Jean-Jérôme Adam (8 June 1904 – 11 July 1981) was the French

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

archbishop In Christian denominations, an archbishop is a bishop of higher rank or office. In most cases, such as the Catholic Church, there are many archbishops who either have jurisdiction over an ecclesiastical province in addition to their own archdi ...

Libreville Libreville (; ) is the capital and largest city of Gabon, located on the Gabon Estuary. Libreville occupies of the northwestern province of Estuaire Province, Estuaire. Libreville is also a port on the Gabon Estuary, near the Gulf of Guinea. A ...

Gabon Gabon ( ; ), officially the Gabonese Republic (), is a country on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, on the equator, bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, the Republic of the Congo to the east and south, and ...

, and an accomplished

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

who studied several of the languages of Gabon. He was born at Wittenheim in

Alsace Alsace (, ; ) is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in the Grand Est administrative region of northeastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine, next to Germany and Switzerland. In January 2021, it had a population of 1,9 ...

and educated in the seminaries of the

Holy Ghost Fathers The Congregation of the Holy Spirit (officially the Congregation of the Holy Spirit under the protection of the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary; ) is a religious congregation for men in the Catholic Church. Members are often known as Holy ...

. He arrived in Gabon on 29 September 1929, and spent the next 18 years as a

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group who is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thoma ...

in the

Haut-Ogooué Province Haut-Ogooué is the southeasternmost of Gabon's nine provinces. It is named after the Ogooué River. It covers an area of . The provincial capital is Franceville. One of its primary industries is mining, with manganese, gold and uranium bein ...

. During that time he prepared

grammar In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...

s for the Mbédé, Ndumu, and

Duma A duma () is a Russian assembly with advisory or legislative functions. The term ''boyar duma'' is used to refer to advisory councils in Russia from the 10th to 17th centuries. Starting in the 18th century, city dumas were formed across Russia ...

languages. In 1947, Adam was appointed

Vicar Apostolic A vicar (; Latin: ''vicarius'') is a representative, deputy or substitute; anyone acting "in the person of" or agent for a superior (compare "vicarious" in the sense of "at second hand"). Linguistically, ''vicar'' is cognate with the English pre ...

of Libreville and

bishop A bishop is an ordained member of the clergy who is entrusted with a position of Episcopal polity, authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance and administration of di ...

of the

titular see A titular see in various churches is an episcopal see of a former diocese that no longer functions, sometimes called a "dead diocese". The ordinary or hierarch of such a see may be styled a "titular metropolitan" (highest rank), "titular archbi ...

Rhinocorura ''Rhinocorura'' (, or , ''Rhinokoúroura'') or ''Rhinocolura'' (, ''Rhinokóloura'') was the name of a region and one or more associated towns and rivers lying between Ancient Egypt and Palestine. The name may refer explicitly to: * As ''Rhinoco ...

; he became bishop of Libreville when it was elevated to a

diocese In Ecclesiastical polity, church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop. History In the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided Roman province, prov ...

in 1955, and he was made archbishop of the see in 1958. He retired in 1969 and moved to

Franceville Franceville is one of the four largest cities in Gabon, with a population of 110,568 at the 2013 census. It lies on the Mpassa River and at the end of the Trans-Gabon Railway and the N3 road. It grew from a village named Masuku. Overview P ...

, where he died in 1981.

References

* David E. Gardinier, ''Historical Dictionary of Gabon'', 2nd ed. (The Scarecrow Press, 1994) p. 31

External links

Catholic-hierarchy.org entry for J.-J. Adam
1904 births 1981 deaths Clergy from Haut-Rhin People from Alsace-Lorraine 20th-century Roman Catholic archbishops in Africa French Roman Catholic missionaries Gabonese Roman Catholic archbishops Participants in the Second Vatican Council French emigrants Immigrants to Gabon Roman Catholic missionaries in Gabon Holy Ghost Fathers French missionary linguists Roman Catholic bishops of Libreville Roman Catholic archbishops of Libreville {{Africa-RC-archbishop-stub