Fr Ralph de Hahn: 95 years old, 65 years a priest

Even in his mid-90s, Fr Ralph de Hahn remains active and makes plans for the future, and on June 4, he celebrated his 95th birthday. He told Günther Simmermacher about his long life and priestly ministry.

His handshake is as firm as ever, the mind remains quick, and the exuberance — that effervescent joy in the Lord — is undiminished. At 95 years of age, Fr Ralph de Hahn radiates a timeless energy.

In December 2022, Fr de Hahn marked 65 years of priesthood, all served in the city of his birth, Cape Town — but his ministry has touched many people outside the Mother City and South Africa.

Before he submitted to his ordination in December 1957, Fr de Hahn said to God: “Lord, if you want me as a priest, I want at least one million souls.” He got his wish many times over, through his ministry in parishes and the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, his work in the media (which included SABC radio and TV from 1968-93), and his 19 missionary travels to the US, during which he raised many millions of rands for his archdiocese.

Born on June 4, 1928, of Dutch and German stock, Ralph de Hahn was the first of six children born to the plumber Henry de Hahn and his wife Freda (née Wassung). “My parents were married in an Anglican church, but as a family we belonged to no particular church. I was ‘christened’ in one or another church,” Fr de Hahn told The Southern Cross.

The family would church-hop until one day, when “curiosity took us into the Catholic church of St Agnes in Woodstock”, Fr de Hahn recalled. “There was a presence there which we had never felt before.” That presence persuaded the family to convert to Catholicism, and parents and five surviving children were baptised together by parish priest Fr McNulty.

The young Ralph received Catholic schooling from the Dominican Sisters and Christian Brothers up to Standard 6 before matriculating from Sea Point High, where he was an all-round athlete. “The principal, Mr Graham, kindly allowed me to come late every morning because he knew I served at morning Mass in St Agnes.” Mass then was in Latin, “a language neither the priest nor I understood”, Fr de Hahn noted.

No thought of priesthood

Ralph was active in his parish, in Catholic Action, the Legion of Mary, and as head youth organiser for the diocese of Cape Town. He also founded a Catholic variety group called Stars of Tomorrow. It staged many shows, including his self-written The Life of Jesus, which was performed at the Three Arts theatre in Plumstead.

Still, God waited before calling Ralph to the priesthood. “I certainly did not want to enter the priesthood,” Fr de Hahn said. Instead he ended up working for seven years as an articled clerk.

Others, however, saw a priest in the young man. “My pastor, parishioners and the Dominican Sisters pressured me to approach Archbishop Owen McCann about exploring the priesthood.” Ralph decided to pursue the path to the priesthood after the celebration of his 21st birthday, held in the parish hall of St Agnes’ parish in June 1949.

The future cardinal also saw a priest in Ralph, and in 1952 he sent him to the new St John Vianney Seminary in Pretoria. Everybody was delighted, except the de Hahn family. “They were not happy about me leaving them — and losing my financial support.”

Once at the seminary, “I knew that this was what God called me to. God did call me, and he would use all my skills and talents in his service,” Fr de Hahn recalled. “I owe my faith and my vocation to the Irish missionaries who came to this country.”

In 1954, Archbishop McCann — himself a product of St Agnes — decided to send Ralph to Rome to study theology at his own alma mater, the Propaganda Fide College. “It was a bitter pill for me, though. I had been so happy at St John Vianney. Now alone to Propaganda Fide! It was a severely testing first year — Italian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and so on. But God’s call saw me through.”

His four years in Rome eventually turned out to be a happy time. “Being with students from all parts of the world, gave me that missionary vision which I treasure to this day.”

Ordination in Rome

Fr de Hahn was ordained at Propaganda Fide on December 21, 1957, by Archbishop Pietro Sigismondi, the secretary of the Congregation for Propagation of the Faith. Upon his return to Cape Town in 1958, his first parish appointment was to Holy Cross church in District Six. “Archbishop McCann said he sent me there, ‘because that’s where I began’.” Nine more parishes would follow, with the final appointment before his (not entirely voluntary) retirement in 2003 being to Observatory.

In 1966, Fr de Hahn began his 20-year stint as the director of the newly-established Archdiocesan Catechetical Centre, with the task of modernising and systemising teaching materials and methods. To that end, he directed courses weekly in three centres for many years. As archdiocesan school inspector he visited every classroom of every Catholic school in the archdiocese. These visits “brought the Church to the Catholic schools. They were my joy and delight.”

Fr de Hahn became the spiritual director of the Charismatic Catholic Renewal in the Cape in 1967 the year the global spiritual renewal began. He retired from that position in 2009. “In the US, they told me in 1966 already that I was charismatic,” Fr de Hahn joked.

On 19 occasions he was sent to tour the United States to raise money for the archdiocese of Cape Town, which he did to great effect. Fr de Hahn was also able to raise funds for his own initiative, Mission Aid, which he used to support various projects. Among other things, Mission Aid funded the construction of Holy Trinity church in Matroosfontein on the Cape Flats — one of the archdiocese’s largest churches — and bought the Holy Spirit Centre in Maitland for the Catholic Charismatic Movement, which was later transferred as a gift to the archdiocese.

The times in the US were important to Fr de Hahn. He was invited to lunch with Bishop Fulton Sheen, a pioneer in the use of electronic media as a tool of evangelisation. From 1968-93, Fr de Hahn himself was a regular fixture on SABC radio with his 15-minute reflections. After TV was introduced in South Africa in 1976, he celebrated televised Masses.

Even today, Fr de Hahn uses modern media to evangelise through recorded reflections circulated daily on WhatsApp. These are received by thousands of people around the world.

A writer for 80 years

Fr de Hahn is perhaps even better known for his writings, many of which have appeared in The Southern Cross over seven decades. The first of these was a Christmas story titled “When Darkness Falls” in the edition of December 10, 1952. His most recent Christmas story ran 70 years later, in our December 2022 issue.

The priest has also published collections of poetry and short stories in books. The revenue from these books was given to the archdiocesan fund for the construction of churches in poorer areas.

One piece of writing was a gift to the pope! In 1999 Fr de Hahn was asked to write a commentary on the daily office for a new French missal. “I have no idea how they found me,” he said.

Eighty years after he first started to put his creative pen to paper, Fr de Hahn still writes prodigiously — his flatlet in the clergy retirement home at Nazareth House resembles a busy study — but he writes “only when I’m inspired to do so”. He is currently working on his memoirs, a task set to him by Archbishop Stephen Brislin.

One thing he doesn’t write is sermons. The priest is known for his inspiring homilies, and he has a talent for speaking off the cuff. “I preach only what I know and live — sin included.”

In his 65 years of priesthood, Fr de Hahn has seen many changes in the Church. The most significant of those, of course, was the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). “I welcomed Vatican II, but it was far too rapidly imposed,” he said.

Fr de Hahn sees a crisis in the diminished “reverence, awe, mystery in the public celebrations of Holy Mass. I fear that desecration, the lack of respect for the Eucharist, is the major cause of all our present national and spiritual Church problems.”

His best piece of counsel for young people considering a vocation? “Take advice from the Masters.” Priests, he said, must beware of being too parochial. And they must be prepared to “die to self” in order to “produce good fruit, with the Holy Spirit alone!”