I am Cristina Paulek and I have belonged to the Comboni Lay Missionaries Association of Brazil since 1998. In this missionary journey, I want to highlight the importance of the LOCAL CHURCH: “Hearts burning, feet on the road!”
I was born in Curitiba/PR and grew up in Santa Amélia Parish, where the MCCJ are present. It was there that I took my first steps in the Church and in living the missionary spirit. It was in the parish that we received a solid formation to be laypeople and protagonists of history, in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council and in the experience of small basic ecclesial communities. It was in this reality that I worked pastorally in the parish and in the Archdiocese of Curitiba, in Prison Pastoral, in Missionary Animation in COMIDI, in CEBI, among others.
Above all, it was in the community that I discovered that the Church is missionary by nature, that every baptized person is a missionary. This is not the privilege of a few who go a little further away, we are all missionaries.
The motto of this year’s National Missionary Congress, inspired by the experience of the Disciples of Emmaus, helps us a lot, because it is in community, in the sharing of bread and life that we discover that Jesus walks with us. When we experience a burning heart, we set out on a journey.
Sending-off Mass in the Santa Amélia Community with the parents and the parish priest Fr Walter.
After seven years in Portugal, five of which were spent supporting the family and working in elderly people’s homes (at the Missionary Sisters of Charity in Faro and at the Parish Center in Paderne) and another two years on mission in the parish of Camarate, I’m leaving to return to the CAR, where I’ve already been for five years.
It won’t be easy, but I know that this is the path God has for me.
The Central African Republic (CAR) is the place where I feel I have been called to serve God and people with joy, in the hope of bringing the message of the Gospel and helping to build a better and fairer world, together with the poorest and most abandoned according to Comboni’s missionary style.
I will face new challenges and difficulties, but I am confident that, with God’s help and the protection of Our Lady of Hope, I will be able to overcome them.
I thank my family and friends for supporting me in this decision.
I thank my parish of Paderne and the Parish Center for always welcoming me with affection despite my long absences.
I thank my community in Fetais and all those who helped me during my time in Camarate.
Finally, I thank the CLM Movement and the Comboni Family for transmitting to me the essence that inspires me to go.
“If I had a thousand lives, I would give a thousand lives for Africa”
For a long time, our group existed with same members. Worse, the number kept on reducing. About twenty, we dropped to ten and for a while just five. The discouragement came out of the various challenges we were facing during the formation process. But, by God’s grace, a new dynamism came with the Superior Provincial Father Timothy and the chaplain Leopold. After the promise of three members on the 10th October last year and after the African Assembly in Benin, we had the joy to see new arrival for the CLM journey.
1. In Ghana :
With the zeal of Mr. Wotormenyo Christian, an old member of the group, have started the CLM formation Ladies Grace Dzokoto and Gifty Aziedu and the Misters Valentine Sewovi, Emmanuel Aniewu, Daniel Gbekie and Peter Kofitio. With the long distance that separates us from one another, in addition to the monthly meeting which requires a physical presence, we plan some online meetings to share some information. Some candidates started attending the monthly meeting already. And to solve in a way the problem of distance between us, we are thinking of having some days formation during vacation. This will at the same time consolidate our community life.
2. In Togo
Seven (7) are the candidates in Lome, Togo at Mary Mother of the Redeemer Parish. The zeal of these committed faithful is remarkable. The group has been in existence for a while. They have some commitments at the Parish and collaborate actively with the Comboni Sisters of Adidogome. Sister Elisabeth, SMC and Father Augustine, MCCJ accompany the group. Misters Botri Ernest, Adjogble Benjamin, Akitibi Jean, Gnimassoun Jean Baptiste and the ladies Emilienne Avotonou, Keto Dorothy and Maria Dong are the candidates in formation. The formation has formally started already. CLM in the Province and the Chaplain are in touch with the group for the growth of the members. We (CLM) will organize from time to time some visits to them for sharing of experience. Visits in that sense have started already: Alberto (CC coordinator) and Justin (coordinator in the province) paid a visit to the group in November 2022. Another visit was paid on the 20th August 2023 on Sister Elisabeth’s invitation. The sharing was about The mission of CLM in the church and the society which went on wonderfully with the contribution of each one including Sister Elisabeth.
3. In Benin
In Benin, two aspirants manifested their desire to start the CLM journey via the CLM blog: Misters Ulrich Coffi and Aboe Lucien. Chats with them is conducted for now online. They will soon meet Brother Pascal, MCCJ who will plan, with them, the Chaplain and the CLM, the formation process.
We are grateful to the Lord who continues to sow in the heart of the faithful « a strong missionary drive for Christ to be witnessed and announced to those who do not know him yet ».
On July 23, 2023 we celebrated the sending of the Comboni Lay Missionary Cristina Paulek, in the community of Nossa Senhora Aparecida, in the Ipê Amarelo neighborhood, a Comboni parish in Contagem / Minas Gerais, where she was currently on mission.
It was an emotional moment of great joy and several reunions of the CLM family of Brazil.
Cristina is leaving for the Central African Republic after several years of missionary dedication in Brazilian lands. She began her work in 1998 in formation and then dedicated herself to the indigenous cause in Rondônia; since then she has developed various missionary works in the Association of Comboni Lay Missionaries, including as general coordinator and accompaniment of people in preparation to be CLM and to leave. Most of that time was spent in the Community of Ipê Amarelo, which now sends her on mission to other frontiers.
Present at this sending-off celebration were: Alejo Ramirez and his wife Terezinha Ramirez, Vanessa and Feliciano with their daughter Valentina, Adriana and Marcelo with their children Bernardo and Esther, Liliana and Flávio with their daughter Maria and also the founder of the Comboni Lay Missionaries in Brazil, Valdeci Ferreira, who on the occasion declared that he was surprised by Cristina’s decision, a joyful surprise. He also said that the dream of Africa has always been the missionary dream of the CLM project and that he thanks God for the gift of Cristina’s life and asks the whole community to be united with her in prayers.
After the Mass, we had a very special moment of farewell to Cristina, together with the community and all the lay people present at a lunch at the mission house, a moment of great joy and satisfaction. The lay couple Adriana and Marcelo declare that: “this was a very exciting moment that strengthens the bonds of the mission and gives a missionary sense to the life we live day by day, in our work in our base community, together with the education of our children Bernardo and Esther”.
The current coordinator of the laity in Brazil, Flávio Schmidt, who traveled 4 days from Maranhão to Ipê Amarelo with his family, highlights: “it is a moment of great joy for our group and for the movement as a whole. Cristina has already done a lot for the mission and now continues her missionary service in the lands of the heart of St. Daniel Comboni, together with the Comboni family present there. It is also inspiring that this sending out takes place on the day when the martyrdom of Fr. Ezequiel Ramín in Brazilian lands is remembered. Let us pray for her and for all the people who dedicate their lives to the construction of the Kingdom”.
We thank God for the gift of Cristina Paulek’s life and ask Him for His blessings so that this new missionary time in the heart of Africa may be a fruitful time of peace, joy and, above all, enthusiastic dissemination of the Gospel of the Kingdom.
We are Ilaria and Federica, two Comboni lay missionaries belonging to the local group of Verona (Italy). We are here to tell about ourselves, not so much because of what we do, but to share the joy and beauty of participating in the life of this world despite its contradictions and difficulties. We live to express how much humanity in the everyday can be found wherever we go, embracing every brother in the Living God: He allows Himself to be encountered precisely in the most marginalized, the loneliest.
After a missionary experience in Uganda, we felt a deeper call that made us want to orient and dedicate our whole existence in a missionary life.
By chance, or rather through various God-coincidences, we met Fr. Eliseo, a Comboni priest and superior of the Motherhouse in Verona. From this meeting began a new Combonian journey in which so many questions and so many previous pieces, began to take life, form and answer precisely in this Family with which we rediscover the values in which we strongly believe, of an outgoing and universal Church that welcomes everyone but especially the last.
In this journey of knowledge, of life, we are also very grateful to the brothers/sisters of the local group of Verona; with them the journey in the Comboni charism becomes concrete in many initiatives of sharing, of participation in the local missionary life, of growth on a human, spiritual, social and faith level.
All this led us to mature the decision to train for an upcoming departure in an international Combonian lay mission, and for this reason we now find ourselves completing our formation by sharing a few months in a Comboni lay missionary community called “La Zattera,” Migrantes Second Reception Center, in Palermo.
The community is made up of a married couple Tony Scardamaglia and Dorotea Passantino and a woman Maria Montana, who 15 years ago had the intuition to create and personally experience welcoming migrants. Our daily life in addition to being enriched by sharing with their presence is also shared with 8 immigrants who live here. Daily life, which for them is a continuous conquest in the field of recognition of rights, becomes for us a school of formation to different cultures, to many “sacred” stories that enrich our daily life and make it special.
Our service then for a few days a week is dedicated to Centro Astalli, a voluntary association for the defense of rights, integration and inclusion of non-EU immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers where all services offered to users are first and second reception. For both of these realities, words are really little compared to fully experiencing all aspects of them. It is difficult to explain in a few lines the beauty that we experience and share with them every day; surely we understand that it is a great gift that we are receiving.
We have been here since mid-April and every day we try to live and grasp the Lord who passes through the daily gestures, in their faces and in the stories of their history. We have to say that Palermo is really amazing us, it is incredibly beautiful but not only the city, especially the people who represent it. From the first day we arrived, the welcome, passion and desire to help sets them apart. There is still very much a sense of helping each other here, a sense of belonging to a family, a sense of always living with an open heart for everyone. The local people really do their best to make you love this land of a thousand flavors.
In addition to this, we also met and shared a few moments with the Comboni fathers who are in the parish located in the Santa Lucia area and with the Comboni sisters who instead live in the parish of Nicola di Bari in the heart of the Ballarò neighborhood.
Our days are never the same, they are always open to a thousand changes, to the encounter with the Other by living in the here and now what the day offers you in complete gratuity and fullness.
We would also like to share a reflection that struck us a lot and that we believe can accompany us on whatever we do in our lives. It is a phrase by Don Tonino Bello: “Give others the true image of the Church: that is, people who welcome one another, who sympathize with one another, who are not liars, who have the language of transparency, who do not disguise things or disguise their person.”
We experience more and more that in order to change this hostile time, it is necessary for each person, in his or her own small way, to always take a step toward each other even when it costs so much, but it is indispensable to always take a step forward. We always believe that sharing with others leads to achieve unthinkable things in everyone’s life, that is why our dream of going out on mission and sharing we want it to be everyone’s, and everyone in his or her own small way to feel a part of that Church that is Everyone’s in its simplicity, transparency and in welcoming everyone.
We believe in it so much and we will never stop witnessing and trying to live it so that life and dignity will not be denied to anyone.
Thank you to those who gave us the opportunity to be able to share what we believe in and live.
If you want you can follow us on social where you will find all the ways to contact us and also become part of the future mission, goodness and this beautiful extended Combonian family.
Until next time, with many unexpected news and let us always be led by the Spirit!!!!!! Peace and joy.
Ilaria and Federica
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