The Benedictine Museum of Mont-Febe (end) 3

Furthermore, for the Benedictine Fathers, this museum should help any visitor to open his mind and his heart to very deep human values diferent from his own. It was essential to help young Camerounese people to find again the balance lost due to occidental civilization harm, and this balance was to be re-created from the past and the present. There was no question for them to be blind in front of cultural alienation and painful changes for growing generation.

The colonial system is not only responsible for this alienation, the first missionaries also have been blind to the cultural values of their auditory. People were forced into the conviction that Christian life and thought could only be expressed in western idioms. Very few people were prepared to have African trarlitions integrated into evangelisation

According to the Fathers of Mont-Febe and to Futher Omer BAUER, the museum has has a real function of justification and rehabilitation of African art. ''With this museum and the setting of our chapel we wish to prove that the church is not found for occidental civilization on1y but that it can also welcome cultural and spiritual values of people of other traditions. Mont-Febe Monastary wishes to continue the Benedictine's tradition more than a one thousand years old and which is to be a school and a center of universal humanism.'' (Father Omer BAUER)

Just like we did in the case of the National Museums we only wanl to talk about the statues and the masks of this small museum in this leaflet.