ABOUT THE FOUNDER
REVEREND (PROF.) JOHN OKORO EGBULEFU, CCE
The Story:
Rev. Fr. (Prof.) John Okoro Egbulefu, the Founder of the Emmanuelites, was born on 19th April 1950 in Ohuru, a village at the suburb of Aba, Nigeria, as the second son of the seven children born to his parents Christopher Egbulefu Njoku and Christiana Comfort Enekwogu (alias Alozu Nwogu) Egbulefu. He received his primary school education at the St Anthony’s Catholic School Ohuru in the years from 1955 to 1963 during which he was baptized on 30/7/58 in the Holy Family Parish Church, Amairi village, a few kilometers from Ohuru. The baptism was administered to him by the then new parish priest there, Rev Fr. John Ogbonna who later as Msgr Ogbonna was providentially to be his Rector at the Bigard Memorial Major Seminary, Enugu. One year after the baptism John Okoro Egbulefu received from the hands of the then newly Consecrated Bishop, Most Rev Dr Anthony Gogo Nwedo CSSp, the sacraments of Confirmation and of the Holy Eucharist on the same day 25/10/59 in the Christ the King Parish Church Aba. Then he joined the team of Altar Boys in the Parish.
And after serving as Altar Boy the whole of the year 1964 in the Christ the King Church Aba he, burning ardently with zeal to become a priest, entered the Immaculate Conception Minor Seminary, Umuahia, where he received his secondary school education from 1965 to 1970 and from where, highly recommended by the farsighted Rector of the Minor Seminary, Rt. Rev Msgr. Edward Ahaji, he was sent directly by the Diocese of Umuahia to the Bigard Memorial Major Seminary, Enugu, in January 1971. Furthermore, from the Bigard, after three years of philosophical studies (1970/71 - 1972/73) and one year of theological studies (1973/74), and under the strong recommendation of the Rector of the Major Seminary Rt. Rev. Msgr. John Ogbonna, he, was sent on the 17th of July 1974, by the Bishop, Most Rev Dr. A. G. Nwedo CSSp, to the Jesuit Collegium Canisianum, Innsbruck, to continue there his priestly formation and finish up the philosophical and theological studies at the University of Innsbruck. He carried out the mission rapidly and excellently and was ordained priest under the hands of Most Rev DDr. Paulus Rusch, the Bishop of Innsbruck, on the 1st of May 1976 (Feast of St. Joseph the Worker) in the Holy Cross Parish Church at Zirl, a little town in the suburb of the Innsbruck City, in Austria. After his studies in Austria (with the Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature at the University of Innsbruck in 1979), and in Germany (with the Doctor of Theology in Dogmatics at the University of Münster in 1982), Fr John Okoro Egbulefu returned to Nigeria, served as parochial Vicar at the St. Eugene’s Parish, Aba, from 1982 to 1983, and as Lecturer in Dogmatic Theology at the Catholic Institute of West Africa in Port Harcourt, from 1983 to 1984, and founded the Association of Christ the Emmanuel on the 30th. of December 1983 at Ohuru, did his post-doctoral course (Habilitation) in Dogmatic Theology at the University of Bonn from 1984 to 1987, and taught again Dogmatic Theology at the Catholic Institute of West Africa Port Harcourt, from 1987 to 1988, returned to Germany in October 1988 to finish his Habilitation in Dogmatic Theology at the University of Bonn, from where already in 1989 - and personally recommended by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (the later Pope Benedict XVI) as the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican - he was directly called to Rome to teach Dogmatic Theology at the Vatican-owned missionary University of Pope Urban VIII (Pontificia Universitas Urbaniana), an engaged teaching ministry that he carried out there all the years long from October 1989 till his retirement in July 2020, and during which he also rendered several other services to the Holy See as he was appointed Peritus (theological Expert) both at the General Synod of Bishops in 1990 on the formation of priests and at the Special Synod of Bishops in 1994 on the Evangelizing Church of Christ in Africa, and both as Consultor of the Pontifical Council for dialogue with Non-Believers in 1992 and as Member of the International Historico-Theological Commission (from 1995 to 2000) for the Great Jubilee of the Holy Year 2000, and as Delegate President of the First Synod of the Diocese of Aba in 2001.
In the course of the three decades of his teaching Theology in Rome, he became also the Father of three Innovations to the favour of the Church’s execution of her Christ-given three tasks in the world and society: the task of teaching (munus docendi), the task of sanctifying (munus sanctificandi) and the task of governing (munus gubernandi) the Christ-redeemed humanity on earth.
For, to enhance the Church’s execution of her Christ-given task of teaching and making disciple of all the Nations, the esteemed Teacher, Professor John Okoro Egbulefu, not only produced thirty-one Doctors of Theology and more than thirty-two Masters of Theology out of the numerous students sent from all over the world by their bishops to study in Rome, and not only published numerous Spirit-filled writings of interdisciplinary character, but also called into existence a new Theology adapted to the current technoscientific Age: the Technoscientific Theology as the Theology that uses theological Technoscience (the Technoscience that uses, on the one hand, the formulae - the laws of stability and of perfect movement as of dynamism - derived from the perfect geometrical figures of the trinitarian structure of God the Creator, the theandric structure of the incarnate Word of God, and the trinitarian-theandric structure of God the Saviour, and, on the other hand, the divinely indicated relevant material objects of the Natural Sciences of Biology, Physics and Chemistry) to produce material goods with which to defend and promote, towards perfection, the material well-being of the human individual and the welfare of the human society and to extend to peoples of all the nations the material goods produced by Christ both through His miracles on individuals and through His socio-cultural, socio-political and socio-economic miracles by which He accomplished the material salvation of humans on earth.
To enhance the Church’s execution of her Christ-given task of governing, the versatile Priest and Professor, John Okoro Egbulefu, not only developed a new theology of the Kingdom of God (Regnology), with Christ as the King and Governor who embodies God‘s government of the Universe the trinitarian structure of which consists in the unity resulting from the union of the gubernatorial tripod ‘the Legislative itself in person that the Father as the Legislator par excellence is, the Executive itself in person that the Son as the Executing subject of the Will of the Father par excellence is, and the Judiciary itself in person that the Holy Spirit as the Advocate and Judge par excellence is’ and ‘the one and indivisible but all-embracing power underlying and sustaining the infallible efficacy of the will and words and acts, and hence the infallible efficiency, of the three persons in one God (the power embracing all the three most powerful powers that can exist: the power to do all good things and do each well to the absolutely superlative degree of its being well done; the power to do no evil and to make no mistake; the power to overview and overpower and overthrow and eliminate every evil) that the sovereign power and authority of the governing God is’; but Fr. Prof. John O. Egbulefu has also called into existence the Theodemocratic System of Government as the proper salvific system for governing the nations of the earth, Theodemocracy being that system of government of the nations the theory of which has the trinitarian structure of God the Creator, while the practice of it has the Theandric structure of the incarnate Word, as its source and model and regulating principle, wherefore the system (unity resulting from the union) of the theory and practice of Theodemocracy is the unity resulting from the mediated union of Theocracy and Democracy through what the two own together at the model of that post-incarnational Trinitarian-theandric structure of God the Saviour which is the unity resulting from the mediated union of ‘the pre- incarnational trinitarian structure of God the Creator’ and ‘the incarnational theandric structure of the incarnate Word’ through the eternal Word as a component both of the theandric and of the Trinitarian structure.
To enhance the Church’s execution of her Christ-given task of sanctification, the Priest, Father John O. Egbulefu, not only composed thirty-nine new Latin hymns for the Adoration of God as God wants to be adored, but also called into existence a new chanted Spirituality (Spiritualitas Cantata), a new Choral Model of Solemn Adoration of God in spirit and truth, in the Most Blessed Sacrament, the Most Blessed Sacrament being where the Holy Spirit (as the Spirit of the Father and Son) and Christ (as the Truth, Truth itself in person) are substantially present, in both of whom together God the Father wants to be worshipped in spirit (i.e. loved with the whole of those two spiritual faculties that the mind and the heart, mens et cor, as the two natural spiritual eyes of the human soul are) and in truth (i.e. loved with that wholeness of the mind and of the heart and hence of the soul which characterizes the truth), adored (i.e. admired and praised with devotion), but also he founded the Congregation of Christ the Emmanuel (CCE) the goal of which is the attainment of that Father-willed and Spirit-effected holiness of humans which consists in the conformity of Man with the Godman Christ as the incarnate Son of the living God. Out of the team of fifty-five Mass Servers that he as the Assistant Parish Priest had formed in the St Eugene’s Parish Center in Aba in the year 1982/83 he chose out six young boys some of whom (like Cletus Ugochukwu Chileke !) had received the First Holy Communion under his hands and with the six of whom he began the Association of Christ the Emmanuel at the end of the year, precisely on the 30th of December 1983, at Ohuru, and to whom he addressed the clarion call that day during his first gathering with them: “God is with us (Emmanuel) in His Son Jesus Christ filled with the Holy Spirit ! Now, led by the same Spirit, let us gather around Christ (Congregatio Christi) that we too may be with God”.
