Mission animation – Page 2 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

Missionary vocation

7 February, 2024 by Alberto de la Portilla

As every year the NGO of the Spanish Church Manos Unidas organizes various activities to raise awareness and involve Spanish society in development aid. In this case it was a march against hunger where children and adults ran to finance several of the projects of this NGO.

Manos Unidas has been supporting the missionary work of the Church in the world for many years. And we, as Comboni Lay Missionaries, also collaborate with it by contributing through our witness in the places of mission in various acts of this campaign as in the marches, in the hunger dinners or in the parishes where the campaign is carried out.

In this case also the program Witnesses Today of the regional television (Canal Sur) was present and took the opportunity to spread the event and make an interview with us that was broadcasted last Sunday.

We leave you today with this interview where we do a little tour on our vocation and missionary trajectory. (The interview is in Spanish)

Greetings to all of you

Alberto de la Portilla, CLM

Celebrating our Missionary Vocation

15 December, 2023 by Alberto de la Portilla

Last weekend took place in Granada the national meeting of the CLM of Spain. It has been a very rich meeting in which we have had the opportunity to do missionary animation in many parishes of Granada and the province presenting the CLM Movement and our missionary vocation.

Moreover, this year our meeting had a special color since, besides celebrating our missionary vocation, we have celebrated as Comboni Family the missionary life of one of our most veteran companions of the Movement: Mª Carmen Polanco. Throughout her missionary life, Maria Carmen has always been a gift from God for all of us. We are fortunate because Mª Carmen began her life journey a few years ahead of us and so, we have someone to look up to. We are grateful for the value of having her as a reference in our own journey as CLM and we thank God for her shared life and dedication to the mission.

Mª Carmen, may the Lord continue to take care of you and bless you every day as He has done so far.

CLM Spain

Comboni feast

6 October, 2023 by Alberto de la Portilla

St. Daniel Comboni Parish, in Guriri, Diocese of São Mateus, in the state of Espírito Santo, began the feast of St. Daniel Comboni on Sunday, October 1. The celebration began with the blessing of the image of the patron saint containing the relic of St. Daniel Comboni, followed by a procession from the residence of Bishop Emeritus Aldo Gerna to the parish church. The image of St. Daniel Comboni was carved in wood especially for the first Comboni parish in the world by the sculptor Werner Thaler, from the city of Treze Tílias, in Santa Catarina.

Fr. Raimundo Rocha

Provincial of the Comboni Missionaries of Brazil

Comboni Family meets in assembly to plan missionary animation

19 September, 2023 by Alberto de la Portilla

From September 7 to 9, the Comboni Family in Brazil gathered at the provincial house of the Comboni Missionaries in São Paulo for an assembly on Missionary Animation and Vocation Promotion, attended by sisters, brothers, priests, Comboni Lay Missionaries and representatives of the Comboni Spirituality Groups (CSGs).

This meeting aims to share the work being carried out by each missionary presence and to review the Plan for Vocation Animation and Accompaniment of the Comboni Family drawn up in 2017, as a way of rearticulating joint action in this post-pandemic context.

The meeting included a formative moment led by Bishop Juarez Albino Destro, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Porto Alegre, who shared about Vocation Animation in today’s context, the map of vocations and where to focus energies and actions.

Based on the insights and inspirations from the training, we reread and revised our plan, followed by the planning of activities until 2024.

It was an important moment of building and reflection as a Comboni family, asking for the inspiration of the Spirit of mission and the intercession of Comboni, raising up new vocations for the Church.

We count on everyone’s prayers for missionary vocations.

Flavio, CLM

Missionary sharing from the first month in the Central African Republic

11 September, 2023 by Alberto de la Portilla

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.

Cristina Paulek, CLM