FRONTIERS • CAPUCHIN POOR CLARES

CONTEMPLATION AND MYSTICISM IN AN AFRICAN CONTEXT

Contemplation, far from leading or preventing the psychological growth of a person into what is called maturity, actually enhances it

BY Fr Christopher Neville OFM | Melville, KwaZulu Natal

Joyous Spirit

Union with Christ is sought at the Monastery at Melville in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. It is a joyous experience for the nuns and for those who enter the environs of the Monastery as day visitors, approaching their Repository, or coming to pray or stay over in the Guest house for Retreats or holidays.

The Capuchin Poor Clares focus their lives on the Paschal Mystery of the Lord; submerging themselves into the Passion and Death of Jesus, they joyously move to celebrate the lived experience of His glorious Resurrection.

They choose to be immersed in Christ and allow Him to infuse them with Himself. During Days of Recollection or Desert Days they ask themselves, questions along the lines of:

• what belongs to the heart of our charism?
• what depends on the changing conditions of time?

Due to this ‘introspection,’ the community is alive and vibrant and the nuns can proclaim the Gospel through their daily lives to individuals or groups who come seeking advice on how to handle their challenges of daily living and to find Christ within themselves and others as well as the situation itself.

Due to South Africa being fairly young in Christian lived experience—the Monastery is only 91 years old—the Nuns don’t carry the baggage of a long history as in a European context. Here, they are full of life and joy as they live their daily lives of prayer and work within the Monastery in a simple, child-like and trusting way.

Ubuntu and a Franciscan blend

I am not a person unless I am connected to other people, says the African Proverb. In Zulu: “umuntu, Umuntu ngabantu.” This coupled with the Franciscan spirituality coming through Saint Clare as these nuns bask in the Presence of the Lord, enables them to be the real people they are.

What stands out, and everybody who visits the Monastery mentions it, is the experience of pulsating peace already at the grounds. The charism of the Poor Clares is clearly alive and well experienced here. The joy of the Gospel truly fills the hearts and minds of all who find Jesus and this is evidenced here.

As Mandy, one of the friends of the Monastery put it, having brought a beautiful pottery item placed in front of St John’s Hall: “The nuns have found their pot of gold, it is up to us to find ours”.

“The nuns have joy which flows out of their selflessness”, as one of the men from the group of Christ the King Parish, Wentworth, Durban who came for a weekend Retreat about a month ago mentioned.

Eucharistic life and devotion

The nuns’ lives are rooted in the Eucharist, the celebration of the Holy Mass and the Adoration of our Lord in the Sacred Host. What do they do during their hours spent before the Blessed Sacrament? Basically, nothing!

They begin by lifting to our Lord a ‘prayer note’ from the pile in the ‘prayer basket’ left by visitors to the Monastery or requested via WhatsApp or email.

“The nuns have found their pot of gold, it is
up to us to find ours”

Then they use a word from the Sacred Scripture or from the writings of Clare, Francis or some other spiritual or Theological work which feeds their minds and souls and enables them to ‘rest’ in the Lord.

The experience can be dry or fertile. It doesn’t matter. They pitch up for their meeting with their Beloved Spouse. This takes place night and day. It is not seen by them as a duty or obligation, but an act of pure love. It is no wonder that people who come here as guests or retreatants comment on the selflessness of the nuns.

Daily Rhythm

The day is punctuated by common prayer; from Lauds and Office of Readings at 06h00, after praying the Angelus, to Hora Tercia after Eucharist which is celebrated at 07h30 during the week and at 08h00 on Sundays. Hora Sexta is prayed at midday after the Angelus and followed by the Rosary.

Hora Nona is prayed at 15h00 followed by Divine Mercy Chaplet which is sometimes sung. Benediction is at 17h00 followed by Angelus and Vespers which, as Lauds, is usually sung. Then, the proclamation of the following day’s Gospel, reflected upon using Lectio Divina, can lead into Centring Prayer.

A light supper is enjoyed around 19h00 and if it is a Thursday, feast day or Sunday, recreation follows supper; the community gathers for Compline at 20h00 which is followed by the Mother Abbess giving the blessing of St Clare.

Reverence for the Eucharistic Presence: The world at their heart

After the final blessing of St Clare there is a grand silence during which the Nuns take turns to be with the Blessed Sacrament; continuing to bring the needs and gratitude of the world to the Lord.

It is no wonder that they are filled with respect for one another and the world in which they live. All who come to the Monastery are amazed at their great joy.

They have left the world but not fled from it but have a great love for it and its people.

They sacrifice an active life of ministry for something deeper and better, not for themselves to gain benefit, but for others.

As one of the members of the Catholic Men’s Movement from Durban said:” The world is in bad shape, but if it was not for people like these Nuns, it would be much worse shape than it is.” The rest of the group agreed saying that he had expressed their own sentiment too.

Simplicity

When there is load-shedding during recreation time, it is a source of delight to hear the Nuns groan and their joyous laughter when power is restored.

They are truly childlike so this is a further reason for them being so full of our Lord.

As Jesus said, ‘Unless you become like a little child, you cannot enter the Kingdom of God’ (Mt 18:3).

Sweet fragrance of their holiness

What struck me deeply during the Easter Triduum as the people staying here from Chatsworth commented also, is that the Nuns pray deeply with no rush, really talking to and listening to God. 

They are people of prayer. Beautiful liturgies e.g., Eucharist, Divine Office, Benediction, Rosary, Divine Mercy.  The hymns are spot-on regarding the different themes of the word of God in the Eucharist. 

They have left the world but not fled from it but have a great love for
it and its people

They sing like angels. I am not the only one noticing this and commenting on it. Sometimes they thrum, i.e., cause the very air to vibrate as the Celestial Host does in Heaven. Their praying with singing goes out to the broken world. 

I remain and grow in awareness that this is holy ground.

Grounded in the Lord

Like anyone, they are probably sinners, but certainly repentant sinners, so they don’t stay down but get up again and try again.

They listen to one another. Every time I have needed to be in conversation with any of them, I have noticed it. This comes from listening to God in prayer in daily life.

This has challenged me and others too as it is so easy to hear somebody, using physical ears and the brain, but genuine listening to another person involves the heart and the spirit. This ability surely flows out of their time spent with our Lord listening to Him, their True Love, their Spouse. They support one another e.g., a faltering in a hymn etc. Others have also commented that they love the way the nuns walk; gently and recollected, except when there is great need.

Care and compassion for any weakness of another

I have been asking myself since I got here: Where does this care come from?

Their time spent alone before the Blessed Sacrament certainly, is fed by their celebrating the Eucharist, Divine Office and community life. I take delight in hearing their chattering and laughter when they recreate together and I am walking past. This too goes out into the world. A bigger privilege is joining them for recreation and having meals together. Vibrantly but gently chattering and conversing.

Holy Ground

I know that I am living with genuine, real human beings. This all takes me back to their time spent personally in the Presence of our Lord in His Eucharistic Presence.

What happens there? What do they do? It is very personal and deep for certain.

Does their mind wander as mine does? Perhaps. Do they doze a little sometimes, as I do? Perhaps. Do they enter into moments of darkness as they allow our Lord’s Light to shine into them? Perhaps. Or even entering into darkness through the awareness that Love is not being loved. The important thing is that they are faithful.

Women-religious can teach us male-religious a lot; they are impacting the world.

They are making a difference. They are bringing God to the world and the world to God. St Therese of Lisieux never left her convent but she is the Patroness of Missionary work.

Personal bliss in their midst

Here I am well. I have never felt so well in my adult life for such a prolonged period. I came to them pretty washed out and look what they have done for me already. My wish to our Lord is that I end my days here as long as I do not become a burden to them. I would not wish to be the reason for an interruption to their beautiful rhythm of daily life. 

Everybody who has come to see me has told me how well I look and that I am glowing. Some pains I have but it doesn’t matter. We are deeply linked in praying for one another’s intentions and therefore for the people we have promised to pray for. Their rhythm of daily life is affecting me very positively and I pray that I remain open to it.

Liturgy which uplifts souls

Drumming for Consecration in the Eucharistic prayer is acceptable in the Church and is beautifully carried out here. Also, during the fourfold blessing at Benediction which is a Poor Clare tradition here in Africa, it is acceptable and beautifully done.

They are bringing God to the world and the world to God

Flower arrangements during a week of Anglican Retreat in the Monastery part of the Church were beautifully done in the shape of stars; with flowers brightly nestling in the middle of them. Lifting minds and hearts to celestial heights. The way they are all so calm and peaceful. Radiating our Lord. The Anglican clergy commented on this too. Purity and joy shine out of them all. They have no idea how they radiate our Lord with their humility too. I grow more and more in the awareness that this is holy ground for sure.

FRONTIERS • AFRO YOUTH PASTORAL MINISTRY

A LIBERATION JOURNEY

Mexican Comboni Brother Joel Cruz shares his experience of pastoral accompaniment of the Afro-Ecuadorian (Afro) people, particularly the youth, as they journey towards their integral liberation and the recovery of their identity

BY BRO. JOEL CRUZ MCCJ | GUAYAQUIL, ECUADOR

WHEN I arrived as a missionary in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in 1997, many young Afro were grouping together on street corners, in vacant lots or abandoned buildings in our area. They seemed to be aimless groups, without purpose or raison d’être (reason for being). They were seen as a social problem, like criminals, that instilled fear in those who passed by them. They were labelled as evildoers because of the colour of their skin. When they were seen together on public transport, in the streets, in parks or shopping malls, the police would immediately come to watch over them and people would move away from them.

The path of imitation

Society was unaware of the harm it was inflicting with those attitudes and the effect on these young people who, in various ways, felt that they were not considered human beings or equal to those who did not wear the colour of Africa on their skin. They suffered urban pressure to abandon their human, spiritual and cultural roots and to root themselves in a history, religiosity, spirituality and culture which was not their own. This feeling of being foreigners, even though they were Ecuadorians, forced them to follow the path of imitation to be accepted as ‘normal’ citizens and to have access to the opportunities of citizens who were not of African descent.

Imitation is the way of not being oneself, but being the ‘other’, whether freely or obligatorily. This reality of the youth made me think of a pastoral approach which could add support to being oneself, to authenticity, in the originality planned by God Himself. The Afro Youth Pastoral Ministry was then born.

The key that opened the door to the process of liberation of the young Afro was street conversations, where they gathered

Its starting point was the realization of not being oneself, just as the slaves in Egypt (book of Exodus) were deemed to be not people, not human, not worthy, not citizens, but what the emperor and the imperial society dictated for them. The key that opened the door to the process of liberation of the young Afro was street conversations, where they gathered. Starting from the book of Exodus, I began to insert the history of their ancestors, testimonies whose lights and shadows led to their present situation.

History as Gospel

The young Afro-Ecuadorians I met did not want to look at themselves because they were told, and learned by experience in society and the Church, that being black was not good, but a personal and social problem, which did not give one the dignity which a non-black person had. They were convinced that everything which portrayed African roots had to be abandoned; they despised themselves, as is reflected in this phrase: ‘I’m bad, you’re good. I want to be the ‘other’, to look like those who are more valued in the Church and in society’.

As missionaries, we believe that the Word of God has the power to transform a tragic story into a sacred one before which ‘one must take off one’s shoes’, like Moses, so as not to trample on it and damage it. God was there, is there and will continue to be there, walking in that history which is not ours. Our mission is to help the Afro-descendants to dust off their tragedy so that they can see the Gospel and become aware of their divine originality and of that first dignity which comes from the very being of God. This is a long process because it is difficult to expel the demons (evil counsellors) which sowed negative convictions in them.

Minds chained to lies

It is not true that an Afro-descendant does not have the same human dignity as those who do not have African roots. This is a religious, social, cultural, and spiritual lie but the historical and socio-cultural demons with which they lived convinced them that this was true. History convinced them that their roots were entrenched by the slavery of their ancestors and that, therefore, they had the last place in society and in the Church. That is why their minds were chained to ‘I can’t, I don’t know, I don’t have and I am not taken into account’.

This mental chain was imposed on the experience of the slaves who had no power, who were denied knowledge, who could not own anything, not even their own body, let alone have a say in their decisions, even about their own life. Dependence became the face of their existence.

I began to understand my role as a missionary among them, following the pattern of Moses: to leave the fortresses of the empire and the Pharaonic religion, to convince the ‘slaves’ that their condition is neither worthy nor pleasing to God, to teach them to dream of a different reality (Promised Land), to encourage them to set out on the road following a new horizon: more dignified, fraternal, just, more human and more divine.

Feeling sent

The time I spent walking with the Afro-Ecuadorians made me understand that their pastoral journey does not end when they recover their dignity and have better opportunities in the Church and in society. The final aim is to make them feel sent to share their being, their spirit and their experience of God, namely, to be missionaries in a world marked by negativity, discrimination, exclusion and diminished dignity. Someone who experiences all this, personally and collectively, and reads this experience, seeking the Gospel in it (the Good News), is better equipped to accompany those who are religiously and socio-culturally marginalized. The process that we call the Afro-Biblical Way aims to rebuild their image and likeness of God, the one that history, theology, philosophy, sociology and pastoral care itself have destroyed in different ways and for different reasons. It is a road that must be travelled from their history, not ours.

The road travelled with the Afro in Ecuador taught me that evangelising means helping people to turn their gaze to their history, a pilgrimage in time and space, in flesh and spirit, with many why’s, what for’s and how’s that the evangeliser must capitalise on to make the Afro-descendants understand that their skin is not a colour, but a history full of lights and shadows, and that in the end, it is the Gospel that God has for them.

This evangelical approach to their history caused pain, anger and rage, opening historical, socio-cultural and religious wounds which had not yet been healed, but a missionary has to help them to see the light that shines in the midst of the shadows of society, of the Church, of their reality and that this history—seen as a tragedy—should be seen and lived as Gospel (Good News).

I witnessed how they rediscovered their history, took up their palenques, their social, religious and political runaways, began to pick up the clothes of slavery of their ancestors and understand their deep mechanisms of resistance. The spirit of fortitude of their ancestors was lifted and they put it back on, but now with dignity to make their existence and their being visible; what was a source of shame and inferiority, became strength, richness and greatness for a new identity in society, in the Church, dressed with pride and freedom.

Understanding that God is also black

It took me 13 years of journeying with the Afro-Ecuadorians to help them approach their history and experience from the perspective of the Gospel. I witnessed how they discovered and accepted that God was not only close but that He became flesh in them and they were able to say that God is also black. That is how they understood that to be of African descent is to be a human being as worthy as God, and that is why negative complexes had no reason to exist.

Evangelisation among the Afro-Ecuadorian is not complete if we remain only in their experience of slavery as roots and origin. Their roots go beyond the memory of their flesh and spirit which speak of a hidden, unconscious, rejected, unknown source, of a theological, human, spiritual place, a place which does not always want to be reached: Africa; a place—socially shown—as being of human, spiritual, economic and cultural destitution, often rejected, denied and hidden. This is very painful and, even if one knows the Gospel and finds God in one’s history marked by slavery, if one does not rediscover and reconcile oneself with Africa, liberation will never be possible.

A journey of return

This anthropological, social, religious, spiritual and cultural journey to the place where their ethical-mythical core is found, continues moving and governing them when they make drums, marimbas, maracas or when they listen to their sounds, and their body speaks to the society and the Church in a different spirit. This journey has to be done because otherwise, they will not encounter the face of God revealed to the Afro people. This treasure, which the world has the right to know and to be enriched by, will remain buried in the complexes which shackle the Afro. This journey makes possible to understand the mystery of the incarnation of God, who became a human being in black flesh, who thinks, feels, acts and looks at the human being and the world as black. This is the highest point of the evangelisation of the Afro and, therefore, of their pastoral care.

Their skin is not a colour, but a history full of lights and shadows, and that in the end, it is the Gospel that God has for them

Certainly, this journey of return to Africa is not made to remain there, but to return enriched, more ‘black’, more strengthened, more original, more unique and only in this way will they truly be a richness for society and the Church. Otherwise, they will be lost in anonymity, in social and ecclesial invisibility.

Helping to put on African clothes

When the Afro abandons the dress of a slave, which he presented as his own, and begins to put on African attires, the evangeliser can say that everything is accomplished, because the rest belongs to the Afro. It is up to them to insert themselves as human beings—with riches that come from afar which this society and this Church need, in order to grow in spirit and truth. When one reaches this point, there are no more reasons for demands, one doesn’t want to be more than that human being that God has created in diversity; not someone else, but the black man that God made with His hands. Universal fraternity becomes the visible face of those who share what is their own with other fellow human beings who are different from them.

Dressing in African clothes is not something superficial or folkloric, but theological and spiritual, which becomes the motor of a new existence and co-existence. Diversity becomes richness and not a threat or competition. The Our Father is prayed in fraternal co-existence with those who are different, sharing differences.

The Afro Youth Pastoral Ministry entails accompanying human beings whose ancestors were uprooted from Africa and arrived with only their body and their memory. From that memory and corporeality, the missionary assists them in re-awakening, far from Africa, the human being that God formed with His hands—taken African soil and infusing His Spirit in it so as to become incarnate.

The Afro are not African, but they are also children of Africa. They must accept, recognise, digest, drink from that hidden well, far from the life of the Church, almost in hiding, because perhaps the Church has not always been able to see that in that flesh and in that spirit, the mystery of the incarnation was also realised. The Afro pastoral accompaniment must cultivate and safeguard this work of God in order to offer it to the world.

FRONTIERS • ST MICHAEL’S HOSPITAL, CHAD

PROMOTING INTEGRAL HEALTH

At St Michael’s Hospital in Donomanga, Chad, a team of health professionals, coordinated by the Mexican Comboni Missionary Brother and medical doctor, Juan Carlos Salgado, does everything possible to ensure that patients are treated with respect and professionalism, healing them and helping them to have hope

BY BRO. BERNARDINO FRUTUOSO | MCCJ

WE LEFT Laï, in the south of Chad, at six o’clock in the morning, while it was still dawn. We were travelling to Donomanga, a small town 80 km away, where we were going to see the work done at St Michael’s Hospital. The institution belongs to the diocese of Laï and is part of the network of health services run by the local Caritas.

The heavy rainy season had just ended and caused a lot of damage to the dirt road. Our driver zigzagged the car with skill and speed, trying to avoid the big potholes which the rain and other vehicles had opened in the road. We passed groups of villagers on motorbikes, bicycles, trucks—used as passenger transport—or ox carts.

“With my service, I do everything I can to make people healthy and happy”

Along the roadside, villagers, mostly women and children, carry buckets and basins with water that they collect from the communal well and the firewood they use for cooking. Some children walk to school, which runs from Monday to Saturday, from 07:30–12:00 under a scorching sun, as the temperature starts to rise and soon exceeds 35°C. Everyone has to breathe the dust that rises in large dark clouds as motor vehicles pass by.

In this southern part of the country, rich in arable land and with great agricultural potential, rice and cotton plantations stretch across the horizon. We also pass herds of cattle on the roads.

Serving the sick with joy

After a bumpy three-hour drive, we pass through the main gate of St Michael’s hospital. The first thing we see are groups of people sitting in the shade under leafy trees. Others occupy the corridors outside the various wards. “It is the patients’ families who take care of them. Each family takes responsibility for their patient, cooks for them and keeps a close eye on their health,” explains Brother Juan Carlos Salgado, a Comboni missionary and the only doctor practising in these facilities.

Sister Angela, a Mexican nurse who has been in Chad since 2008, belongs to the congregation of the Daughters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She collaborates with the administration of the hospital and takes us on a tour of the facilities. She tells us that the hospital has a capacity for 70 inpatients, divided between paediatrics, maternity, general medicine and infectious diseases. The hospital serves 10 000 patients and is the only one for the 111 538 inhabitants of the Donomanga district.

Bro. Juan Carlos examining one of the patients.

Maria Oralia, also Mexican and who arrived in Chad just over a year ago, tells us that the logistics of storing the medicines were demanding and complicated, as there is no public electricity service and they had to use a diesel generator and batteries. However, “this task is now easier”, she says with a smile, “because a few days ago 24 solar panels were installed and guarantee energy throughout the day and allow us, for example, to preserve medicines which need low temperatures for storage.”

Bro. Juan Carlos adds that it can be difficult to understand how a hospital can function without energy, but “they have adapted to working with scarce resources”. He says they can now “have a blood bank, keep basic services running for 24 hours and even perform some operations with more peace of mind in case of emergency”. Before, they had to turn on the electric generator hoping it wouldn’t break down.

In the maternity ward, Sister Aurelia, a young nurse originally from Guatemala, has been working at the hospital since 2008 and is responsible for the administration of this wing, the paediatric ward and the operating theatre. With a warm smile, she tells us that she is originally from San Marcos, a region with fairly mild temperatures, but has adapted well to the hot, dry climate of Chad. In the cool mornings of the dry season, she “even has to put on a coat” because she feels cold: night temperatures drop to 14–16°C and Chadians wear thick coats. She stresses that the mission of her institute, founded in Guadalajara, Mexico, by Mother Naty Venegas, the first female Mexican saint, is to serve those who suffer most, the sick, and that she is very happy at Saint Michael’s.

Bro. Juan Carlos worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a nurse before coming to Chad

Sr Aurelia tells us that they receive, on average, about 100 parturients a year, often with some kind of complication. “When there are difficult situations that the nurses have not been able to resolve in the village health centres, they send the pregnant women back to the hospital,” she explains. Sr Aurelia enters the room and talks to a woman who had been bitten by a snake and was already being medicated. She asked a man sitting by the door to take out of a jar the small poisonous snake that one of the villagers had killed. She tells us that “if the lady had not been assisted, the poison would soon have spread and she would have died quickly. Snakebites are still frequent in the region, and people are bitten when they work in the fields or the villages”. Sr Aurelia says “Every year, there are about 100 patients who arrive at the hospital in this condition”.

Bro. Juan Carlos attends to a pregnant woman and, shortly afterwards, performs an ultrasound scan to make a better diagnosis, find out about the health of the baby and the mother, and decide what steps to take.

Daily challenges

The hospital, as we have observed, is well organised, although it does not have many staff members, since, including all the employees, only 38 people work there.

When we arrived, Bro. Juan Carlos was in his consulting room attending to the outpatients arriving that day. He says that many people arrive at the hospital already very sick, because “first they resort to local medicines and healers and only after that, if there are no positive results, they come to the hospital”. Many patients arrive already very ill, for example, with major infections resulting from accidents or injuries with knives, machetes or weapons, or very advanced diseases. The most common diseases in the region are infectious diseases, namely tuberculosis and malaria, child malnutrition and respiratory diseases. During the rainy season from May to September, malaria frequently affects children and the recovery process is more complicated, as many suffer from severe anaemia.

Mexican Sr Maria Oralia, from the Congregation of the Daughters
of the Sacred Heart, responsible for the pharmacy of the hospital.

Brother Juan Carlos evaluates the risky pregnancy of a woman
by means of an ultrasound scan.

The missionary doctor’s working day starts early with visits to patients in the different wards; it continues with outpatient consultations, ultrasound scans and minor surgeries. “The more complex and time-consuming surgeries are scheduled for Thursday and Friday each week. However, in case of emergency, they are done at any time, even during the night,” explains the missionary. For this, there are two operating theatres, equipped with the essential equipment.

“Everyone is treated with the respect and dignity they deserve. My greatest joy is to see patients going home cured,”

Bro. Juan Carlos worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a nurse before coming to Chad. It was only after a few years, in 2003, that he went to study medicine at the University of Gulu in Uganda. When he finished his degree, he returned to Congolese territory and moved to the hospital of the diocese of Wamba, where he co-ordinated and supervised the network of dispensaries. In Chad, for the past two years, he has been carrying out a difficult service, but one that fulfils him as a person, as a missionary brother and as a doctor. He values his work with the sick, the most vulnerable in society, despite not having many human and technical resources.

Brother Juan Carlos with the team of nurses from the internal medicine ward.

“I am happy to be here. I like the quiet life of the countryside better than the stress and hustle and bustle of the big cities,” he explains. However, working in this remote location has its limitations, drawbacks and challenges. The biggest challenge he faces as a doctor “is the lack of support from other experienced colleagues, with whom I could talk and discuss the more complicated clinical cases”. However, he says that over the years of practise, he has gained “confidence to make decisions” and, whenever possible, he has tried to consult “friendly colleagues using communication platforms, as new technologies allow this teamwork”.

He adds that, despite being in a remote location, this does not prevent solidarity. There is a group of Spanish ophthalmologists who come every year to work, with great dedication, for two weeks as volunteers at the hospital. His dream is to have teams of volunteer doctors from other specialities, especially in oral health, as “this service is practically non-existent in this country”.

He says that when he first arrived in Chad he had difficulty adjusting to the climate and the extreme temperatures. With such an intense workload, it is easy to become dehydrated in this climate, so “I often suffer from kidney stones”. As malaria is endemic, he is also recurrently infected, and this year he has already suffered three characteristic bouts of the disease.

Helping hands of brotherhood and solidarity

Due to the limited resources of the people in the region—most of them are engaged in subsistence farming—consultations and hospitalisation cost very little. As the hospital receives no state funding, finding the funds to keep it running is always a major challenge, requiring ‘creativity and budgetary discipline’.

The hospital serves 10 000 patients and is the only one for the 111 538 inhabitants of the Donomanga district

Among the most urgent needs, Bro. Juan Carlos mentions are an X-ray machine; a unit for sterilising clothes and surgical instruments; a new refrigerator for the blood bank; and repair of the leaking water tank. He adds that “working with limited resources is not easy,” but they have learned to manage them so that “everything works well”. In addition, everyone at the hospital is aware of recycling and minimising waste as much as possible. Bro. Juan Carlos has many projects in mind for the future of the hospital, especially those aimed at ensuring its sustainability. Among these, he mentions the planting of cashew nuts to sell the fruit and the purchase of a tractor to till and cultivate the land owned by the hospital.

Entrance of St Michael’s Hospital, the only hospital in the District of Donamanga in Chad.

Bro. Juan Carlos’ face shows the serene joy of a life given out of love for God and our most vulnerable brothers and sisters. “With my service, I do everything I can to make people healthy and happy. Everyone is treated with the respect and dignity they deserve. My greatest joy is to see patients going home cured,” he confesses shyly.

The missionary doctor ends his days tired and often stays at the hospital even at night because he has to perform urgent operations. On those occasions, he cannot come back to sleep in the house of his nearby Comboni community, where he shares his life with three priests—from Mexico, Togo and the Central African Republic—dedicated to the pastoral care of the parish of Donomanga and the twelve small rural Christian communities in the area. Despite the difficulties, Bro. Juan Carlos is a fulfilled person, happy for the mission he carries out with his competent, fraternal and supportive hands, which help to give life and hope to the inhabitants of this remote village in Chad.

FRONTIERS • MEXICO-GUATEMALA BORDER

A Stop-Over for Healing

Faced with the migration crisis at the border of Guatemala and Mexico, the Comboni Missionary Sisters (CMS) decided to commit themselves and respond to it. They opened a centre which offers assistance and rehabilitation to the queues of migrants who journey northwards

BY Sr Pompea Cornacchia CMS | Tapachula, Mexico

HUNDREDS OF women, young people, girls and boys, arrive at Belen Reception Centre every day but this diocesan shelter in Tapachula is not their final destination. Hailing from Honduras, El Salvador, Cuba, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Haiti, they have one thing in common: they pursue the American dream. Tapachula, a city in the state of Chiapas, is just a place of transit. It is among the most dangerous Mexican border cities. This small city, neighbouring Guatemala, witnesses the daily crossing of thousands of migrants from Central America and the Caribbean, including Africans and Asians.

Effata crisis intervention programme

The Comboni Missionary Sisters set up a crisis intervention programme called Effata at the Belen shelter, to assist and serve the migrants. Effata is a powerful word which in Aramaic means, be opened. It expresses a desire and a commitment in favour of life.

A community of four Comboni Sisters, from Costa Rica, Mexico and Italy welcome and provide support and compassionate care to the migrants. Three are dedicated to listening and healing through spiritual and therapeutic accompaniment, assisting those who strive to integrate their experience of trauma. Under the Sisters’ care, they renew their hope, self-esteem and courage. Another Sister gives handicraft classes. Both children and adults participate joyfully in art therapy which helps them to develop their creativity. The intervention is focused on two steps: accommodation of the population in shelters or refugee camps and repatriation to their countries of origin to help them to continue in their rehabilitation process.

A community of four Comboni Sisters welcome and provide support and compassionate care to the migrants

The Mexican border is flooded with tears, nightmares and dreams of those who cross it every day. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), in 2019, around 450 000 people crossed the border from Guatemala into Mexico seeking asylum or trying to continue their journey towards the north. Young people are fleeing from gang violence, while others are forcibly displaced. Poverty, inequality, social unrest and lack of opportunities are other factors that cause people to leave their families and their countries.

Witnessing the arrival of caravans of migrants at the southern border of Mexico in 2018, the Comboni Missionary Sisters decided to get involved in their humanitarian care. They realised that the reception conditions for migrants in Tapachula were very poor and limited. People were facing serious difficulties in terms of accommodation and food. The most vulnerable, such as single mothers with small children, large families, pregnant women, unaccompanied children and adolescents, the elderly, LGBTQ people, survivors of sexual violence, faced even more precarious situations. Moreover, the Siglo XXI migration station, where thousands of migrants are detained, is also located in Tapachula.

Numerous migrations

As a response to this humanitarian emergency, a CMS community was established in May 2019. Since then, the Comboni Sisters have been committed to promoting the human rights of migrants in collaboration with the Hospitalidad y Solidaridad shelter, a space for refugees and asylum seekers.

In the last two decades, the transit of migrants through Mexico has become a critical phenomenon of human mobility, both in terms of its magnitude and the conditions in which it occurs. Massive flows have gained the attention of the academic and media world. Understanding the causes, effects, risks and vulnerability of those who enter the Mexican territory without proper documentation is crucial. On the other hand, the ordinary transit of Central Americans, the so-called caravans or exoduses that began in 2010 and continued from 2018 to 2020 received contradictory responses in the host communities: rejection by some members and welcome by others.

Poverty, inequality, social unrest and lack of opportunities are other factors that cause people to leave their families and their countries

In 2020, the lockdown due to the pandemic put migrants and asylum seekers at risk at the border and in detention centres. Trapped, they became even more vulnerable to organised crime. Borders were closed and migrants were left unattended, as the centres did not provide them with security. Feelings of incomprehension and despair, as well as a loss of orientation, became an open challenge. At the moment, stranded migrants, asylum seekers and refugees say that they are modifying their American dream into a Mexican dream.

Through the programme, women lighten their backload, their energy flows back, and healing takes place. Some arrive with an accumulated amount of grief and sometimes they can’t even breathe. As they process their pain, loss and grief, they regain a sense of courage, strength and determination. Some of them commit themselves to help others who are in the early stages of the healing process.

Much work remains to be done in the Effata intervention programme at the Belen shelter in Tapachula. However, we Comboni Missionary Sisters know that we are not alone. The Spirit of Jesus and the solidarity of the world community strengthen us for service. To you, migrant woman, we say with tenderness, “Open yourself with renewed hope to a more human world: Effata!”.

FRONTIERS • MISSION IN ETHIOPIA

Evangelizing Through Sharing of Life

Fr Paul Schneider is an American-born Spanish diocesan priest. He left his home to become a missionary in Ethiopia. He narrates his experience among the Oromian people to whom he ministers and with whom he shares his life

BY Fr Paul Schneider | Lagarba, Ethiopia
PHOTOS BY JOSE MARTIN

TO BE HONEST, I never thought that the mission would be so exciting. Since we have finished the boreholes in the schools and the rains have started, my pace of work has slowed down in terms of construction and projects, but in terms of personal relations, these have intensified, with community members from many families in the area, both Christians and Muslims.

I’ve been on this mission for five years. I’ve learnt the Amharic language, and I already speak some Oromo. I enjoy being with the people; we laugh a lot and we always talk about doing things together. I often feel that no other time in my life would have been better if God had not brought me to this place.

Planting trees

Together with the voluntary co-operation of the people, we are planting a lot of trees, it’s the right time for it; now it’s raining and the ground is not drying out. This week, we have planted about five thousand plants, mostly conifers and Grevilleas, along the side of our new road, so that as the roots grow, the slopes will be strengthened and there will be no landslides. We have also planted many fruit trees at the mission. We already had almost a hundred coffee plants growing, and last week we added guava, mango, papaya, banana, custard apple and other trees. They will take years to bear fruit, and those that don’t thrive, we will replace.

As I drive back and forth with the pick-up, I am getting to know the public tree nurseries of the area, and meeting more people from other places. As we have constructed the road and other projects, the authorities are very grateful, and they give us all the seedlings we need for free. We also encourage the villagers to plant trees on the edges of their fields and on land that has been left fallow by erosion or continuous cultivation. Nothing can ensure that the rain may be as it used to be, but the shade from the trees certainly will reduce soil temperature, prevent moisture from evaporating, and when their leaves fall, they will mulch (in the case of deciduous trees) and make the soil more fertile. Moreover, where there is a grove of trees, crops, vegetables and fruit trees are better protected from hail and strong winds. A tree can be planted in two minutes, and once it takes root, it hardly needs any care.

Faith-growing experience

Sometimes, I think back to why I came here, and evaluate all these years in the mission. Although hardships are our daily bread, if the missionary experience during these years had not been an opportunity to grow in faith and joy, I would have returned long ago to my beloved diocese of Getafe, in Spain. Faith gives you many gifts, it opens doors, hearts and people. The mission can only be lived from our faith. I didn’t come here to build houses, bridges, roads and boreholes, or to plant trees. I do all that but I don’t even consider myself the author of these works, much less boast about them, even if I enjoy working and I am passionate about them. I came here for my salvation, to be more of His own and to share His love. That is evangelisation. Evangelisation is the most necessary thing for the world, more than all the social causes. Everything else comes afterwards, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all else will be given to you besides” (Mt 6: 33). Evangelisation has its basis in worship.

Evangelisation is the most necessary thing
for the world

My presence here is to live among the poor, to be their father and their shepherd, and to contribute whatever I can to the betterment of their lives, spiritually, materially, in everything. When you live with the people, the poor share what they have, and they also ask of you. They ask you often, sometimes they overwhelm you; sometimes you give and sometimes you refuse, but in either case, you know that Christ asks you to renew your generosity daily, and the mission demands that you overcome your selfishness, make sacrifices and live with austerity.

Food sobriety

Austerity, for example, in food. If I have some special food that I like, I prefer to share it with those who live with me and, if not, it is better I deprive myself of it and not buy it, and just eat what people eat, even if sometimes I miss some things such as chocolate or meat. Here you don’t eat à la carte, or special things bought in the city, such as cold cuts, tinned tuna, cold meats, powdered milk or chocolate (all unaffordable for people in the countryside), unless, as I say, you invite everyone you are with. I no longer have any excuse for not eating what they eat, as my stomach is more than adapted, although I don’t always love it. I have got used to always eating vegetables and injera (bread made of fermented teff flour), and not eating meat, dairy products or eggs except occasionally, when there is a party or when I go to the city, which can be every month or every two months.

This is how most families live in Lagarba, they can’t afford beyond that. As far as possible, and without prejudice to health, whoever comes here for a long time should eat and drink what is here, what the people eat and drink. “Eat and drink what is set before you” (Lk 10: 8), is the advice of Jesus to his missionary disciples. No one starves in Lagarba, but many families do go a little hungry; they only eat once or twice a day, and the food is very simple and the portions are tight. There are rarely any leftovers. Everyone loves sugar and coffee. This is the land of coffee, but many families go for days and weeks without coffee or sugar due to a lack of income to buy it. However, when there is an important holiday, such as the Ethiopian New Year (Enkutatash, 11/12 September), or Easter or Christmas, every family eats meat, even if they have to indebt themselves to buy a few kilos, or spend the savings they have so that on that occasion they make sure that there is no shortage of coffee, sugar and biscuits for the children. Wealthier families also buy new clothes for their children, to wear on those two or three special days of the year, but many others cannot. The rural poor, even if they would never have voluntarily chosen poverty and being born here, have a special strength to live with continuous deprivation, and they also have the enthusiasm and innocence of those who are not satisfied or jaded, and you don’t see bitter people as you may find in the city. I share with you my experience, which has a lot to do with liberation, and which has been a gradual adaptation, not without renunciations, even in something as prosaic as food.

In Jesus’ footsteps

The Son of God worked with His hands and taught us that manual labour is a school of holiness. So did St Paul, the Fathers of the Desert, the Benedictines, and the laity throughout the centuries. I like to give a hand to the farmers in the fields; that is also part of evangelisation, to be with the people and to work with them, to know their fatigues and become one with them, to make them feel that I am also theirs. Working together, sharing food and praying together, this is the Church. There is time for everything, time to put on the cassock and time to take it off and roll up your sleeves, pick up the hoe, and get calluses and blisters on your hands, and get dirty with sweat and dust, and in everything, you can find the joy of the Lord.

I like to give a hand to the farmers in the fields; that is also part of evangelisation, to be with the people and
to work with them

I am content with this life, with its toils and privations. It is the dynamic of sacrifice that is repeated every day, like the Eucharist. You are consumed, and you know that the sacrifice has an eternal purpose, that God has prepared a reward and rest for you.

FRONTIERS • MAHUBE VALLEY

A Comboni family in the mother of melodies

Mahube Valley is one of the most recent pastoral commitments of the Comboni Missionaries in South Africa. The presence of a priest, a brother and a community of sisters working together makes it quite special

BY Rafael Armada | MCCJ

“WHEN I sing, I feel like I’m in heaven.” Jacob Mahlangu is not exaggerating. He is a member of the Izwi le temba (voices of hope, in isiZulu) choir of St Daniel Comboni, in Mahube Valley. The parish, run by a community of Comboni Missionaries, is located in the eastern part of Mamelodi, a name that means, mother of melodies, because of the concentration of musical talent offered by its inhabitants.

Mamelodi, north-east of Pretoria, is a township created in 1953 to relocate the African population during the Apartheid era. Ten years ago, it had a population of 334 000, but now it is probably more than half a million. It is a dormitory town, with many middle-class workers, government and private sector employees who commute daily to Pretoria or any other nearby towns. “During the day, only retired people stay at home, because children also go to school,” says Fr Jerome Anakese, hailing from the Democratic Republic of Congo, parish priest for the past year. He previously worked in the rural mission of Glen Cowie, Mpumalanga. “Many of the unemployed live in informal settlements. At night, especially in winter, there is a smell of smoke. They collect wood or, if they can, they buy it, to heat themselves outside their tiny shacks. There is a tremendous social imbalance”.

The number of those collecting garbage for recycling grows every day. “They do a hard and undignified work, pushing heavy bales on carts through the streets. They are left to their own fate, without any protection,” says the Comboni Missionary, who wishes in the near future to engage with them. “Those unemployed try their luck in the informal economy, selling on the streets, driving taxis or recruiting clients for them. They intend to emulate their working neighbours who drive private cars through the streets of Mamelodi. Others, unfortunately, turn to crime or to drink,” says Fr Jerome. The insecurity “is a consequence of social contrasts and high levels of unemployment”.

The beginnings

Mahlangu arrived in Mamelodi in 1965. The police, at that time, forcibly removed him, together with his family, from his home in Garsfontein, southeast of Pretoria, when that area was declared a residential zone only for whites. Mahlangu was then seven years old. “They came with guns and took us to Mamelodi. We didn’t know anything, but maybe our parents did. The government knew where they were going to place us because our new house was already built when we arrived.”

“People are very welcoming and about 200 attend Mass every Sunday”, says Fr Jerome

“They placed us in Emasangweni (at the gates’, in isiZulu), says Teresa Chimeloane who was also taken there, a year later, in 1966. She was a teenager at the time. “My parents worked in Ga Rankuwa, north of Pretoria. I lived with my grandparents. From a Catholic family, she began living her faith, like Mahlangu, at St Gerard’s Mission, in Garsfontein. When they were relocated in Emasangweni, there was no Catholic community formed yet. “We were all new and we started to know each other. My grandparents and others began to gather in the evenings to pray by the dump site of the slum. Each one carried their own chair. Every day a new family joined; some weren’t even Catholic.” Then, they thought of asking for a classroom at Zakele, the nearby primary school. “The neighbouring parish, St Raphael’s, was far from our home. The elders used to tell us: ‘When you come back from school, if you see bricks lying in the street, pick them up and bring them; we want to build a church’. That’s what we did and that’s how St Peter Claver was born”. It was in that parish that Teresa began, like Mahlangu, to sing in the choir.

After some years spent in Ga Rankuwa, Chimeloane returned to Mamelodi and settled in Mahube Valley, then with her three children, in the house where she still lives today. “We lived far from St Peter Claver and on many days our children missed catechism classes. Several parishioners began to see how to start a new community. A Mexican Comboni priest, Fr Luis Carranza, also encouraged us to do so. By then I was a leader in the small Christian community,” Teresa recalls.

Baba Mahlangu, now retired, after more than 30 years working as an accountant at Ford is also, like Teresa Chimeoane, one of the pioneers of St Daniel Comboni. “My aunt instilled in us the importance of going to church. That’s what I did with my four children and they are all still involved today.” His only son is a diocesan seminarian. He and his wife are happy with his choice.

St Daniel Comboni

The parish of St Daniel Comboni started in 2007. The Comboni community, along with parishioners, began to establish the first structures. The priest’s house, the hall, still used as church, and some classrooms for catechesis were built. The various groups and sodalities commenced to develop. “People are very welcoming and about 200 attend Mass every Sunday,” says Fr Jerome. According to Erich Stöferle, a German Comboni Brother, who joined the community recently and is involved in the maintenance of the mission, “as lockdown was lifted, people came back to church when the choir started singing again”. The parish sodalities and six of the nine small Christian communities are already functioning as before the pandemic. Seventy-five catechumens are preparing for baptism, “a good number for a small community like ours”, says the parish priest.

Young people

Forty per cent of the Mass attendees are people under 30. They are also beginning to reorganise themselves. Ivonne Moswane is one of their leaders. Originally from Mashabela, in Limpopo, Ivonne, 27 years old, arrived at St Daniel Comboni in 2014. She grew up with her grandmother who introduced her to the Catholic faith. She studied civil engineering and is now completing her apprenticeship in plumbing. “Young people have many challenges, but they need to take responsibility. Many come from broken families and haven’t had someone who listens to them to help them heal their wounds”. Fr Jerome agrees: “In general, family life is in a deep crisis; there are many single mothers and very few structured traditional families. Most marriages are short-lived and children end up living with grandparents or relatives. Young people are hooked by modern culture, music, parties, fun— ‘we are free’, they say, ‘we know what we want’”.

“Young people have many challenges, but they need to take responsibility”, says Ivonne

Ivonne sees music and dance among the most remarkable talents of Mahube’s young people. “Many don’t get into university after high school and stay at home doing nothing. Others turn to drugs or alcohol and to finance it, they steal”. Teenage pregnancy, domestic or sexual violence and dropping out of school are also challenges affecting young people. Ivonne recognises that there are also positive stories, such as the case of Mpho (not real name), who quit drugs and now teaches young people, through talks and sport, how to beat drugs.

“I am trying to regroup the young people again, bring them closer to the parish and get them off the streets; to resume our programme ‘the soup route’ in which we go around the neighbourhood and offer soup and bread to the needy”, comments Ivonne, who offers her gratitude to the Comboni Missionaries. “I met them in Limpopo, and from them I learned that it is more important to give than to receive. I love going to the church; there I find mental serenity and security. I have my vis-a-vis with God.”

She dreams of having a family. “I want to grow spiritually and make a positive contribution to the community”. She would like to see young people maturing with an open mind, a vision and mission which makes them participants in their own personal growth, in the Church and in the community at large.

Comboni Sisters

The Comboni Sisters live in the neighbourhood, a fifteen-minute walk from the Comboni Missionaries’ house. They arrived in Mahube in 2010. Among their pioneers was Sr Tsehaitu Hagos, originally from Asmara, Eritrea. She had previously worked 20 years in Colombia and Ecuador. “I was told so many things about South Africa before I arrived, about the violence, etc., but I met good people here in Mamelodi, neighbours who protect and help us”, says Sr Tsehaitu. Many come to visit her. They share their difficulties and joys and ask for prayers. “People trust you when they see that you come close to them. ‘You live with us and you look happy. Thank you!’, they say. Our presence is important for them and for us”.

“I would like our parish to be missionary, to reach out to many who are still far away”, says Fr Jerome

Two sisters from Latin America have recently joined the community. Sr Maria Cristina Ibarra, from Mexico, who has worked in Mozambique, South Sudan and in various missions of her country. Recently, she has been chosen by the Diocese of Pretoria as catechetical co-ordinator. “It is a challenge for me, since I also want to be with the people in the settlements”. On arrival in South Africa, she was struck by its contrasts, “a modern airport and highways just outside Johannesburg to the shanty houses a few minutes away as you approach the township. It’s another image of Africa that shocks you; very different from the rural areas of other countries where I’ve worked before”, says Sr Cristy, as she likes to be called.

The third member of the community is Sr Marta Vargas, a jovial Costa Rican from the capital, San José, who professed her first temporary vows a few years ago. She has journeyed in her formation as a religious through Mexico, Ecuador and Egypt, where she learned Arabic. “I thought that after Egypt I would go to Turkey to work with refugees, but the community was not established and my superiors sent me to South Africa”. She has experience with young people, “I’m still young”, she laughs, and also with women and refugees in Cairo. “There, I discovered how our presence among the people, together with the Word of God, can enlighten anyone’s life, even when Christ cannot be explicitly proclaimed. I never thought of coming to South Africa; I always understood that it was a developed country”. She feels welcomed by the parishioners of St Daniel Comboni, by their neighbours and children, “it is a very beautiful place, in spite of the violence. I think that our presence as a Comboni family is fundamental as a way of living the mission”.

Sr Marta’s dream is to work with marginalised populations, such as refugees and women, to enter into their lives, to accompany them and to reach the informal settlements with a presence close to the poor. “Of course, I want to learn the local languages. Some older people don’t know English and young people feel more comfortable speaking their mother tongue”, says Sr Marta.

A missionary parish

Fr Jerome emphasises, “I would like our parish to be missionary, to reach out to many who are still far away. Two kilometres from the mission, there is an area where people are settling. We are not there yet”. As far as the parish social commitment, he considers that there is still a lot to do. “We have to organise our visits, registers and so on, but we already have two initiatives running, the delivery of about 10 kg of food to about 100 people and the distribution of blankets that have been donated to us. The community is attentive to those who do not have their basic needs covered, such as food and household needs. The choir has even donated goods to one of the elders. Mahube Valley is a mission in line with our Comboni charism, and the recommendations of our last Chapter, namely to reach out to the peripheries, as Pope Francis also often reminds us, carrying out a pastoral ministry that brings together social and faith aspects, creating living and mature missionary communities”. Although the government offers social assistance and technical education programmes, “Mahube Valley is a mission where the presence of religious brothers and sisters is important and significant”, concludes Brother Erich.

FRONTIERS • ARTISTIC TALENTS

Evangelizing through art

Daniel Comboni invited those preparing to become missionaries to use their God-given natural gifts for the task of spreading the Gospel. In South Africa, one of his missionaries is developing his painting skills and is engaging in social media platforms to announce God’s love for humanity

BY Raul Tabaranza MCCJ | Pretoria

“WHO WOULD have thought that Christianity, heritage and art can go together?” One of my Tiktok friends made that comment about my doodle of the carrying of the Cross. Aside from doodling, I love painting and making collages from old magazines or newspapers. I am not a professional artist, just a self-taught artist, who discovered these passions at a later stage of life, in my late 40s and more in my 50s. I am, probably, one of those of whom you can say: “life begins at 40, a very late bloomer in the field of arts.”

Developing a passion for arts

I worked as a Comboni Missionary priest in Zambia for almost nine years, and the sceneries in the mission captivated me; especially the Luangwa National Park, where I had very personal and close encounters with animals. Most of my paintings subsequently included animals. In 2017-2018, I did my Sabbatical in Rome; I was already 50 years old then. Everything was in Italian, and since at that time, I was really struggling to understand some words, I had challenging moments during the classes. One day, I started doodling, taking my left hand as the outline. I made different strokes and designs and I found it so beautiful. I bought a bigger sketchpad and I started doodling in my free time, not even realizing that at the end of my sabbatical, I already had three albums.

What is a doodle? Google says that “A doodle is a drawing made while a person’s attention is otherwise occupied. Doodles are simple drawings that can have concrete representational meaning or composed of random and abstract lines, generally without ever lifting the drawing device from the paper, in which case, it is usually called a scribble.  Is doodling a real art? Doodling is underrated as an art form. It’s a fun way of expressing oneself, but also of experimenting and learning to draw. Doodles give a unique insight into your artistic style, conveying parts of your personality not shown through other mediums of art. 

Art communicates a message about our faith, customs and traditions or even virtues and values

When I went home for holidays, I carried with me sketch pads and I produced more doodles. I also started painting different images, mostly abstract on illustration boards, canvas etc.  Imagine at my age, exploring arts in this way, experimenting and blending colours, trying out many designs, liquid painting, taped painting, making collages from photos, dried leaves and branches, papers, pictures and magazines.  I found so much joy in this hobby, and quietly, I put my thoughts and sometimes my prayers into art. 

Communicating faith contents

Nobody knew of my hidden talent, and I was ashamed to share it with others because I felt they were the works of a child. I doodled some more, about Church feasts, Stations of the Cross and mysteries of the rosary. I use these artworks to express my own faith and my life as a missionary, abstract as they may be. Later I started posting my paintings and doodles on Instagram and Facebook. It was then that I realized that my artworks created a special impact on my friends.

Art communicates a message about our faith, customs and traditions or even virtues and values.  When I doodle or paint, I often feel like praying deeply. It creates in me some form of discipline and calmness. It develops patience and in-depth reflection on reality.  Art conveys the intangible stories of our faith; therefore, it is a very effective means of teaching and enhancing devotions and prayers.  In the past, they used art to teach their children and many people about the history of the Church, lives of saints and images of the Old Testament.  Many were not privileged in getting educated, so teaching by images became a very effective tool.  The messages in images can easily be retained in the mind when teaching is accompanied by visual aids.  For example, a mere glance of a dove and a man in the river reminds us of the baptism of the Lord and what transpired in that event. The sight of an image can communicate at a greater level. In 1999, Pope John Paul II addressed this very issue too in his Letter to the artists: “in order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art” (1999: 12).

A work of art is a work of creativity, and creativity has value because God is the Creator 

The value of artworks

When there are special occasions in the Church, I find myself asking how I can make a meaningful image of the feast. When I visit a church, the first things that attract me are the paintings on the walls and the ceiling. I noticed this also from my collection of pictures, I tend to take more photos of artworks. These artworks testify something to us; that there are bigger, deeper and more powerful potentials in our Christian faith.  There is something in arts that could influence a person, especially his feelings.  I often stay for long, sitting down, staring at a painting or artwork, because there is something in art that conveys reverence, as if you become involved in the picture. Aside from art, I love writing a lot, and I preserve my memories in my writings.  I like writing the details of what I have seen or experienced, my feelings of joy and my frustrations. As in art, I love the little details. 

We need creative and quality communication techniques, to show to the people in the mission the love of God through arts

Doodling is a very time-consuming artistic activity and the details speak of its beauty.  When you put the details in your work, communication is elaborated upon. A piece of my artwork speaks of something within me.  My painting, doodling and collaging is a very special gift for me; a spiritual gift that leads me to a deeper communication and communion with God. A spiritual piece of art links one to Him; gives some connections of one’s life, past, present and future. Artists have a vision, and bring it to life by painting or doodling, as they are always participants in their work.

Art and life

Art is a very healthy hobby, it keeps you grounded, able to analyse things, visualize thoughts and convey desires.  Since it is a passion, one’s creation and creativity can also transform into a way of life, in personal or communitarian aspects. Art is very influential and I may have to consume a bushel of salt in order to reach that level, whereby my artworks would speak to the world and go beyond boundaries. I know that a good artist has a very deep level of introspection. He can connect his work to a higher motivation and stir the unconscious part of a person. I am trying to reach that.  I pray that it will come. Reflecting on the words of my Tiktok friend, art and any form of social media can powerfully connect together in the evangelizing work of the Church. 

Sharing in God’s creative power

Let’s consider the Creation story in Genesis.  We call God, the Creator. He created heaven and earth, fishes and plants, trees and animals and everything that lives on the earth.  God is an artist and He was immensely happy with what He had created.  At the end of the day, He looked at His creatures and everything was good. I am also happy with my work. Actually, I find them very good. As Christians, we know why a work of art has a value. Why? A work of art is a work of creativity, and creativity has value because God is the Creator. The first sentence in the Bible is the declaration that the Creator had created: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Gen 1: 1) Creating and being artistic runs in our veins. It should be handed from generation to generation in our works of evangelization and developed more and more so that people can experience that intimacy and connection with God. 

As I have said, in the beginning, I was so ashamed to share my work, afraid to be laughed at by people. I didn’t have that confidence because I felt that, being a self-taught artist, my pieces of art were of no value.  Then one day, I said to myself: “Raul, God has given you this gift, and you should put it into the open space.”  My hidden talent should be discovered in depth, developed and put out for the common good.  When I started posting online one by one, I was so surprised by the effect: what a huge community of friends and family I found, aspiring artists, neophytes in the craft and many professional artists who encouraged me to keep on practising, developing my skill and harnessing my work to perfection. I am an aspiring artist who pursues goodness and beauty in my life, and I want to share it with others. Perhaps they may also see beauty in the little details of their life, whether bad or good.  In life, as in visual arts, we can also repair the work, as we can also make amends for the wrongs we have done.

Mission and arts

Being a Missionary, I think art is a very challenging gift to impart, as many of our missionaries are more into buildings and infrastructures, churches and refugees.  Artists are sometimes isolated.  As a Comboni Missionary, I experienced life in the mission as being more about relationships with people and pastoral commitments than artistic expression.  It was only when I worked in Waterval Mission (Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga), that I dug a bit deeper to discover my artistic talents. My colleague priest used to tell me to organize a workshop with the youth and combine prayer and arts, and I would have called it, “Praying with your fingertips: painting your imagination.” The plan unfortunately didn’t come to fruition, because of transfers and the arrival of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Mission needs some creativity to capture the attention of our people.  The Charisma of St Daniel Comboni has a lot of symbols such as the Pierced Heart of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, The Crucified Christ, The Cenacle of Apostles and Mission Ad Gentes. All of them have been interpreted by artists in different ways. We need creative and quality communication techniques, to show to the people in the mission the love of God through arts.  To have a creative team for this unique mission is a very big challenge. If you are very attentive to social media, there is an increasing number of aspiring artists. Today’s generation relates more to the arts than to lengthy talks. 

I take this as a personal challenge now; to use my God-given gifts for a special ministry.  When I post my humble works on Instagram, I accompany them with my own voice, explaining the work created, the events, the historical and biblical backgrounds as my way of imparting our faith. This is my little personal contribution to God, aside from my commitments in our Province. May it flourish, for it is said, “If it is for God, it will always bear fruit”.

FRONTIERS • SUDAN

Indomitable Women of the Gospel

Celebrating the 150th anniversary of their foundation (1872–2022), the Comboni sisters wish to recall the heroic testimony of faith by some of their members who endured great suffering and persecution during the Mahdi’s revolution soon after the death of the founder St Daniel Comboni

BY Paola Moggi | Comboni Sister, Verona, italy

FROM 1881 TO 1898, the Egyptian Sudan was overwhelmed by an Islamist religious insurrection known as Mahdia named after its spiritual and political leader, Muhammad Ahmad, who called himself the Mahdi (which means well guided by God). His declared aim was to restore the purity of Islam, corrupted by prolonged contact with Europeans. However, the socio-political reasons for the uprising were others: to enact the widespread discontent with the Egyptian misrule and to restore slavery, an important economic resource in the region.

The Mahdi’s uprising

The Mahdi’s advance towards the central region of Kordofan took place while the staff of the Catholic missions—mourning for the sudden death of Daniel Comboni (10 October 1881)—paid little attention to it.

The Egyptian government, which was wagering on its twenty regular battalions, underestimated the insurrection. The Mahdi militias, supported by powerful slave traders and fed by numerous defections of government officials and soldiers, quickly conquered Kordofan.

In May 1882, the fighting reached the Nuba Mountains and Delen (or Dilling), the seat of a Catholic Mission. In August, the capital of Kordofan, El Obeid, was besieged and it surrendered due to starvation on 18 January 1883. Those who had not professed the Islamic faith had to embrace it under threat of death, so that missionaries became sought-after prey of the Mahdi to further fuel his mythical aura.

We answered that we were Christians and intended to die as Christians

In an attempt to crush the insurrection and free the prisoners, the government decided to intervene with a mighty army, led by British General William Hicks. On 9 September 1883, 10 000 men, including infantrymen and cavalrymen, and 6 000 camels to transport ammunition and provisions, rifles and cannons, left Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, but “that great mass of Muslims led by a cosmopolitan Christian general of staff” (Gozzi 2010) had the seeds of defeat in it. Hicks did not know the region and relied on two fake deserters from the Mahdi, who led his army into an ambush. After two days of fighting, only a few hundred men survived. Charles Gordon, an anti-slavery British officer who had been governor of the Equatoria region from 1873 to 1876, was appointed governor of Sudan. Supported by Martin Ludwig Hansal, the Austro-Hungarian consul in Khartoum, he tried to negotiate with the Mahdi for peace and the release of his prisoners.

The capital falls

In April 1884 the Mahdi’s troops left El Obeid, concentrated in Rahad and began to march towards Khartoum. The British government was slow to send reinforcements and the Sudanese capital fell on 25 January 1885. Gordon and Hansal were slaughtered along with another 2 000 people. In a few years, the Mahdia controlled almost all of Sudan, but on 22 June 1885, Muhammad Ahmad died of typhus. He was succeeded by Caliph Abdullahi ibn-Muhammad. In this context, the conditions of those in captivity became dramatic, especially for the nuns, whose state of life was not contemplated in Islam. The difficulties became worse in 1889 due to a terrible famine that decimated the population of the entire Mahdist state, mainly due to years of war that deprived agriculture of its workforce.

“And this is the story, or almost the story, of all of them: how many lashes! The formula was taken when we were almost exhausted and out of our senses from the anguish, beatings and hunger, and half-dead. We shivered at the thought that the Mahdi would divide us among his leaders,” “And this is the story, or almost the story, of all of them: how many lashes! The formula was taken when we were almost exhausted and out of our senses from the anguish, beatings and hunger, and half-dead. We shivered at the thought that the Mahdi would divide us among his leaders,” (Teresa Gregolini in Maccari 1988)

The uneasiness among the population aggravated the tensions that had already emerged in the Mahdi’s succession and weakened the Islamic State, which in 1896 began to crumble in the face of General Herbert Kitchener’s military advance. On 7 April 1898 the Anglo-Egyptian army defeated a Mahdist army on the Atbara River and on 2 September 1898, conquered Khartoum.

The account of the witnesses

When the insurrection led by Muhammad Ahmad reached Kordofan, the Catholic missions became an important target: the staff, besides being Christian and of European origin, openly opposed slavery and gave shelter to those who fled from it. “Being a ‘woman, white, Christian’, and moreover unmarried, was a great challenge for every sister (Archive Madri Nigrizia 2011).

Those who remained in captivity suffered more repression because of the escape of the others, but those who returned to the community after years of unimaginable suffering also suffered

“The experience they were forced to live throughout their captivity was deeply traumatising, not only because they were foreigners and Christians, but above all because they were women, and consecrated women”, stresses Sr Maria Vidale (Archive Madri Nigrizia 2011).

From joy to tears

Easter Sunday on 9 April 1882, was a day of celebration in El Obeid; the Nubian, Fortunata Quascè, a former slave educated in Verona at Mazza Institute, became the first African Pious Mother of Nigrizia (Comboni Sister). A few months later, the city was destroyed by the Mahdi’s troops.

Teresa Grigolini, in charge of the sisters in Sudan, was worried; no news came from the mission in Delen and the Mahdi troops were marching towards El Obeid. It was urgent to leave: “We are in an unspeakable turmoil, we have packed our trunks to return to Khartoum, but the government is denying us the soldiers to accompany us,” she writes from that mission. With no reliable communication, the course of confusing news became an agony. She tried to convince Fr Giovanni Losi—acting superior while waiting for Daniel Comboni’s successor—to leave, but he delayed. He hoped that the staff from Delen would arrive, but they had already been made prisoners; so when Fr Losi decided to leave it was too late.

Siege and starvation

In August 1882 the population of El Obeid was invited to take refuge in the fortress. The nuns were hosted by a former slave girl, Marietta Maragase, and the male staff by Syrians. On 8 September, the first attack was repulsed by the garrison, equipped with cannons and rifles. If the Egyptian battalion would have exited the fortress to persecute the Mahdist troops during their withdrawal, perhaps these would have been defeated; but this did not happen and El Obeid fell, due to starvation after five months of siege. Teresa Grigolini recalls: “The poor, very numerous, were the first to die. The quarters were all cluttered with mats and rags, the little ones dying of hunger; skeletons stretched out their hands to ask for charity and died in that position.” In the meantime, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception was approaching and the sisters were ready to renew their vows, but Fr Losi did not allow them to do so and suggested to them to renew their “private vows” daily or every 15 days. Scurvy raged and Fr Losi himself died from it.

On 16 January, the Mahdi demanded the surrender of the fortress, still full of ammunition. The governor would have preferred to blow it up with the powder keg, but the officers refused to obey him to preserve their families, and on 19 January, the Mahdi conquered El Obeid with its weapons. Elisabetta Venturini recalled: “As soon as they went inside, like so many raging beasts, they took the (African) boys and girls we had with us. Then they went to Fr Rossignoli and Brother Locatelli; they threatened them that if they did not become Muslims they would have their heads cut off. They were immediately intimidated and abjured without the slightest resistance.” The nuns, despite slaps and beatings, refused: “we were left alone: we were Teresa Grigolini, the superior, Concetta Corsi, Caterina Chincarini, Fortunata Quascè and Elisabetta Venturini.”

In the Mahdi camp

Threatened and beaten, they were dragged before the Mahdi: “After so many flatteries and promises,” continued Elisabetta, “finding us as strong as before, he told us that the Lord would forgive us now and later we would see the truth.” The five sisters were reunited with the survivors of Delen: “Being together again after so many misfortunes, it seemed like a dream. One should see in what state we found them.”

“We stayed like this for about a year,” Teresa recalled, “spending our lives suffering and praying always in great trepidation for the future.”

In fact, attempts to free the missionary personnel continued for months, but were unsuccessful. They hoped for military action entrusted to General Hicks, but this failed tragically. A ransom was offered, which the Mahdi categorically refused, and a plan to escape was contemplated. A Syrian, formerly the mission’s procurator and now Mahdi’s ‘lieutenant’, provided the camels and everything was ready for 29 March 1884. On the eve of that day, the unexpected happened: “The Caliph Abdullahi appeared suddenly with a large retinue in front of our house and summoned Fr Bonomi, myself and Brother Giuseppe Regnotto,” wrote Fr Giuseppe Ohrwalder. “The sun had just disappeared when we saw about 30 satraps coming on horseback, declaring that they had orders to take the nuns away.”

Heroic weakness

It was night. They took the nuns to a hut near the Mahdi’s compound, and the next day began the interrogation repeated insistently until evening: “Do you want to become Muslims?” We answered that we were Christians and intended to die as Christians,” Elisabetta Venturini recalls. In the middle of the night, Caliph Abdullahi arrived with three of his men. Seeing that after so many questions they could get nothing, they took Sr Fortunata aside, tied her to a pole and whipped her until they were tired.” Then they raged on Teresa Grigolini, cutting off her lips. The long-awaited escape turned into a torture that continued for days. “Not being able to kill us, they vented their anger by dividing us up,” which happened on 1 April 1884, before leaving for Rahad. Each one was handed over to the women of the leaders who, amid threats and promises, continued to try to convert them “saying that we were lucky because the Mahdi and the Caliph loved us and would have married us if we had become Muslims. Imagine what happiness!” Don Luigi Bonomi states: “The usual threats and intimidations were renewed, and even more so to the sisters; the example of their heroism was for us the object of the highest admiration.” The Mahdi had in fact given orders to convert all the mission staff to Islam, but not to kill them.

Exhausted and unconscious

From El Obeid to Rahad, the sisters walked almost 60 km barefoot, without food and under a blazing sun. One evening, Sr Concetta, destined for the harem of Caliph Abdullahi, was attacked by two men who tried to rape her. Her cries attracted attention and they fled, but she was exhausted and asked for an audience with the Mahdi. It was 12 April 1884. To be admitted into his presence she had to pronounce the formula of adherence to Islam. The news spread immediately: a nun had succumbed. Teresa Grigolini understood the cause and decided to join her sister: “I was the second one brought before the Mahdi, and there I met Sr Concetta.” After days of threats, Elisabetta also left for Rahad in the retinue of Caliph Ali Dinar. To bend her will, they beat her repeatedly under the feet and dragged her with a rope around her neck during the journey; she did not give in, so they tied her to a tree and beat her for hours until they believed she was dead. The Mahdi then demanded that she should be taken to his house, where there were already four nuns. Maria Caprini, a veteran of the mission in Delen, also arrived. “After 40 days since our separation we are all united again, but what a painful and terrible reunion; in the house of the Mahdi! It seems to people that we have all become Muslims, but it is not true,” Elisabetta Venturini narrated in her memoirs, while for the European press they had all already become Muslims, except for two priests and three nuns.

Marriages to be made

The Mahdi announced to the six nuns that as Muslims they must marry. Teresa manages to let Fr Bonomi—still in prison— know this and at the end of June she is joined by Rudolf Slatin, a former government official and friend of the mission. With him were other ‘converts to Islam’: Isidoro Locatelli and some Greeks led by Dimitri Cocorompas. While waiting for their release, in order to prevent the nuns from being given in marriage to Muslims, Slatin persuaded the men to contract apparent marriages with them, which were officially contracted that same night in front of a Muslim representative. Teresa Grigolini was at Cocorompas’ house; Concetta Corsi, at Isidoro Locatelli’s; Caterina Chincarini, at Trampa’s; Fortunata Quascé was at a certain Andrea’s. Maria Caprini and Elisabetta Venturini were spared because they were already too weak from torture.

Everyone has found his liberation. The nuns in their convent, and all the others in their families and countries; I alone could find neither my convent nor my family, and my slavery would last until my death

In August 1884 the Mahdi, leaving Rahad, marched towards Khartoum but one of his caliphs, with Frs Bonomi and Ohrwalder in his retinue, was sent to El Obeid to govern Kordofan. So the six nuns stayed with their fake husbands and after five months walking they reached the Mahdist troops’ camp in Omdurman. An area was reserved for the ‘renegades’, those who had ‘forcibly’ converted to Islam after being captured; they lived under surveillance and had to provide for themselves. The clear separation between men and women, typical of that culture, facilitated the co-existence of the four sisters with their ‘husbands’, who worked at the market from morning to evening: “They sell some cotton cloth, some jackets that we sew at home and some other things. At midday we prepared lunch for everyone and sent it to Fortunata’s hut and there the men ate alone and we ate alone, according to the custom of the country”, read Teresa Grigolini’s Memoirs.

Waiting for liberation

Monsignor Sogaro, Daniel Comboni’s successor, tried in every way to organise the escape of all missionaries. An Arab reached Omdurman and delivered a message to Teresa Grigolini, but he was arrested as an English spy. Khartoum was under siege and fell on 25 January 1885. The messenger was liberated and, on 3 February, he managed to get Teresa Grigolini’s messages and reached Licurgo Santoni, in Dongola, an Egyptian postal official, in contact with Monsignor Sogaro. Teresa asked that all of them would be able to escape from Omdurman together, and specified that in Kordofan there were Frs Bonomi, Ohrwalder, Rossignoli and Regnotto: “Here in Omdurman there is Isidoro Locatelli, Domenico Polinari with six nuns: Concetta Corsi, Caterina Chincarini, Marietta Caprini, Elisabetta Venturini, Fortunata Quascè and Teresa Grigolini, all in good health. In order to avoid horrendous dangers, we the sisters are divided into three houses under the protection of three Greeks who do the charity of keeping us hidden by sharing the meagre bread with us.”

The letter was leaked to the press and created a great impression. Sogaro replied: “Passing as the wives of some Greeks was an industrious ruse; their behaviour was beyond praise.”

Finally on the run

The first to escape was Fr Bonomi, on 25 June 1885, from El Obeid; followed, on 7 October, by Maria Caprini and Fortunata Quascé from Omdurman. They were all supposed to leave, but the messenger arrived with 16 camels when Concetta, raped by Locatelli, was pregnant and Teresa chose to stay with her and Caterina, who for health reasons could not endure days and days on camelback. Elisabetta, hosted at Cocorempas’ house and threatened by the Caliph to be given in marriage, had tried to escape on her own during those months. In 1886 Fr Ohrwalder arrived in Omdurman and officiated the marriage between Concetta and Isidoro in a Christian ceremony, but Isidoro fled at the beginning of 1887, leaving her with their young son. The other false husbands struggled to continue the charade and asked for money to maintain the nuns and not do violence to them.

She remains alone

From the end of 1888, famine raged in Sudan and, even in the ‘renegade’ neighbourhood, survival became difficult. Desperate, Teresa asked her brothers for help in 1889. The letter reached them in August and aroused indignation towards the Institute, which had abandoned the sisters, and increased the misunderstandings between it and those waiting for help.

To dispel the suspicion of a sham marriage with Cocorempas, Teresa herself was forced to marry in August 1890. On 3rd October 1891, Concetta died of typhus.

On 29 November, however, Elisabetta, Caterina and Fr Ohrwalder were finally released. The flight was strenuous, to the point that an exhausted nun fell off the camel. On 21 December they finally arrived in Cairo. On this occasion, Sogaro wrote to the Vatican: “The former Superior Teresa Grigolini was married to a certain Greek, Dimetri Cocorempas. There are, however, very serious reasons for not having to condemn her conduct; a victim all the more worthy of compassion, in that she was always of blameless innocence and exemplary character.”

The cost of martyrdom

Those who remained in captivity suffered more repression because of the escape of the others, but those who returned to the community after years of unimaginable suffering also suffered. Maria Caprini and Fortunata Quascè remained marginalised for a long time; Caterina Chincarini and Elisabetta Venturini were considered apostates, and Fr Ohrwalder was even asked to make a profession of faith in order to reinstate him as a priest. The most painful situation, however, was experienced by Teresa Grigolini Cocorempas. The mission tried several times to organise her escape, but as she was often pregnant, she could not escape. For her, liberation came on 3 September 1898, after the victory by Kitchener: “For a whole year I mourned my fall, but even more so on the day of liberation. Everyone, I said to myself, has found his liberation. The nuns in their convent, and all the others in the bosom of their families and their countries; I alone could find neither my convent nor my family, and my slavery would last until my death,” she wrote in her Memoirs.

FRONTIERS • LAY VOCATION

Mission for transformation in Brazil

Upon arriving in Brazil, Xoan Carlos never thought that his three-year commitment as a Comboni lay missionary would become a life-long dedication to the promotion of the rural peasants in the Amazonia region. He shares his journey with Worldwide

BY Xoán Carlos Sánchez Couto | Comboni Lay Missionary, Açailândia, Brazil

MY MISSIONARY commitment was born during my participation in youth groups, in a Salesian youth centre in my city, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. The reflections we made there on the injustices of the world and the role of the Church in these situations led me to get involved in a group of Comboni Lay Missionaries (CLM) that was being created in my city. I followed the formation of the CLMs simultaneously with my university studies in agronomy. When I finished, I was ready to go to the mission and, although I had always asked to be sent to Africa, destiny brought me to Brazil, initially for a three-year commitment, starting in November 1999.

Agricultural school

Knowing the reality of Açailândia, in the state of Maranhão, and in dialogue with the local community and with the Comboni co-ordination, we decided to start working with the rural youth and we chose the proposal of the Rural Family Houses (RFH) project. The beginning was a long road: to gather a good number of families interested in taking on the responsibility of offering to their children a contextualised education; an education which would not lead them out of the rural environment, but allow them to take charge of their own development. Thus, a community agricultural school came into existence, managed through an association of families of peasants and maintained through partnerships with local governments and through the sales of what the students produced by themselves.

Due to the length of this process of collective construction, my commitment had to be extended. Along the way, I met Dida, a young catechist from Açailândia who became involved in this process and ended up becoming my wife. She married me and my struggles, so in a way she also married the mission.

It was a long road to get the necessary facilities built to run the school, to convince the authorities to pay the teachers and other workers, and the running costs —even being a small project—are high. What was never difficult was to get the interest from the young people. Finally, in 2005 we started the classes, with a group of 35 boys and girls, mainly from agrarian reform settlements, some children of small landowners and some children of the employees of the large estates of the latifundia (large ranches).

Justiça nos Trilhos denounced the human rights violations of peasant and indigenous communities impacted by large mining projects and their transport infrastructures

Rotational methodology

The house follows a methodology called Pedagogy of Alternation, which emerged almost a century ago in France through the alliance of a rural parish priest, a trade unionist and rural families who saw their children going to the city for lack of opportunities in the countryside. The young people stay at the school for a week and return to their families for another week.

Throughout the three years of the duration of the course, this alternation of one week at school and one week with their families is always maintained. In this way, they do not lose their rural roots, the family can count on the help of the young person for work, and the school can deal in a theoretical and practical way with the same activities that the farming family is engaged in on their land at each time of the year. Integrating work, theoretical reflection, participation of the farmers and development of the environment are the four pillars of this pedagogy, which is also very present on the African continent in French-speaking countries.

Over the years, other Comboni Lay Missionaries and local lay people have taken over responsibility for the school, although the owners have always been the peasant families, who make the main decisions at an annual assembly and at regular meetings of the board of the association that they have formed to run the school.

After seven years of operation, in 2012, Dida and I assessed that it was time to step aside and let some young people who had studied at the RFH and were already finishing their university studies to take over the reins. We withdrew to retrain, studying in another city. I finished my sociology course and did a master’s degree in Amazonian agriculture; Dida finished her arts course and specialised in school management. On our return we got involved in other projects, always dedicated to the livelihoods of the peasant communities in this corner of the planet, the eastern Amazon, which we combined with supporting the RFH.

Peasants and indigenous rights

At that time, the Comboni Missionaries in Açailândia had started a campaign called Justiça nos Trilhos (Justice on the Rails), which denounced the human rights violations of peasant and indigenous communities impacted by large mining projects and their transport infrastructures. In Brazil, everything is superlative: the world’s largest open-pit mine is in this region, the iron ore that is extracted from the bowels of the Amazon is transported by the world’s largest train to the port of São Luís, from where it is exported almost entirely to China by means of the world’s largest ships, the Vale Max.

Naturally, the social and environmental impacts are also superlative. The communities lose their right to move freely through their territories; since it is very difficult to cross double tracks with heavy train traffic, many people and animals are run over, many houses crack with the train vibration, wells crumble, animals miscarry or produce less than normal offspring; and the noise is deafening twenty-four hours a day.

Young people from various localities come here to spend time learning appropriate techniques adapted to their social and environmental conditions

Justiça nos Trilhos became a human rights NGO and I was invited to work with these communities with the proposal to offer economic alternatives to mining and agribusiness exports because—despite all the impacts—the lack of other employment possibilities ends up pushing many people to seek employment in these mega-projects as the only alternative way of life. Subsequently, the infrastructure created for the export of huge quantities of minerals attracted the attention of large landowners in southern Brazil, who acquired land in this region to produce mainly soya and eucalyptus for export. They take advantage of the same railway and port as the mining companies; and the impacts are further accentuated, not only because of the increase in train traffic, but also because the siege of peasant territories has intensified.

Soya and eucalyptus bring in a lot of money in dollars, and commodity fever has meant that there is no limit to the expansion of these crops. They offer farmers a lot of money to sell their land. When the farmers don’t want to sell it, they ‘accidentally’ spray the fields with the same herbicides they use on their soya plantations, which are not affected because they are genetically modified to resist glyphosate. Thus, the farmers have a total loss of their crops, which immediately translates into worsening their poverty and food insecurity. The only way out is to sell their land—and the same people who caused their economic bankruptcy are there to buy it.

Agro-ecological centre

As strategy, the first step we have taken has been to create a centre of reference in agro-ecology on a piece of land belonging to the Comboni Missionaries. It is also shared by the Rural Family House, where we have a sample of agro-ecological production practices: organic dairy cattle, free-range chickens, pigs raised in the open air, organic horticulture, agro-forestry systems, solar energy, biogas. The idea is to produce in alliance with nature and not against it, as suggested by the idea of integral ecology proposed by Pope Francis in Laudato Si. This centre is called CIRANDA—Centre for Rural Innovation and Agro-ecological Development. We felt the need to start from here because the impacts caused by mining and agribusiness have led to the abandonment of traditional agricultural practices in the communities, so this knowledge is no longer passed down from father to son, as was the custom. Our goal is to rescue this traditional knowledge, combining it with scientific knowledge about organic production. The CIRANDA centre is a field of experimentation and learning. Young people from various localities come here to spend time learning appropriate techniques adapted to their social and environmental conditions.

A second step has been to do agro-ecology training in the communities. Agro-ecology is not only agriculture, but also solidarity economy, human rights, political awareness, values.

More recently we have started a rotating solidarity microcredit fund, so that families who participate in agro-ecology training can start or improve productive activities that give them food security and sources of income. The loan is for a small amount, which must be repaid after one year. The Rotative Fund Ezequiel Ramin—in homage to the Comboni Missionary killed in the Amazon for his commitment to the peasants—is inspired by the experience of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, and by several similar initiatives that have existed in the northeast of Brazil for years. That is why most of the Fund’s members are women. They have more responsibility with the money, they always pay it back and they are concerned that this opportunity is transformed into a better life for them and for all the members of their family. They also have a better ability to work in groups and a broader vision of the community.

As Pope Francis proposes in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti, the economy as a whole has to be oriented towards the common good

Lay missionaries for transformation

We are well aware that these testimonial initiatives at the micro level do not promote real transformations if they are not co-ordinated with structural changes in the economic organisation of the countries. What does this have to do with missionary work? It has everything to do with missionary work, above all, because we are lay missionaries. As Pope Francis proposes in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti, the economy as a whole has to be oriented towards the common good. To achieve this is the specific task of the laity, but also, for lay missionaries, who value inculturation in the peoples who welcome us; this has to be done respecting and starting from traditional and ancestral ways of life. The idea of good living, sumak kawsay in Quechua, is present in one form or another in all Latin American indigenous cultures.

At the same time, being lay missionaries in Brazil, we are stimulated by the missionary Bishop Pedro Casaldáliga. He was inspired by the biblical prophets who were then responsible for passing on to the people the true meaning of events, making, at every moment, God’s plans known. For this reason, we also investigate and denounce the tax juggling scheme by which these large multinationals manage to leave no resources in the countries of the South; they capture and own: 1, the State; 2, the system of administration of justice; 3, the media; 4, and all national and international decision-making spaces. Vale Coorp., the Brazilian multinational mining company that destroys this part of the Amazon, does the same in Zambia and Mozambique. South Africa’s AngloGold Ashanti is one of the main gold extractors in the Brazilian Amazon, causing irreversible impacts on indigenous lands. But Vale’s money is in a small village in Switzerland and AngloGold Ashanti’s money is in the British Virgin Islands. Environmental destruction and extreme poverty are their real legacy in the territories they exploit. Doing mission among the peasants, in the Amazon or in South Africa, is not possible without denouncing these injustices.