Grenada

Building the Church through education and faith formation

The Dominican Friars of the English Province have a long association with the island of Grenada, and have played a key role in building up the Church and forging a new nation here. Discover this story below, and please support our mission if you are able.

Thirty years as a lone missionary on Grenada

Not long after his ordination in the early 1860s, Fr Thomas Greenough was sent out from England to serve as a lone missionary on the Caribbean Island of Grenada, working under the Archbishop of Trinidad.

Greenough was a member of the Order of Preachers, also known as the Dominican friars, a Catholic religious order founded by St Dominic in 1216 for ‘preaching and the salvation of souls’. Greenough was sent to walk in the footsteps of this great saint, by preaching to a vulnerable and marginalised Catholic community still sweltering under the weight of colonialism and the poisonous legacy of the slave trade.

His thirty-year mission was marked by sickness, stress, fatigue, and poor living conditions. There were times when he pleaded with his superiors back in London for permission to come home. Yet his work was abundantly fruitful. For thirty years, Greenough sowed the Word in Grenadian soil, and these seeds would yield a rich harvest.

Growing in Faith

In 1901, Greenough’s long and lonely labours were rewarded when the Dominican Order accepted responsibility for the Church’s mission in Grenada.

A small team of Dominican friars arrived from England and the brethren immediately set to work, ministering as priests to the Catholic community on the island. The friars built churches and schools. They did their best to alleviate the great poverty of their flock. They tried to support and empower Grenadians to assert and to develop their own unique cultural heritage.

Grenadian Vocations

As the decades passed, the power of Caribbean Catholicism awakened. The Order began to welcome local vocations, beginning with the much-loved Fr Irenaeus Alexander OP (1932-1972) of Sauteurs in 1955. He would be followed by many others from Grenada and elsewhere in the region who wished to join this great work of building-up the Church in the Caribbean. By 1956, in a sign that the local Church had reached maturity, the island of Grenada was established as a diocese in its own right. In 2002, the Dominican brethren had the great joy of seeing one of their own, Fr Vincent Darius OP (1955-2016), consecrated as the first Grenadian bishop of Grenada.

Forging a New Nation

This growing wave of confidence and ambition within the local Church was mirrored in the secular sphere. Men and women who had been educated in Catholic schools, many of which were founded or supported by Dominican friars, were at the forefront of Grenada’s march towards political independence, which was finally attained in 1974. According to the former Prime Minister of Grenada George Brizan, the Dominican Order’s commitment to education was of fundamental importance in this long struggle for freedom.  For Brizan, the Dominican friars were not only building the Church, they were contributing to the building of a nation.

Grenada Today

Today the Dominican friars in Grenada continue the Church-building tradition of the brothers who preceded us. Now, this Church building is less a matter of bricks and mortar, and more about the Church’s spiritual edifice, where God’s children are built together like living stones into a spiritual house (1 Peter 2: 5).

Through our pastoral care for the poor, the sick, the fearful, the lonely; through our preaching, our teaching, and our youth ministry; through our liturgy and prayer we testify to the Good News and the coming of God’s Kingdom. We invest in people, empowering those we serve to be disciples of Christ, salt and light to the whole of society.

Could you support our mission?

The lonely labours of Thomas Greenough have borne fruit in abundance. With your support, the Dominican mission in Grenada can bear fruit still more abundantly especially through our ministry to the young and our commitment to faith formation for people of all ages through our programme of bible studies and biblical lectures.

Current Projects

The following budgets estimate the expected costs of specific projects being undertaken by the friars, as examples of the needs we are trying to meet through fundraising.