Formation – Page 31 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

The Laity and Ministeriality

7 May, 2020 by Alberto de la Portilla

The Laity and Ministeriality

We shall attempt to make a reflection on ministeriality from a lay perspective, especially from the point of view of the Comboni missionary vocation. However, before going into these ministries and services from the point of view of the faith, I think it is important to view the framework of the topic.

Our lives move in a certain direction once we have a personal encounter with Jesus of Nazareth. We share society with many men and women of good will. All of them have their own values that direct their actions and life choices. For us there exists a “before” and an “after” having come to know Jesus. Just like the first disciples, one day we met Jesus on our path. Our hearts leaped and our lips asked: “Where do you live?” And his reply was: “Come and see”. From that moment our lives were changed.

The ways are many by which we came to this encounter: for many it was due to our families, our Christian communities, our friends or the circumstances of life that happened to us … undoubtedly, the case history is endless. But that which is really decisive is the response we made, essentially in freedom, and the consequences of this response in the life of each one of us. The response is free and nobody forces us to make it; it is a grace we have received and, consequently, the recognition of a new life.

The lay person is, first of all, a follower of Christ. It is not a matter of following an ideology or simply of fighting for just causes that contribute to a new humanity that is more just and more dignified for all and neither does it mean following all the precepts of religion that can assist us in our relationship with God. To be a Christian means, before all else, following Jesus, going out of our comfort zone and starting our journey. It means taking just what is necessary to travel light and to be always open and available as we follow Him. Jesus shows us, as we make our way, what our responsibilities are in announcing and building up the Kingdom.

We believe we are in a constant discernment that is not a state of constant dialogue with God. It is true that there are special moments of discernment in the life of every person such as those regarding one’s main vocation, as in the case of marriage or the vocation to which we feel called, such as the missionary vocation, or the sort of profession by which we feel we can serve others, choosing one sort of studies rather than another, one sort of work rather than another. It is fundamental for the life of each person to understand their particular call to become a nurse, a doctor, a teacher, a company director, a lawyer, an educator or to become a social worker, a politician, a skilled worker or whatever.

These are vital moments which, during our adolescence, our youth or when we are young adults, present themselves meaningfully. However, apart from these moments that will keep us on the right track in difficult times, we want to listen at all times throughout our journey. We have no desire to compromise. Life continually presents new challenges and new calls that come from Jesus. For us as missionaries, having our bags packed is part of our vocation. We are called to accompany people and communities for a given length of time, and then we leave, since our leaving is an essential part of our life. Going out means continuing to grow. We do not stay the same for years because we know that needs also change. We are called to leave our homelands and travel to other countries and other cultures; we are called to carry out new services, to return to our original homes and to assume new commitments: this is all part of our vocation. With every call, every new change, we must understand the plan of God for us. Why does He ask us to go to another continent or to return to our original countries when we were doing so well with those people, when we even thought we were greatly needed where we were and why does our life call us to move and start all over?

Why is it, that when we think we have arrived at our final destination, there is something inside us that questions and disturbs us? It is the Lord who speaks to us. We have a relationship of friendship with Him that makes us grow. As friends, we share the life and new projects that cross our paths. There may be moments of greater stability or times of new challenges. We have not come into this world to rest but to bring our lives to fruition and to be able to struggle so that others may enjoy its fruits.

We respond to this call, not just as individuals, but also from within a community. We do not travel alone. This is part of our Christian vocation, our belonging to the Church, just as we feel part of all humanity. As part of the Church, we feel called to common service. As Lay Comboni Missionaries (CLM), we feel we belong to the Church of Jesus. We also feel that this specific vocation we have received is a communitarian vocation and responsibility. We have a personal call but we also have a call as a community and as communities of communities. We recognise the Church as the sacrament of salvation, each person with their own individuality, gifts and charisms for announcing and building up the Kingdom of God.

Jesus calls his disciples to live and to make the journey as a community. We know that only with the help of the Lord we can walk and that, as a community, we need that deep spirituality that unites us to Jesus, to the Father and to the Spirit. It is a journey where prayer, a life of faith and the community become nourishment and a reference for the life of the CLM.

The centrality of the mission in Comboni. The Church at the service of the mission

Comboni clearly understood the centrality of the mission and the necessity of the mission in the Church. Before the needs of our poorest brothers and sisters we are called to a response. This response is so necessary and complex that we are not called to give it individually but as a Church. Each and every one of us Christians is called to respond to this call. It matters not what our position in the Church is; each one of us must give a faith response. Jesus calls each one to go forward. And it is because of the complexity of existing needs that the Spirit raises up in the world and in the Church different vocations, as well as different charisms which may make their own contribution to this reality.

Identifying the Church with the clergy, or with religious men and women shows a failure to understand Jesus and that the voice of the Spirit is not being listened to. The work and the vocation of the priesthood or religious life with all its many aspects is fundamental for the world, but not more than the commitment of each and every member of the laity. The Church is not only responsible for the religiosity and spirituality of persons: we have responsibilities towards the whole world: society, the family, the environment, education, the health service and so on.

Everyday’s things are things of God. Little things are things of God. Attentiveness towards each person, in concrete and in global needs, is the responsibility of the followers of Jesus. In all these areas, the role of the laity, both men and women, in spiritual and material matters, is fundamental … this is how Comboni understood it and how we, too, understand it.

The Lay Person in the World

In this global call we have received, the Church presents itself as a reference community. It is nourishment for service. The place where strength is renewed and where one may find nourishment in a special, if not unique, manner.

As lay people, we are called to send out roots that fix and enrich the land; we are called to create networks of solidarity and relationships that link up society by means of families and communities in small condominiums, in city quarters, social organisations, businesses … we are great creators of networks of relations, collaboration and work. We live as people involved in all these networks and we are called to animate them, to give them spirituality so that they may be at the service of people, especially the weakest. We are called to include all people. Our gaze must be fixed on the poorest and most abandoned of whom Comboni spoke, on those excluded from this society and it must be a gaze that urges us to be present in the peripheries since things are seen differently from below. We must not be content with a society where not all people have a dignified life, with a society where ‘having’ and not ‘being’ is rewarded, together with ‘consumerism’ that is devastating this destroyed planet that cries out, proclaiming our global responsibility.

This view, which must question our way of life, demands concrete action.

The call of the laity is a call to the service of humanity, a call which, for some will involve service within our Church. We must not think that a good lay person is one who helps in the parish and so loses sight of our vocation to serve the world. Some internal services are necessary but the Church is called to go out, to go out into the roads with Jesus, to go from village to village, helping in things great and small. We are called to be the salt that gives taste, the yeast in the dough … we are called to be in the world and contribute to it in a meaningful way. We must not stay at home where we are comfortable, where we all understand one another. We are called to go out. The Church is not born for itself but to be a community of believers who follow Jesus and serve the most needy. It is for this reason that we feel called to help the growth of human communities (including Christian communities).

What is our response to this call as CLM?

Today there is a broad reflection throughout the Church on what is specifically missionary, on what are and ought to be our services, or specific ministries, as missionaries. The geographical notion of mission has been abandoned in these times as well as that of the rich north and the poor south in need of development since inequality and other difficulties are to be found in all countries, even though most wealth and opportunity are still concentrated in some countries while, in others, there is much greater hardship … Furthermore, extreme poverty is spreading among the homeless in the so-called rich countries and forced migration due to poverty, wars, persecution for various reasons, climate change and other factors are causing a phenomenon always present in humanity, to worsen. The COVID-19 pandemic reminds us of our global humanity that goes beyond all barriers and frontiers. It strikes all of us in the same way. To date, we thought that money alone could travel without a passport but now it seems that the virus can do the same.

It is only in a just world that we can live in peace and prosperity. Inequality of wages, conflicts and unbridled consumption that is even melting the polar icecaps, etc., will end up influencing and causing serious consequences for all of humanity. Police roadblocks, whether at the borders or in the urban housing areas of the wealthy, will not bring about a better world either for all or for those who hide behind them.

Seeing all this, the debate and reflection on what, for the laity, is specifically missionary in this new epoch is clear. I do not pretend to discuss the theme theoretically; I will simply present some of the activities in which we are active as lay people, as we try to respond to the call we have received.

This is our ministeriality, the service to which we feel called, the response of life and not of theory, which we are making. I will not dwell on this but I wish simply to indicate some clarifying examples; many others will not be mentioned … it is not for nothing that we are called to be hidden stones.

We have friends who work among the pygmies and the rest of the population of the Central African Republic, a country where we have been present for more than 25 years. We are in the midst of people who are considered servants by the majority of the population; acting as a bridge of inclusion or assuming responsibility for a network of primary schools in a country which has suffered a number of coups and has been in a state of war for years which prevents the regime from providing these services.

In Peru, we accompany the people in the outskirts of the great cities and in the abusive settlements where those coming from the country grab a piece of ground from the city so as to have a home without electricity, water or sewerage. There are many families struggling for a dignified life, people who have left their small towns to go to the city to find food and give their children a better life. It is a place where there is much solidarity and hospitality between neighbours but also problems related to alcohol, macho violence and the break-up of many families.

In Mozambique, we collaborate in the education of the youth, both boys and girls who, leaving their distant communities, hope to gain an education and rebuild their country. They need schools for professional training and hostels where they can live during the school year, since their homes are so far away. To accompany these young people and the Christian communities is part of our calling.

We are also present in Brazil, in the struggle with the large mining companies who banish the communities from their lands, poison the rivers and the air, cut communications and isolate communities with their long trains that carry away the minerals of the area without any care for the environment or the people.

Besides all this, in many European countries we are involved in receiving immigrants. We try to give back something of what we ourselves received when we were strangers in foreign lands. We are called to welcome those who flee from poverty and wars, those in search of a better future for their families and who, on their arrival, find themselves up against a wall, made not just of concrete or barbed-wire but also of fear and the lack of understanding by the population.

They try to build a bridge with a population who are hospitable and agreeable, by being present in the social and ecclesial organisations that have mobilised themselves to welcome their new neighbours and help them integrate. They engage in such varied activities as that of welcoming people on the very shore of the sea, helping them learn the language, to look for a job or a home or helping them with administrative issues, acknowledging the enrichment they bring to us and how they add to the value of the new society. They also value the immigrants for what they are and for their cultures and try to be reference persons for the latter in a world that does not always understand them.

When society collapses and the human being is defeated, we do not know what to do with those persons. Locking people up is the solution we have provided, as a society. The fact is that prison often becomes a school of delinquency and not of rehabilitation, as it ought to be. Among them there are the APAC prisons which started in Brazil and which, little by little, are increasing. It is a prison system where the prisoner is seen as a person to be recuperated and not as an inmate, one who is called by name and not by number. As the protagonists of their lives, they are helped to understand the error of their ways and the need to ask for forgiveness and to be reinstated as active members of society. This is a method whereby the community accomplishes a change and builds bridges, recuperating their sons and daughters who have done wrong; where the people to be recuperated have the keys of the doors and, little by little, together with the others, understand their dignity as children of God, repentance and their worth as people fit for society.

The style of life in countries with the greatest resources is draining this squandered planet. International commercial relations are impoverishing many for the benefit of the few … promoting a new lifestyle is fundamental in changing the paradigms and values that are seen to be the only ones that are valid for a social outcome and for happiness. In a society where ‘possessions and consumption’ are seen as greater than ‘being’, it is necessary to propose new lifestyles. Here, too, we are involved in Europe: we propose new lifestyles of commitment, responsible consumption, a responsible economy, etc.

By doing so, we shall follow activities connected to: committed education among the excluded of our cities; consideration for the sick, showing them the face of God who accompanies them and the hand of God who heals them; consideration for the homeless, the addicts and others.

As missionaries, we are aware, and we must also make others aware, of the situation of this globalised world that requires joint action in which all our little grains of sand create little hills which we can climb to survey and dream of a different world.

We aim to climb up with the people with whom we live daily. We feel we are called to do so especially with those who are immersed in their inability to see the horizon, to emerge from their difficulties; we are called to look up and go forward, to animate and accompany these communities. We are called to be present where nobody else wants to be.

All of us are called to strive, in a global manner, against problems that are themselves global, to join together and be promoters of networks of solidarity together with our fellow human beings with whom we share a common home, a home that seems to become smaller with every day that passes.

At the centre, we place Jesus, the person who changed our lives. Every man and every woman has a right to God. We feel a duty to make known the Good News, to present a living God who is in our midst, who walks with us and, as Jesus of Nazareth has shown us, never abandons us but is with us always. Within every person, in the poorest and in the community, God awaits each one of us, to transform our lives and to fill them with joy, a joy that is deep. God is waiting to give us living water, the water that quenches the thirst of every human being.

May the Lord give us the strength to be always present and accompany others, to be instruments that lead others to meet Him and keep us always close to Him on our journey.

Alberto de la Portilla, CLM

Missionary during the pandemic

23 April, 2020 by Alberto de la Portilla

When I am writing this text, I am in Peru with Agnieszka for a month now, we are learning Spanish in Lima and we are supporting the local Comboni Lay Missionaries Movement in their missionary work.

Wrong.

I would be in Lima if it wasn’t for the coronavirus pandemic, closing the borders between countries and canceling our flight.

At first I thought it was nothing big, we will wait these few days and fly. After, I realized, that waiting time for a flight should be counted in months rather than days.

Many people ask me how do I feel in this transition time, suspension, waiting. However, I look at it from a different perspective. It is true that I am looking forward to my missionary work in Peru, but I do not consider the time I got here in Poland so unexpectedly, as a waste of time, a transitional moment in which I have nothing else to do except sitting and waiting. I came back to my family house in the small village, I am unemployed, I don’t go to the cinema, to the swimming pool, if only I had to go back to my school, I would practically be my childhood again. And on the one hand, it really is, I help my parents in the household, I prepare meals, I spend time with my siblings, I go for walks with dogs and cats, which we have a lot of here.

However, I’m not 12 anymore, so my way of perceiving the world has changed. Many priests emphasize that the time of epidemic is a time of grace, we only have to take it from God. I agree with them. I try to use my free time for prayer, meditation with Holy Bible, reading valuable books, learning Spanish, to really think about myself and my relationship with God and my family.

In is a bit comforting that we are all in a similar situation, not only my plans have been changed without my participation. It helps me to notice the situation of others. Those who died in the epidemic or lost their loved ones. Those who had to give up various trips, lost their jobs or are on forced days off.

Cinemas, fitness clubs, theaters are closed, we cannot do anything personally in offices, we can only submit ready applications or send everything by post. Wherever we go, we have to put on masks covering our mouths and noses, keep appropriate distance from other people, and generally leave the house only when we really have to.

That’s a lot of restrictions for our society, for me too. But I still have food, I can contact my friends via email, Facebook or WhatsApp. Many people work from home because the specificity of their work allows them to do so. Life goes on, although maybe a little slower. Besides, looking at my parents’ life in the countryside, the epidemic did not change much in their everyday life.

Probably the biggest limitation that actually affected me was that I could not physically participate in the Holy Mass, which, fortunately, has changed a little since this week. However, for the first time in my life, I spent the feast of the Resurrection of Jesus at home, adoring the Cross in the room, singing songs with the priest on YouTube and praying the Way of the Cross, walking along a dirt road to the river. At the same time, I feel that for the first time I have deeply experienced the mystery of the Resurrection, which confirms my belief that it really is a time of grace.

Developed technology means that even alone we can still be together. Not so long ago we could all experience it while participating in a joint CLM online prayer. Our Movement in Poland seems to flourish in this difficult time. In mid-March we had an online formation meeting, a joint Holy Mass on Palm Sunday and a joint online retreat about vocation last weekend. On our WhatsApp group, we share good words, support and our thoughts during the epidemic.

The situation that should separate us seemed to connect us even more. This is unambiguous proof for me that God is unstoppable in His love and blessing people. That He could act in our lives and carry out His plan of Salvation in every conditions.

Ewelina Gwóźdź CLM

Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis to the Popular Movements

16 April, 2020 by Alberto de la Portilla

To our brothers and sisters
of popular movements and organizations

Dear Friends,

I often recall our previous meetings: two at the Vatican and one in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, and I must tell you that this “souvenir” warms my heart. It brings me closer to you, and helps me re-live so many dialogues we had during those times. I think of all the beautiful projects that emerged from those conversations and took shape and have become reality. Now, in the midst of this pandemic, I think of you in a special way and wish to express my closeness to you.

In these days of great anxiety and hardship, many have used war-like metaphors to refer to the pandemic we are experiencing. If the struggle against COVID-19 is a war, then you are truly an invisible army, fighting in the most dangerous trenches; an army whose only weapons are solidarity, hope, and community spirit, all revitalizing at a time when no one can save themselves alone. As I told you in our meetings, to me you are social poets because, from the forgotten peripheries where you live, you create admirable solutions for the most pressing problems afflicting the marginalized.

I know that you nearly never receive the recognition that you deserve, because you are truly invisible to the system. Market solutions do not reach the peripheries, and State protection is hardly visible there. Nor do you have the resources to substitute for its functioning. You are looked upon with suspicion when through community organization you try to move beyond philanthropy or when, instead of resigning and hoping to catch some crumbs that fall from the table of economic power, you claim your rights. You often feel rage and powerlessness at the sight of persistent inequalities and when any excuse at all is sufficient for maintaining those privileges. Nevertheless, you do not resign yourselves to complaining: you roll up your sleeves and keep working for your families, your communities, and the common good. Your resilience helps me, challenges me, and teaches me a great deal.

I think of all the people, especially women, who multiply loaves of bread in soup kitchens: two onions and a package of rice make up a delicious stew for hundreds of children. I think of the sick, I think of the elderly. They never appear in the news, nor do small farmers and their families who work hard to produce healthy food without destroying nature, without hoarding, without exploiting people’s needs. I want you to know that our Heavenly Father watches over you, values you, appreciates you, and supports you in your commitment.

How difficult it is to stay at home for those who live in tiny, ramshackle dwellings, or for the homeless! How difficult it is for migrants, those who are deprived of freedom, and those in rehabilitation from an addiction. You are there shoulder to shoulder with them, helping them to make things less difficult, less painful. I congratulate and thank you with all my heart. My hope is that governments understand that technocratic paradigms (whether state-centred or market-driven) are not enough to address this crisis or the other great problems affecting humankind. Now more than ever, persons, communities and peoples must be put at the centre, united to heal, to care and to share.

I know that you have been excluded from the benefits of globalization. You do not enjoy the superficial pleasures that anesthetize so many consciences, yet you always suffer from the harm they produce. The ills that afflict everyone hit you twice as hard. Many of you live from day to day, without any type of legal guarantee to protect you. Street vendors, recyclers, carnies, small farmers, construction workers, dressmakers, the different kinds of caregivers: you who are informal, working on your own or in the grassroots economy, you have no steady income to get you through this hard time … and the lockdowns are becoming unbearable. This may be the time to consider a universal basic wage which would acknowledge and dignify the noble, essential tasks you carry out. It would ensure and concretely achieve the ideal, at once so human and so Christian, of no worker without rights.

Moreover, I urge you to reflect on “life after the pandemic,” for while this storm shall pass, its grave consequences are already being felt. You are not helpless. You have the culture, the method, and most of all, the wisdom that are kneaded with the leaven of feeling the suffering of others as your own. I want all of us to think about the project of integral human development that we long for and that is based on the central role and initiative of the people in all their diversity, as well as on universal access to those three Ts that you defend: Trabajo (work), Techo (housing), and Tierra (land and food). I hope that this time of danger will free us from operating on automatic pilot, shake our sleepy consciences and allow a humanist and ecological conversion that puts an end to the idolatry of money and places human life and dignity at the centre. Our civilization — so competitive, so individualistic, with its frenetic rhythms of production and consumption, its extravagant luxuries, its disproportionate profits for just a few — needs to downshift, take stock, and renew itself. You are the indispensable builders of this change that can no longer be put off. Moreover, when you testify that to change is possible, your voice is authoritative. You have known crises and hardships … that you manage to transform — with modesty, dignity, commitment, hard work and solidarity — into a promise of life for your families and your communities.

Stand firm in your struggle and care for each other as brothers and sisters. I pray for you, I pray with you. I want to ask God our Father to bless you, to fill you with his love, and to defend you on this path, giving you the strength that keeps us standing tall and that never disappoints: hope. Please pray for me, because I need it too.

Fraternally,

Francis

Vatican City, Easter Sunday, 12 April 2020

The General Chapter and the ministeriality

9 March, 2020 by Alberto de la Portilla

In the view of Evangelii Gaudium (EG), the mission of the Church and all its ministers within it are directed towards building up the Kingdom of God, striving to create room in our world where all people, especially the underprivileged and the excluded, may experience the salvation of the Risen Christ. The ministers, therefore, assume a role of crucial importance as a place of encounter between humanity and Word and Spirit in history. (Bro. Alberto Parise, in the picture)

THE GENERAL CHAPTER AND MINISTERIALITY

Bro. Alberto Parise

There are times in history that mark epochal movements or transitions from one socio-cultural system to another, with a high degree of discontinuity. The period in which Comboni lived was certainly one of these historical moments. It was the time of the industrial revolution, the result of the great leap that science and theology were making in science as well as in the fields of finance and politics. The Church found itself on the defensive, faced with the so-called “modernism” that it perceived as a threat. It was a Church under siege, politically and culturally; and in its resistance, it ran the risk of self-referentiality. And yet, precisely at that difficult time, it experienced a great rebirth: among the contradictions and social evils that emerged with the new industrial capitalist economic system, there also emerged a force for social apostolate, through the work of the laity and of a large number of new religious institutes. The colonial movement – a response to the politico-economic logic and to the ideology of competing nation states – on the other hand, was accompanied by a deep cultural interest in exploration, things exotic and the spirit of adventure. However, there was also the rebirth of a new missionary movement towards distant lands and peoples. The Church was entering a new epoch with deep spiritual renewal – as is attested to by the spirituality of the Sacred Heart that characterised those times – bringing about a new missionary model.

The XVIII General Chapter was celebrated in an analogous epoch for the Church. The discernment of the Chapter was harmonised with the interpretation of that turn of events which Pope Francis had written in Evangelii Gaudium (EG): his was a theological reading of the new epoch that opens, in pastoral practice, to a new missionary impetus. New in the sense that it abandoned the paradigm we were used to: a mission based on a geographical model in which the protagonists were “special units” of missionaries who were real pioneers, whose role was to found local Churches. The reality of globalisation and the dramatic socio-environmental crisis of our time – a consequence of a prevailing unsustainable model of development that has brought us close to the point of no return – require a renewed approach to evangelisation. After all, we just have to look at our Comboni situation to realise that, in practice, the model of the past has been discarded. For example, the system of ‘sending’ provinces (in the northern hemisphere) and provinces (in the southern hemisphere) that ‘receive’ missionaries, no longer corresponds to what is really happening, as it’s the case with the idea that the countries of the south are for “evangelisation” and those of the north for “mission promotion”. We can now see the urgent need for mission promotion, for example, in Africa and – as also stated by the Chapter – of the mission in Europe.

Evangelii Gaudium therefore proposes a new paradigm of mission. No longer simply geographical, but existential. The Church is called to overcome its own referentiality and to go out to all the human peripheries where people suffer exclusion and live with all the hardship of economic inequality, social injustice and impoverishment. All these situations are no longer a dysfunctional aspect of the economic system but a requirement for the system itself to prosper and continue. The mission becomes a paradigm of all pastoral action and the local Church is its subject. So, what is the role of the missionary institutes? It is that of animating the local Churches to live out their mandate of being missionary, Churches that go out to the existential peripheries. It is a matter of proceeding in communion within realities characterised by diversity and pluralism, creating together a common perspective that values the differences and “conquers” them, without destroying them, creating unity on a higher level. These journeys are characterised by closeness to the poorest, by service and the ability to proclaim the Gospel with the essentials of the kerygma both by word and by a way of life. Pope Francis is relaunching the vison of the Church of the Second Vatican Council, as “the sacrament, or the sign and instrument of intimate union with God and of the unity of the whole human race”. In our new world formed by a digital revolution and the globalisation of the markets of financial capitalism, the Church is called to gather a ‘people’ who are able to go beyond the confines of belonging and walk towards the Kingdom of God. Then the Christian testimony to the Risen Lord will be productive and the Church, too, will grow by attraction and not because of proselytising.

Today, the epoch of digital revolution is a time of great missionary opportunities, just as the time of the industrial revolution was for Comboni. Since we are speaking of a new paradigm, the challenge lies in thinking, structuring and training ourselves accordingly. The first step is to recognise the grace of the Comboni charism which is very relevant and made to measure for the new paradigm of mission. In the first place we have the central idea of “regenerating Africa with Africa”, a concise image that recounts a most complex and articulated story: there is the idea of generating a ‘people’ capable of building up an alternative society, in harmony with the action of the Spirit. The proclamation of the Gospel helps to bring to completion those “seeds of the Word” already present in the cultures and spirituality of the people. Comboni also stressed the importance of this work being “catholic”, that is to say, universal: far removed from self-reference, he saw himself as an integral part of a much greater and broader missionary movement with a variety of gifts and charisms. He saw his role as that of an animator who made an untiring effort to move the conscience of the Pastors of the Church concerning their missionary responsibility so that Africa’s hour might not pass in vain” (RL 9). In the view of EG, the mission of the Church and all its ministers within it are directed towards building up the Kingdom of God, striving to create room in our world where all people, especially the underprivileged and the excluded, may experience the salvation of the Risen Christ.

The ministers, therefore, assume a role of crucial importance as a place of encounter between humanity and Word and Spirit in history. It is a fecund encounter, as Comboni well understood. This is why, in his Plan, he envisaged a series of small theological and scientific universities along the coasts of Africa, to train ministers in various fields who would then spread out into the interior, to bring about the growth of communities imbued with the spirit of the Gospel, capable of social transformation, as the models of Malbes and Gezira show us.

In the spirit of the Chapter, the requalification along ministerial lines of our missionary service requires, as Comboni realized, a new “structure” of the mission that sustains and fosters it:

= a ministerial requalification of our commitment, with a development plan that is shared and made in communion, for specific pastoral priorities, in accordance with the continental urgencies. During the Chapter, it emerged that, on the one hand, we are present in these “frontiers” of mission while, on the other hand, we often lack a contextual approach to the human groups we accompany;
= collaborative ministry in journeys of communion. We are still subject to practices and ways of operating that are too individualistic and fragmented;
= re-thinking our structures while seeking greater simplicity, more sharing and the ability to welcome others, so as to be closer to the people, more human and happier;
= the reorganisation of the circumscriptions. Amalgamation does not find its justification only in the shortage of personnel, but rather, it has a value in relation to the passage from a geographical to a ministerial model which renders it necessary to be connected, to work as a network and to share resources and pathways;
= the reorganisation of formation to develop the necessary expertise in the various specific pastoral fields.

In brief, as the Chapter Acts state, “the growing awareness of a new paradigm of mission spurs us on to reflect and re-organize our activities along ministerial lines.” (CA 2015, No. 12). As invited by Pope Francis (EG 33), the Chapter has indicated the path of pastoral conversion, abandoning the criteria: “as we have always done” and setting in motion a series of action-reflections to reconsider the goals, structures, the manner and method of evangelization (CA 2015, No. 44.2-3). (Bro. Alberto Parise)

Official visit of Fr. Tesfaye Tadesse and Fr. Pietro Ciuciulla to Uganda

6 March, 20206 March, 2020 by Alberto de la Portilla

The year 2020 has started with the visit to the province by the Superior General, Fr. Tesfaye Tadesse and one of the General Councilors, Fr. Pietro Ciuciulla. It has been a great moment of communion. They had also a meeting with the Comboni Lay Missionaries in their house at Solent Avenue-Kampala (in the picture).

From the 6^th January to the 8^th February 2020, the two visitors met confreres individually and all communities. It was also a moment of meeting Bishops of the dioceses where the Comboni Missionaries are serving and some other religious families with which we work closely. The two confreres visited different projects geared at human promotion with which we are engaged. In all the communities, the Superior General and Fr. Pietro Ciuciulla had a message of encouragement, acknowledging the tremendous work the Comboni Missionaries are doing in Uganda and inviting us to be focused on labouring for the Kingdom of God despite the challenge of a reduction in personnel.

They had a meeting with the Comboni Lay Missionaries in their house at Solent Avenue-Kampala. The visitors invited the province to be grateful to God for the forthcoming beatification of Fr. Giuseppe Ambrosoli, Mccj.

Scheduled for the 22 November 2020 at Kalongo (Archdiocese of Gulu), the beatification will be a moment of celebrating the work of God’s grace in a man who humbly and lovingly sought nothing other than caring for the sick. One of the moments that marked the end of the visit was the inauguration of a small project, Limone Medical Centre, situated at the former premises of Leadership Magazine. The facility designed to accommodate confreres who need special care as they follow their medical treatment in big medical facilities in and around Kampala. It will have an outpatient service open to the public. It was a moment of joy to have the Superior General officially opening this place on Friday 7^th February 2020.

The province is grateful to the General Council for this moment which we will always treasure.