RIP: 07/04/2020 - Hamont
Fr. Jos Stevens was born in Hamont on 1 October 1933 as the eldest child of a family of 12. After having finished his secondary studies at our Salvatorian College in the before mentioned city, he did his novitiate in Passau in Germany where he professed his first vows on the Feast of Saint Michael, 29 September 1954. He studied in Passau and Louvain and was ordained a priest at Hamont on 27 September 1959. After a year of preparation for mission work in Paris, he left Belgium for the young mission in the Congo where he would work for 37 years, till he was forced by health problems to return to Belgium in 1998. He was active in different fields in the mission: school, parish and outstations. Fr. Jos initiated the cow-farm at Randu as a self-supporting activity for the growing mission. He had a special love for nature and plants: his photographs and descriptions ended up in the specialized virtual botanical encyclopaedia of the Senckenberg Institute. Fr. Jos died in Hamont in the COVID-19 pandemic on 7 April 2020.
