

His wife was also a teacher in the same school, so he used to help at home quite a bit, changing diapers and such, which was contrary to local custom, and it was something that was frowned upon but he saw it as part of his responsibility as a husband.

What is the status of the veneration of Blessed Benedict in South Africa and beyond?

So, at the beginning it was new [in South Africa] for people to have a layman as a saint, but after his beatification on September 13, 2015, devotion grew enormously.

And you see a lot of people who had lapsed, who were not coming to church or practicing the faith, to start coming to church after the beatification and inspired by his example. So, the beatification was really a source of inspiration, evangelization and renewal for us.

You have to consider that the shrine is in a very rural area that’s not that easy to reach, but you still have thousands of people coming to venerate him. And what I’ve seen with the years is that the devotion has grown abroad, we’ve had pilgrims come from Germany, Rome, and other African countries such as Zimbabwe and Botswana, and, of course, from all over South Africa.

Four years ago, we started a walking pilgrimage around Blessed Benedict’s birthday on June 16, in which we walked almost 19 miles to the shrine. When we began, it was maybe 40 of us, a year later 80, and now the goal is to surpass 1000, and now we have people coming from other South African countries such as Botswana, Eswatini and Zimbabwe, and from many parts of South Africa.

The South African bishops’ conference, which includes South Africa, Botswana and Eswatini, organizes yearly pilgrimages to the shrine, and last month there was a youth pilgrimage with over 3,000 young people from these countries, so devotion is really growing.

What do you think is the most important gift Blessed Benedict gives to the Church today?

To always be faithful to your faith and to your family. To always be committed to the mission of Christ and always speak the truth, no matter the costs.

There is no substitute for the Gospel. Don't compromise your faith. Bl. Benedict really shows us how to fully embrace our faith and to put the Gospel into practice in our daily lives by always relying on God.

He spoke the truth, and people do not like the truth, the truth can be bitter. So he died for the truth. Some people hide the truth to get a good name or progress professionally. But Benedict said that wrong was wrong and right was right, and that he’d stand for Christ.

He embraced the Gospel and the mission Christ gave him. He was also very devoted to Mother Mary, he dedicated his life to honoring Mother Mary, praying his Rosary daily.

There are many, many lessons we can take from Blessed Benedict. But I think the biggest one, and the one all of us can take, is not to compromise in matters of faith, to always speak the truth. If something is wrong, we must always have the courage to say it’s wrong and to challenge people when they’re doing wrong.

That will mean that sometimes they may not like it, but as Christians, we must speak the truth. He spoke the truth, and that's why he was killed.