Engelbert Mveng

Mveng was found to have been assassinated at his home in Yaounde on April 23, 1995. The crime was never solved, but occurred near the same time as the murders of several other members of the clergy.

The chapel of Hekima University College is painted with a Eucharistic fresco conceived and designed by Mveng, which was executed by the painter Stephen Lobalu. The Holy Angels Catholic Church of Chicago, now Our Lady of Africa, bears a mural painted by Mveng in 1990. Mveng also painted the Ugandan Martyrs Altar in the chapel of Libermann College in Douala, Cameroon. He was commissioned for a painting of Mary in the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, Israel.

Mveng was implicated in the functioning of several intellectual associations. He opened the festival symposium in the first World Festival of Negro Arts (Festival Mondial des Arts Nègres) in Dakar, Senegal in 1966, and was secretary-general of the second festival, held in 1977 in Lagos, Nigeria.

Mveng then completed a year of study in a major seminary in Yaounde, where he learned Latin and Greek. Wanting to engage in the religious life, Mveng first sought to become a Trappist monk. However, he was dissuaded from this by René Marie Graffin, the Archbishop of Yaounde, who informed him of the presence of Jesuits in the Belgian Congo. Hence, in 1951 he became a Jesuit novice in the Djuma novitiate in the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). He lived there between 1954 and 1958, then started his philosophical studies in Europe. He studied at Université de Namur in Belgium, and earned his licentiate from the University of Louvain and the Catholic University of Lyon. At the end of his philosophy studies, he went to Collège Libermann, a Jesuit college in Douala from 1958 to 1960, eventually returning to Lyon to study theology. There, he focused on the philosophy of Chantilly and the theology of Fourviere. At the end of these studies, he was ordained as a priest on September 7, 1963, becoming the first Cameroonian Jesuit priest.

In 1963, Mveng submitted a thesis entitled Paganisme et christianisme: christianisation de la civilisation paienne de l'Afrique romaine d'apres la correspondance de saint Augustin (Paganism and Christianity: Christianization of the Pagan Civilization of Roman Africa According to the Correspondence of Saint Augustin). Later, in 1972, Mveng submitted a thesis in history, Les sources grecques de l'histoire negro-africaine depuis Homere jusqu'a Strabon (Greek Sources on Black African History from Homer to Strabon). From 1965 to 1971, he was an assistant professor at the University of Yaounde, whereupon he became a full lecturer, and in 1974 became a full professor. Mveng was also Director of Cultural Affairs in the National Ministry of Education and Culture from 1966 to 1974. Following this role, from 1983 to 1987 he chaired the History department of the University of Yaounde.

In 1963, Mveng wrote Histoire du Cameroun, a 533-page overview of the entirety of Cameroonian history with illustrations and maps. This work was the first academic history of Cameroon to be published. Divided into eight sections, the first half of the book focuses on the precolonial period, while the rest of it covers the colonial history of Cameroon until the date of publishing. While most of the history presented is a secondary source, relying on published works, Mveng also includes a section on labor unions in Cameroon based primarily on then-unpublished writings.

Born in a Presbyterian family but baptized in a Catholic church, Mveng received a Christian education from his parents. His intelligence was noticed by a priest, Father Herbard, who sent him to school in Efok, Cameroon from 1943 to 1944. As a teenager, his talent for draftsmanship led him to tutor younger students at a nearby mission school in Minlaba. The next stage of his studies followed in the minor seminary of Akono from 1944 to 1949.

Engelbert Mveng (9 May 1930 – 22 April 1995) was a Cameroonian Jesuit priest, artist, historian, theologian, and anthropologist.