St. Joseph's Cathedral

Beneath two tall towers visible above the roofs of the Old Town stands the seat of the Bishop of Zanzibar, and an active Catholic parish gathers here. The cathedral grew out of a mission that acquired a hospital, a school, and workshops: priests and nuns treated the sick, helped the poor, and taught trades. It was dedicated to Joseph, whom the members of the mission considered the patron of their African undertaking.

This cathedral was built on the second attempt. In eighteen sixty-seven, French Catholic missionaries began building a church here, but discovered that they had chosen a site on a Muslim cemetery. Work stopped. The church records do not even preserve the exact date when construction resumed.

The reason for such caution had emerged seven years earlier. Armand-Joseph Fava, vicar to the bishop of the French island of Réunion, came to Zanzibar Island to secure the right to a permanent Catholic mission. Two of his Capuchin predecessors had been expelled one after another after conflicts with the sultan. Without the ruler's consent, the missionaries could lose both their premises and the chance to work on the island.

The French colonial administration of Réunion hoped to use the mission to recruit Africans. Fava refused to recruit freed enslaved people for Réunion. He offered Sultan Majid a different program: treating the sick, helping the poor, opening schools, and teaching trades. The sultan allowed three priests and six nuns to settle in the city. A hospital, a school, and workshops soon appeared at the mission.

The mission was then taken over by the Spiritans, members of the French Congregation of the Holy Spirit. They bought enslaved people, freed them, and gave them an education. The sultan visited the mission, and his successor Barghash even visited the Spiritans' main house in Paris. These relations had a practical result: in the eighteen nineties, the missionaries received new permission, returned to the halted construction, and by the end of the decade began holding Masses in the completed cathedral. The two towers above the roofs of the Old Town are precisely the result of that second attempt.

The cathedral was dedicated to Saint Joseph—Mary's husband, a carpenter, and Jesus's earthly guardian. According to the Gospel, Joseph saved the child and his mother by leading them away from the persecution of King Herod into Egypt. Joseph's name entered the history of the mission before the building here appeared. Fava called him the first apostle of Africa specifically because of the flight into Egypt, and placed the first missionary station on the mainland under his protection. The records do not say who exactly chose the dedication of the Zanzibar cathedral, but Joseph was already the patron of these missionaries' African undertaking.

The seat of the Bishop of Zanzibar is now here, and an active Catholic parish gathers here. No markers of the Muslim cemetery that interrupted the first construction remain on the surface. Its former site is occupied by the cathedral, built by people who waited three decades for the chance to return to this plot.