Africa – Page 96 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

Conclusions of the 2nd Meeting of the CLM in Africa

2 September, 2014 by Alberto de la Portilla

The 2^nd Continental Meeting of the Comboni Lay Missionaries took place in Kinshasa, DRC on July 21-25, 2014. The participants included five priests, two sisters and 18 lay people, among them the six coordinators of the French-speaking and English-speaking African provinces. They were joined by representatives of the Central Committee.

The objective of the Assembly of Kinshasa was to establish a concrete plan of action based on the resolutions of previous gatherings – the Continental Assembly of Layibi in 2001 and the International Assembly of Maia in 2012 – having as a theme: “Beginning with what we have starting from our reality.”

Keeping in mind the current challenges of our African reality, where God calls us to live our vocation as witnesses of his love, according to the charism of St. Daniel Comboni, at the service of mission, which is a gift from God, and after having reflected together, we have come to some conclusions that will allow each province to set up a plan of action. These are the conclusions:

1. Vocation

We want to encourage each CLM to live one’s vocation as it was defined at Layibi; to overcome life’s difficulties and to keep the commitments we have as fathers, workers and Christians, thus giving witness to our vocation.

As it was said in Maia, the CLM communities need to formulate processes that will allow the full development of the personal vocation of their members during their entire lifetime. This means setting up a program of prayer, retreats, sacramental life and revision of community life.

In order to facilitate a joint journey in our vocation as an International Family of CLM, we encourage the new groups to keep in touch regularly with the Continental and Central Committees, in order to get help from those responsible for the coordination. We believe that it is necessary to follow the common lines of the international organization.

2. Relations among the CLM

The movement holds one single vision. All must cooperate and work together at living a harmonious community life.

In order to facilitate the integration of new CLM in the local CLM groups, we must strengthen communications and networking between the sending group and the receiving group, the Central and Continental Committees and the MCCJ provincials.

In order to reach full integration, we invite the new CLM to take part in the group’s activities: ongoing formation, assemblies, retreats, administrative practices and financial contributions…

We encourage CLM working in countries where we have no local members to promote our vocation and form a local group.

3. Formation

As a movement of CLM in Africa, we are committed to make our formation journey together, in order to follow Christ according to the charism of Comboni who calls us to make common cause with the people to whom we are sent.

The decisions taken in earlier Assemblies guide us on this journey of formation, where we should keep in mind the following aspects:

The provinces must cooperate in the preparation of the various programs and materials for formation;
We must share programs and topics of formation between the provinces and with the Central Committee;
We must translate in all languages the formation documents.

4. Economy

We want to include the economy in our spiritual life, in order to live a life based on Providence. In this context, we ask the groups to include the topic of our relations with money in their formation programs, placing our stability and confidence in God.

In the process of our financial autonomy, we invite the various groups to form their members in the various aspects of finances, such as: development projects based on the local needs, the search for funds, compatibility…

Knowing that we all belong to this family of CLM, we are called to be responsible for and to support the group. In this sense, all the CLM must contribute to the fund of the local group. From this fund, the group in turn should contribute to the international common fund, managed by the Central Committee. We are also called to inspire the local Church and all people of good will to support our missionary activity.

In order to reach our financial autonomy, we invite the groups to start fund-generating activities such as in the field of agriculture, animal husbandry, pharmacies, movies, internet and photo-copying centers, production of local artifacts, talks, formation, dialogue and promotion of events…

It is not enough to engage in projects, but we are also called to give financial reports with great transparency (ledgers, bank accounts with more than one signature…).

5. Organization

5.1 Each Province must have:

A Coordinating Team made up of : a coordinator, a secretary and a treasurer. This team must send its reports to the African and to the General Committees.
A person in charge of communications (blog, Facebook, Twitter).
A Formation Team which must: plan and prepare the topics of formation; ensure the follow-up and the evaluation of the formation given.
Each group must have someone from those in charge of formation who will be networking with those responsible at the national level.

5.2 African Committee:

The Central Coordinating Team is made up of: a coordinator, a secretary a treasurer.
Its duties are:

Ensure communications with the Central Committee.
Call and organize continental meetings.
Provide for communications between the provinces.
Take care that the decisions taken at the various assemblies be implemented.

Second African Assembly of the CLM

1 August, 2014 by Alberto de la Portilla

The coordinators of the Comboni Lay Missionaries (CLM) of the African Comboni Provinces, together with the Comboni Missionaries in charge of this sector, held their second African Assembly on July 21-26 at the Comboni residence of Kinshasa-Kimwenza, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The gathering was called to reflect on the past and to plan future activities for the CLM in Africa.

This second African Assembly of the CLM was attended by 25 people: 18 lay people, 5 Comboni Missionaries and two Comboni Sisters, including those in charge of the central commission of the CLM, Alberto de la Portilla and Fr. Arlindo Ferreira Pinto.

The morning of the first day was given to two informational sessions in order to introduce the participants to the program of the assembly. One session was on the current Congolese situation and the other dealt with the missionary vision of Evangelii Gaudium.

The assembly opened with the presentation of the participants, moderated by the lay members of the African Commission of the CLM:Dieudonné Likambo (Dido), Congolese, Innocent Mweteise Karabareme, Ugandan, and Márcia Costa, Portuguese working in Mozambique. Also part of this commission are the provincials Fr. José Luis Rodríguez López, of Mozambique,and Fr. Joseph Mumbere Musanga, of Congo. Fr. José Luis is in Mexico and Fr. Joseph only attended the last few days of the assembly, due to personal commitments.

Following the introduction, tasks for the week were distributed.

Márcia Costa then recalled the principal objectives of the assembly: to deepen the topics of identity, formation and financial self-sufficiency; to review and plan the activities of the CLM at the continental level and in the individual provinces, keeping in mind the conclusions of the intercontinental assemblies of the CLM, especially the last one, held in Maia, Portugal, in December 2012 and the first African Assembly, held in Layibi, Uganda in 2011.

Words of welcome were given through a message of Fr. Joseph Mumbere Musanga (read by Fr. Enrique Bayo Mata) and by Sr. Espérance Mamiriyo Togyayo, provincial superiors of the Comboni family in Congo. Both of them stressed the value of cooperation between the two Institutes born of the same Comboni charism and the importance of prayer joined to missionary witness as a Comboni family.

Fr. Arlindo Pinto, coordinator of the CLM at the general level, brought the greetings of Fr. Enrique Sánchez, superior general, and of Fr. Antonio Villarino, assistant general, who follow closely the varieties of expressions of the CLM on the African continent. From his part, Alberto de la Portilla, member and coordinator of the central commission of the CLM, said that this assembly is an event of interest not only for the African CLM, but also to those of the European and American continents, who share a strong feeling of belonging with the CLM.

Fr. Jean Claude Kobo Badianga, a Congolese Comboni Missionary, presented a brief history of the DRC in order to help us better understand the socio-political and economic situation, drawing comparisons with the history and past and recent conflicts of neighboring countries (Angola, Congo Brazzaville, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, South Sudan and the Central African Republic). He spoke of the main obstacles to a stable and truly democratic governability of the DRC, such as tribalism, regionalism and corruption. He referred to the various armed rebel groups active especially in the North and North-East of the country and the national political complicity with international interests tied to the very rich natural resources of the Congolese underground. Oil, gold, coltan and many other precious mineral resources are at the basis of all the social contradictions, economic inequality and armed conflicts in the DRC.

The Catholic Church and hundreds of other churches and sects take different positions on the situation faced by the country, mostly in order to favor the status quo and only rarely in order to denounce the injustices that victimize the Congolese population from North to South of the country.

F. Jean Claude pointed out that, in this social reality in the DRC and other African countries, the CLM have a moral and Christian responsibility that must be present in their pastoral and professional activities.

Fr. Enrique Bayo Mata, a Spanish Comboni Missionary working in the DRC, presented the topic of mission based on the apostolic exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium” of Pope Francis. Following a general introduction to the document, Fr. Enrique stressed the vision of a new evangelization marked by the joy of the announcing and of witnessing to the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the many human peripheries of today’s world. He spoke of the urgency of a pastoral conversion in order to move the Church to come out of itself in order to become missionary, which means to place itself at the service of persons and peoples, especially the marginalized, those who have a greater need of this joy, of faith and of Christian life and those who re farther away from the values of the Gospel.

He added that lay people, intellectually and professionally formed, have a particular role in the pastoral process of evangelization, which aims at the transformation of society and at the inclusion of the poor in the active life of their country.

In the afternoon of the first day, Innocent gave a panoramic view of the CLM, mentioning that one always begins with small things in a restricted situation, by then growing and maturing if there is a clear vision of identity, of who we are, and if there is a concrete plan of action, of what we need to do, in a permanent context of listening to the Word of God, of prayer and vocational discernment, in the spirit of St. Daniel Comboni. Innocent’s presentation was followed by a long sharing section of ideas and experiences from various CLM situations in Africa.

In turn, Márcia Costa presented a summary of the first African Assembly held at Layibi, especially concerning the identity and the mission of the CLM. She pointed out that it is part of their vocation to get out of one’s own reality or country for a determined amount of time in order to get involved in missionary activity, and this is a life-long commitment.

The second day was given to the presentation of reports on the activities of the African commission, the central commission and the individual African provinces present at the meeting: Egypt-Sudan, South Sudan, Togo-Ghana-Benin, CAR, Congo, Mozambique and Uganda. Dido Licambo gave the presentation on the work done by the African commission since the gathering at Layibi up to the preparation of the present one in Kinshasa. Lberto instead presented the reports of the central commission and of the provinces that were not present, but that have CLM in their midst (Chad, Malawi-Zambia, Ethiopia).

One of the major problems that were discussed was the lack of communication between the African commission and the African provinces. This is due, in part, to difficulties arising from the different languages spoken in the provinces and the difficulty in accessing new technologies of communication, especially the Internet, in the vast majority of African countries.

On July 23 and 24 the conclusions of the assembly were reach through group discussions followed by plenary meetings, in order to be ready to answer the following questions: What is the relationship between the local CLM and the CLM from abroad working in your country? What challenges and strategies must we keep in mind in order to walk together? How can we share the contents of formation in different countries in order to have a similar basic formation across the continent? What is still lacking for us to be living our CLM vocation according to the conclusions reached at Layibi? What strategies must we adopt in order to live fully our CLM vocation? What strategies must we adopt in order to achieve self-sufficiency? How can we organize the CLM movement at all levels: formation, relations between CLM of different African provinces, vocation, organization and economy?

In the afternoon of July 24 and the morning of July 25, the lay people met on their own to prepare the conclusions, while the Comboni personnel met to examine their cooperation with the CLM and to share some ideas and experiences on how to help them and strengthen them in all the provinces.

Mention was made that this commitment was taken up by the Comboni Missionaries at the General Chapter of 2009.

On the last working afternoon, the conclusions were read, discussed and voted upon. The elections of the African commission followed: Dieudonné (Congo), Innocent (Uganda) and Márcia (Mozambique) were re-elected for another three years.

Finally, it was suggested that the next meeting take place at Lomé, Togo in July 2017. Place and date will need to be confirmed by provincial superiors of this sector.

Kinshasa

On Saturday, the group visited the botanical garden of Kisantu-bas Congo and the cathedral of Kisantu, about 75 miles from Kinshasa.

The assembly closed on Sunday with a meeting with the Congolese CLM of Kinshasa which took place in the provincial house of Kinshasa-Kingabwa. A Mass was celebrated with Fr. Joseph Mumbere presiding, and it was followed by lunch.

Arlindo Ferreira Pinto.

Just two tiny hands

13 July, 2014 by Maggie and Mark Banga

In today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 18:1-5,10,12-14), in response to the question “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?”, Jesus calls a little child over to him. He presents the child as a model of how we should approach and trust God.

A story from Rafael Gonzalez, a Comboni Missionary who worked in Kenya, came quickly to my mind after listening to the scripture reading:

“There were 120 starving, poor children in the mission nursery school in the semi-desert of Northern Kenya where I used to live. They received their only food each day from the school. At noon daily, the youngsters lined up to receive their dinner. Old tin cans, wooden bowls, or just two tiny hands, received a modest amount of porridge made from roughly ground maize flour boiled in water.

One girl, named Namoe, who walked very, very far each day to attend school, filled her little baked bean tin daily. Then, unlike the rest of the children (who consumed their food on the spot), Namoe left the mission property with her full container.

One day I followed her at a distance. On and on she walked, porridge in hand. A few kilometers away from the school, she met her mother and her younger sister, sitting alongside the road in the shade.

Namoe sat down. She placed the little tin of porridge on the ground in the middle of the group. And she shared her only food for the day with her mother and sister.”

What a rare moment of beautiful love Rafael witnessed that day. It speaks to me, in a special way, of Jesus’ words today: “Unless you change and become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

– Maggie, Mark, Emebet, Isayas and Therese Banga, Comboni Lay Missionaries, Awassa, Ethiopia

Walking with Comboni

10 July, 2014 by Alberto de la Portilla

Hello fellow travelers, peace be with you!

These days was held the MCCJ Assembly in the Province of Mozambique. As Comboni Family, the Comboni Sisters and the CLM, we were invited to attend the first two days. This allowed us to better meet our Province and the Comboni Missionaries who are working here.

Being celebrating this jubilee year of the 150th anniversary of the Plan of Comboni, we start with a reflection presented by Father Vitor Dias, former in the novitiate of Santarém, Portugal. How to dream, to experience, to announce: Christ, Comboni and the joy of the Gospel today, in our daily lives, in our actions?

Among us, we were sharing our feelings, our experiences of Christ in the mission, and so, as craftspeople made a mat, we were sharing this reflection. I leave here, knowing that many things remain to be said, a few points:

We are invited, as Comboni, to encounter God, without letting our own tasks to bind us, so that with Him, remain in this attitude: “I am here for whatever you want me”, so let ourselves, therefore, every day, inspire, love, excite, challenge, by the Lord of the Mission.

A meeting methodology, that allows us to live the Pastoral of Meeting with the people in an attitude of listening and dialogue. Daring to live the mission as a “salute”, a beginning to “walk” with the communities, so that in the informal meetings, we announce Christ and allow ourselves to be evangelized by the people who welcome us.

Will you remember the attitude of Pope Francisco that leaving the car went to the old woman? Will it not result of greater impact, greater proclamation of Christ, than a thousand words spoken into a microphone?

For that, we also must leave our “car”, strip us of what we are and have (training, lifestyle, personal experiences), to find one another, our community and the people that welcomed us, from the essence of what the people are. It is an invitation to an attitude of humility; find the other starting from him. A major challenge, isn´t it?

Plan of Comboni, reproduction or upgrade? We would say that the two attitudes. An attitude of reproduction in relation to the Plan of Comboni in what is its highest expression: the freedom of the human person. On the other hand one of the fundamental aspects of the Plan is the dimension of Today. A plan that it is not just paper, but actions that generate life, a life that we want in abundance. For this it is essential starting from what is already built and contextualize our reality today, where we are. We try to leave the “old” to start the “new” from a continuous attitude of discernment.

Which is the new attitude? What we bet? Building structures or build with people? Stone buildings or human constructions?

The challenge is released: Let us not become mere administrators of created structures but seek, invent new possibilities, without fear, with hope and confidence, not in an attitude of “who comes to give”, but who “comes to learn and walk together”.

Seize the wealth of diversity, so that we can set the pace for a mission in increased collaboration and mutual assistance with the people we work, so they are increasingly the protagonists of the mission and their lives.

We leave you with the question: “How do we incarnate the Gospel today?”

With the knowledge that none of us has it all and that no culture drains the Gospel, we walk with the fear of walker and the heart full of trust in the Lord of the mission, which calls us to face the challenges with confidence and optimism.

“Peace be with you” and “Do not be afraid!”

I wait for you in Mozambique 😉

Márcia Costa. CLM in Mozambique.

With our hearts in the mission

26 June, 2014 by Alberto de la Portilla

P._Enrique_Sanchez

“I do not want to hide from you here that when the Holy See entrusted this vast and difficult Mission to me, my conscience was somewhat uneasy, for I was aware of my limitations with regard to this enormous mandate that God has entrusted to me through His august Vicar Pius IX. Then I realized that with our forces we will never succeed in founding Catholicism in these immense regions where the Church, despite the efforts of so many centuries, has never been successful. So I placed all my trust in the Sacred Heart of Jesus and have decided to consecrate the whole Vicariate to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on 14^th September next. I have sent a circular letter for this purpose, to make it a great solemnity, and I have asked that admirable apostle of the Sacred Heart, Fr Ramière, to compose the act of solemn Consecration, which he has completed.”(Writings3318).

Dear confreres,

As the feast of the Sacred Heart approaches, I wish to share with you this brief reflection to help us prepare for this celebration, fixing our eyes on that open Heart from which our missionary vocation is born, to draw the strength we need at this point of our journey as heirs of St. Daniel Comboni.

On 31 July, 1873, St. Daniel Comboni wrote a letter to Mgr. Joseph De Girardin from which I have taken the text with which I am starting my reflection. I chose it because it seems to me to contain some elements that correspond to this moment of our life and our mission and merit some reflection on our part.

As in those days, it is not difficult to affirm that the mission entrusted to us continues to be vast and laborious; it often seems to us to be even more demanding and beyond our strength. This – and I do not delay in saying it – is of no help to living it out responsibly and effectively.

The past thirty years have seen remarkable developments in the Institute. In its process of growth, it became involved in many sectors, on many fronts and in many and varied missionary situations whose vastness is plain to see. The immense Vicariate of Central Africa has become even broader with our presence in four continents and such a variety of missionary commitments as to make us feel we are present on all the fronts of the mission. For some of us, this fact is positive and seems to fill the need of boosting one’s ego, making us think we are great missionaries because we bring the Gospel to the four corners of the planet and to all the suburbs of humanity, to use an expression dear to Pope Francis.

To its vastness we must add laboriousness, the complexity of a mission that is demanding, challenging and undergoing profound change due to the frenetic pace of change in the world and in society. The mission is changing without allowing us the time to understand how to react and the great danger seems to be the inability, on our part, to anticipate these mutations.

However, the laboriousness inherent in mission today becomes a challenge to our creativity, our ability to question and to dream so as to take new paths that make us walk in unknown and unheard-of lands – as we were told some time ago – inviting us to avoid living on what we have inherited, which may deceive us with the pretence of missionary omnipotence.

Comboni, in that letter of 1873, said he was uncertain as he knew his own nothingness. Today, we too are becoming more aware of our nothingness. Not only because the statistics show that the numbers of our personnel are decreasing. I do not think it is simply a question of numbers. I believe that this nothingness may make us understand that our forces will never be sufficient to respond to the demands of the mission and that the Lord does not think in terms of numbers.

Where, then, should we turn our gaze and from where shall we draw strength and light to live radically our Comboni missionary vocation?

I think that, today, our nothingness must be measured by looking at the quality of our lives, our coherence in carrying out personal commitments and the life-options we have made, at our ability to avoid being superficial in living out our religious consecration for the mission, at our complete willingness to go and serve the poorest, at our freedom to avoid being confused by the facile suggestions of our world: consumerism, appearance, superficiality, etc.

Without reference to anyone in particular and with no desire to rebuke anyone, I think that each of us must recognise his own poverty, his own fragility and his own limits and the temptation to make of the mission something that is useful to me rather than that reality which calls me to give myself unconditionally and without using pretence to make it become a “mission made to measure”.

I have the greatest admiration for confreres who live with great enthusiasm, dedication and spirit of sacrifice in situations of unspeakable violence and danger. They are the hidden stones needed – as Comboni reminds us – to build up the mission. It is in the light of this testimony that we must measure our response to the call we have received and to discover how great, strong and capable we may be in order to embrace the mission entrusted to us today.

Comboni says in all humility: “I thought that with our forces we would never succeed”. It was not an expression of discouragement but rather the conviction that he was carrying with him a mission that does not depend on us. “Then I threw all my trust upon the Heart of Jesus”. Perhaps, or, rather, without doubt, now is the time for us to experience this abandonment and trust, of faith and openness to the plan of God in our lives, and this does not mean hiding ourselves in a spirituality that takes us out of reality or absolve us from the responsibility of being involved in building up the Kingdom.

Trust in the sacred Heart of Jesus is still, for us today, the challenge that obliges us to get our hands dirty with the transformation of our humanity by means of our missionary service, not forgetting that the only true protagonist of mission is, and always will be, the Lord.

If Comboni willed to consecrate his Vicariate to this Heart, which is nothing else than the unlimited love of God for us and all those to whom he sends us as his missionaries, I think it is worthwhile living this feast by renewing our availability so that the Lord may carry out his plan for us, recognising that the mission that is born of his Heart has a good future ahead of it. It is for this reason that we must trust that the Lord will not disappoint us.

Happy Feast day to you all.

P. Enrique Sánchez G. mccj