1. Only one priesthood
          When we celebrate the anniversary of the priestly ordinations, it is important to understand fully where we are going. There is only one priesthood – the priesthood of Christ. Every other one is a share in that same priesthood of Christ. And that is the big mystery that goes beyond our understanding. We work with the little we can grasp from this immensity of mystery, the great gift of God to us.

2. No one is ordained for himself
          Another point we have to get clear when we celebrate the priesthood is that no one is ordained for himself. This gift of the priesthood is given not as an exclusive one to the person ordained, but to the community, to the Church. Priests are not ordained so that they may go to heaven. No. they are ordained so that they may lead others to heaven. Did you ever think of it that the priest who has the power to absolve people from grave sins cannot absolve himself from even a venial sin? He has to go to another priest to seek forgiveness! This shows that he was not ordained for himself but for others.
          When the procession is moving into the Church for the Mass, and the Bishop is there as the chief celebrant, the choir normally sings the hymn Nee nnukwu ukochukwu. We would all join in the singing. Sometimes the Bishop will also be singing even as he blesses the congregation. Who is that high priest we are talking about? Jesus Christ is the High Priest we are talking about, not the Bishop. That is why the Bishop too would be singing.

3. We participate in His priesthood
          The highest thing a priest does in the Catholic Church is to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass. But, do we remember what we answer in our catechism: …Jeso Kristi bukodu ka onye na-achu aja, ja ife eji achu aja, ka n’enu obe, ka n’enu olta.
          So when we as priests are standing anywhere as priests, we are there in the person of Jesus Christ, not in our own power. Every baptized person has a share in this priesthood. The ministerial priesthood however stands out on its own, for the service of others.

4. What are we celebrating today?
          Now let us get closer to understanding more concretely why we have come here today. We have come to celebrate the manifestation of the powers of the Priesthood of Christ as we see it in our ancestor Bishop Emmanuel Otteh; a manifestation which took off 60 years ago. We cannot go through all the wonderful experiences we had in connection with Bishop Otteh. We can just select two or three and place them as examples of the life of this indefatigable pastor bonus, a good shepherd.

5. Bishop Emmanuel Otteh was a teacher
          We recall that when Mary Magdalen recognized the Risen Lord at the grave in the garden, she exclaimed: Rabuni, which means Onye Nkuzi (Jn 20:16). Christ is the teacher, and Bishop Otteh was and is a teacher, according to the mind of Christ. I came in contact with Bishop Otteh when he was a seminarian, a prefect in All Hallows Seminary Onitsha. He was the one who welcomed me as a fresh student in the seminary. That was in January 1954. We used to call him Alhaji. We did not know that time what Alhaji meant but we were told that he did Apostolic work in a new seminary in Uguawusa and so they nicknamed him Alhaji. With us, as we came to All Hallows seminary, he was the Senior Prefect, and Msgr. Ferdinand Ugwueze was the Junior Prefect. For all practical purposes that time, this Alhaji was everything for us. He taught us in class; he taught us how to use knife and fork at table; he even taught us how seminarians should take their bath in the bathroom, and in the Nkisi River at Onitsha! He taught us what siesta meant and how to go about it – that time it was unheard of that a young boy should go to bed in the afternoon. I recall what an old man told me when, as a parish priest, I went to settle a quarrel between him and his daughter. He assured me that he loved the daughter and prayed that she marries an industrious man and not somebody who sleeps in the afternoon. You can imagine how queer it was for us that time to be told to go and sleep in the afternoon. As a good teacher, he led us into this practice and up till today, I do not joke with my siesta. He even taught us how to wash our face as soon as we got up from siesta. I still wash my face everyday after siesta. Alhaji taught us how to play, how to study, how to spend the recreation, do manual labour, and above all, how to pray. He was always there for us.
          After my ordination, I came in even closer contact with Bishop Otteh when he was the Vicar General and Administrator of the Holy Trinity Cathedral, now Bailica, with Cardinal Arinze as the then Archbishop of Onitsha , and later Archbishop Stephen Ezeanya. We lived and worked together for 11 good years. Bishop Otteh remained the teacher that he was when I first met him in 1954. He was a living example of a priest who understood the importance of teaching the faith, teaching catechism. He was for all practical purposes the Headmaster of what I termed the academy of catechism education which he was running at the Holy Trinity Cathedral Parish, Onitsha. He engaged lay people, seminarians and postulants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Sisters and the Brothers of St. Stephen for the teaching of catechism. Sometimes you will see about ten different classes properly grouped in manageable sizes and according to their stages of religious formation. He even had special catechism class for servants, housemaids and apprentices late in the evening – 7pm to 8.30pm and 8.30pm to 10pm so that they can finish their house work or close their workshop and be able to come for the classes. He was as detailed as that!​

6. Children’s Apostolate
          As a general description of his character, one might be inclined to say that Bishop Otteh was on the conservative side and one may regard him as old fashioned.  But, he was not the one that closes his eyes to reason and persuasion. As a good listener, you only need to be consistent and marshal your points clearly, and once you have convinced him, you can turn to another assignment and leave him to flourish in the one you have succeeded in introducing him into.
          Jesus did not let his disciple prevent the children from coming to him. He loved the children. He even told us that if we want to get to heaven, we must be like little children. Bishop Otteh did not joke with the apostolate for these young ones. He constantly urged the parents to come to Mass with their children. He did not however buy the idea of children’s Mass. His argument was that the children would usually make a lot of noise and are distracted if they do not have their parents around them to control them at Mass. I pressed for a very long time for the introduction of children’s Mass at the Cathedral parish. During that time the children’s Mass was scarcely known over our area. For months I pressed on with arguments to convince him to give it a trial. At very long last, he agreed, on condition that I would be the one to be celebrating the children’s Mass every Sunday. I agreed. Trust him, at the first outing, he was there with his stick pacing round like an old headmaster and watching how things were going on. His first surprise was that the children, in spite of the noise and apparent inattentiveness, were quick to answer questions I used to ask them during the sermon and to follow the Mass with appropriate responses. After the second Sunday, his remark was: Ive dikwonu na ive nwa Fr. Hypo na ekwu. Mma esoyakwu a ka yabu Mass. Thereafter, he became a champion of children’s Mass and even printed thousands of copies of children’s Mass book for them. It did not take time and the children’s Mass was popularized in the Archdiocese and beyond through his effort.

7. Celibacy
          The life of a priest is a celibate life. That is the way Christ himself lived. Bishop Otteh is an example of a priest who understood how to keep away from intimacy with women whom he called umCnwanya. He appropriately engaged their services for the apostolate but shunned getting close to them. I recall at the celebration of Uka Nne when some women brought gifts to the priests at the cathedral, some women were singing Msgr, Otteh, obu nna muru ya. Without showing any preferential treatment to particular women, he was able to do his apostolate in a noble way among them. Some may describe his method as strict or exaggerated, but one cannot ignore the underlying social circumstances of the time.

8. Obedience and Poverty
          One other thing outstanding in the life of Bishop Otteh is his faithfulness to his vow of obedience. No matter how strongly he holds a point, once the person in authority gives his verdict, he would not only yield, but would pursue the course as if it were his own.
          Bishop Otteh was exceptionally conscious of living a life of poverty. Not only did he not misappropriate church fund, but he was also meticulous in making sure that each available fund was used for the purpose for which the money was meant. He was not the one that would be tempted to use church funds for himself or his family.

9. Two Requests
          In this regard, I wish to make two requests – one specifically for the priests and the other for all our Catholics, especially for the close relatives and friends of priests. I wish to start with the second request.
I am begging you for a favour which I already asked in another occasion. What is that favour? It is as follows: please allow the priests to do their work as priests. These days, things are very difficult for everybody. Many families are suffering. In their desperation, family members turn to their relatives who are priests asking them to help them solve their financial problems. They believe that priests have the money. When they see the priest driving a car, they conclude he must have the money. The priests themselves get worried and the danger looms loud that they can gradually see themselves chasing after money, even in not-so-unquestionable circumstances in order to be able to help the members of their family. Some may be tempted to run after rich people to beg for money. Some may be tempted to become special prophets or healers overnight. Unauthorized ministries can spring up behind the back of the Bishop. The so-called prayer warriors may emerge and red stole worn over the soutane would replace the prescribed liturgical colours. Some may quickly become “powerful” priests who can go into families to cast out non-existent devils with programmed non-existent ancestral curses. A blend of Catholic practices with Old Testament ideas and ATR beliefs will give rise to the syncretistic setting up of a he-goat or ebunu  upon whom the sins of the community is heaped, purportedly to free the family members from whatever sins the now powerful prayer warrior may have prophetically concocted and pronounced. That now becomes more powerful that the Sacrament of Reconciliation popularly called confession. The priest now becomes Fada n-eme ekpele and not Fada n-ekpe ekele. Any priest who falls into this type of temptation may still be going about in priestly garb, but he is far away from the target. I beg you; do not drive your priests into this ugly situation because of your financial needs. Please leave them out of your plans for the solution of your financial need. They will, on their own help whenever they can.
          The pressure on the Rev. Sister in not any different in quality, though it may be less in intensity, but it is equally distressing. This can push the poor Sister into a situation of a misfit in her religious community with a strong burden of trying to reconcile the pressure for solving the family financial problems with her religious vows.
          I therefore earnestly beg you to spare your priests and religious this ugly situation so that they, like Bishop Otteh, can carry out their apostolate smoothly.
          The other favour is to be addressed to my brother priests. Please let us begin to teach our religion to our little ones. Let us get into the primary schools, at least on Thursdays and teach our children. How can we refuse to teach our faith to our children in our schools and still believe that we have accepted the Lord’s mandate to go and teach the whole world?  Who told us that degree holders cannot teach children in primary schools? If Jesus asked his disciples to allow the children come to him, how can we be the ones that will reject the children? We abandon them to the care of little girls who help them recite the catechism verses without understanding their meaning and we confidently admit them to first Holy Communion and Confirmation. Do we really believe that it is proper for us to abandon teaching our children while we flock to funeral Masses of “big men” in hundreds? We are not doing them a favour by teaching them our religion. It is their right! We cannot open the door to the Holy of Holies for them without teaching them how to go about it. My experience when re-examining those who had been approved for First Holy Communion in a parish was a shock to me – to the question: Kedu ife olili di aso nábalu anyi, I received the correct answer ending with o bia nye anyi mbe nke ndu ebeebe. When I further asked the meaning of mbe, I was told it is the animal that is slightly bigger than the squirell – (nwa ntikosiri ihe ka o jiri ka oguno). On creation, I received the correct answer that Adam bu nwoke mbu, Eve bu okporo mbu. When I asked for the meaning of okporo, I was told it is the big frog found in lakes - o na-ano nágbo. And these are children approved for First Holy Communion!
          The life of Bishop Otteh invites to take the responsibility of teaching our children more seriously.

10. Conclusion   
​          As we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Priestly Ordination of Bishop Emmanuel Otteh, let us remember him in our prayers and ask the Lord to receive him in his Kingdom. May the soul of Bishop Emmanuel Otteh and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace, Amen.