Today our economy is threatened by the constant changes in the world, in fact, I can not explain what people think when they hear the phrase, THE NEW WORLD ORDER, all this makes people sometimes stop to help the disadvantaged in our present, others continue their lives as usual.
I am Beatriz Maldonado Sanchez, a Mexican who works in a school in Sahuayo, my city, where the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus arrived 70 years ago; at the moment I have a year that I am following the accounts of the international economy of the Comboni Lay Missionaries (CLM) movement, we have already been able to have a formation that helps us to have tools to generate the economic resources that we need in the CLM missionary project; but I still realize that nowadays the challenge is great, so I see that it is necessary to leave indifference to the situation and do simple things that make a difference in our economic reality.
As it was the case of the child Angel SUPPORTED me in the proposal to run a “CANDY STORE” for a month in the school where I work, to collect money and send it to the mission where the laity work; this is how we got 100 euros that we sent to the Central Committee so they can send to the group of Comboni Lay Missionaries who are in Mozambique and thus be able to support the activity of bringing food to the most disadvantaged.
Fortunately we also have people like Carmita Espinoza an Ecuadorian friend who knows our movement and she DONATED 20 euros for the international expenses that are generated, this is how we can join efforts when they are the work of different hands that contribute and their collaboration make that TODAY WE CAN BE COMMUNICATED, because they were placed in the international box that today is in crisis. So if you want to help in this project we invite you to get in touch from our official website or send a WhatsApp message to your servant at +52 5515 052 960, be part of this great construction for the Kingdom of God.
We can all give something that makes a difference and make history continue to be constructive in the face of challenging scenarios, all this is possible when you let yourself be conquered by the Love of God that can do anything.
PODCAST 2 – BEGINNING WITH SONG “Essa Luta è Nossa Essa Luta è do pouvo…”
Hi, we are Anna and Gabriel, and this is Ciranda, the podcast about our mission experience in Brazil. In which we try to bring you into the everyday life experiences and choices of those who live in this part of the world.
Edvar Dantas Cardeal lives in a small village, on the outskirts of Açailândia, in the hinterland of Maranhão. Unfortunately, he still does not own his history, because he lives where no one would want to live. When he arrived in Piquiá, he really liked the name of the place, an homage to one of the region’s largest trees with delicious fruit, The Piqui.
The community of Piquiá de Baixo (so called because it is located in the area lower than the next neighborhood) was created in the 1970s, when this part of the region was still called “the gates of the amazonia,” rich in vegetation. People planted and fished from the river that kissed the banks of the community. It was a little paradise in the memories of the inhabitants.
Then in the 1980s, the “development” came, which even changed the name of the village to “Pequiá,” an acronym for “PetroQuímico Açailândia.” Açailândia itself, or “Açaí City,” another tasty fruit typical of the region, has lost the meaning of its name, where progress and respect for life cannot coexist.
Next to Edvar’s house were installed 14 steel furnaces, a thermal power plant, and, to top it off, a steel mill. The people of Piquiá did not even know what a steel plant was and what this would mean for their health, their lives, and that they would become little more than gears in this industrial machine. Companies came with manifestos of jobs, jobs for all, but the intent was always and only to settle there making the most at the least possible price, deceiving the community and destroying the way of life of those families.
It is 2005, Edvar heads to the small house of the Piquiá di Baixo inhabitants’ association of which he is a member, it might seem like just another day but perhaps he does not know that from that day began the real struggle and resistance of his community! He was tired of seeing iron dust fall from the sky and settle on every surface he finds. He sees friends and relatives increasingly starting to get sick, strong respiratory complications, skin infections, constant headaches, intestinal problems, exhaustion…his much-loved village was falling apart more and more.
Edvar waited 60 days before he was able to pick up a pen and a blank sheet of paper, he does not know how to start writing this letter, how to use the best words to tell about his community, but he knows for sure to whom it will be directed: To President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva!
Soon after time, the response arrived, with directions pointing to routes and public bodies that the community should seek out. The people of Piquiá soon realized that alone, though many, they would not be able to fight against a boulder the size of a steel mill, so little by little they managed to weave around them a strong network of allies, who took the community’s grievances and demands to international institutions, such as the UN. Thus the struggle that was started by Edvar became everyone’s, the community of Comboni Fathers and the associations that over time joined in this great resistance.
Of all the mobilizations carried out by the community over the years, some were very notable, such as the one that took place in December 2011, when hundreds of residents marched and blocked the super road that connects Açailândia to São Luís. The blockade lasted longer than 4 hours in a prolonged protest with burning tires. Another noteworthy protest was the one that forced the Steel mills to pay for expropriation, when residents made a real cooperative effort and, divided into shifts, closed the entrance and exit gates of the industries for 30 hours.
“We must do the possible in the impossible” was what Edvar repeated to his people in Piquiá, and this struggle, of all people, paid off. Through all this mobilization, the approval of the urban project for the new neighborhood was obtained on December 31, 2015. Due to bureaucracy, which is one of the tools of oppression of the poor, the resources to start the work were not made available until November 2018, when work began on a new Neighborhood: “PIQUIA DA CONQUISTA!
Edvar Dantas Cardeal died on January 23, 2020, a victim of the same disease he was fighting. His lungs were contaminated with iron dust, and his struggle ended after more than a month in the intensive care unit, due to respiratory failure and other complications.
Edvar Dantas, who started this struggle, will never see its end, but his ideas and hope live on in the new people of Piquiá da Comquista!
BATE PAPO
The struggle, therefore, is still ongoing and its outcome is open to debate.
The community’s achievements have been significant, especially considering the disproportion in scale between the local community and the national/global industry. Perhaps this is why the claims of the Piquiá de Baixo Community transcend the local struggle and become a larger banner that exposes the other side of development agendas. At the same time that it reaches international levels (such as the UN), this struggle takes place on the ground of the community, in direct human relations, as so well expressed in the letter that Mr. Edvard wrote to his nephew Moisés: The beauty of this battle is that we do not get tired, and when there is a defeat we react with more enthusiasm and conviction: it is very clear that we are victims, there is an obvious injustice! The law cannot be wrong: we will be compensated! Sometimes even grandparents delude themselves and dream like an inexperienced young person…. After all, it is hope that sustains us. But I learned, Moses, that hope is a child who needs two older sisters: patience and wisdom.
“ONE DAY, YOU NEW GENERATIONS, WILL TELL THIS STORY IN THE NEW NEIGHBORHOOD: PIQUIA DA CONQUISTA!”
This is the ciranda song; it is danced in a circle, each member hugging his or her neighbors and moving to the rhythm by stamping their feet loudly. This song is a dance related to the Brazilian folk tradition.
Last Saturday we were able to enjoy a formation on Comboni Missionary Spirituality given by the Comboni Missionary, Fr. Vittorio Moretto.
A formation that goes through the central aspects of this missionary spirituality and gives us clues on how to live our missionary vocation as Comboni Lay Missionaries.
This is the ciranda song, you dance in a circle, each member hugging his or her neighbors and moving in rhythm by banging their feet loudly. This song is a dance related to Brazilian folk tradition.
Hi, we are Anna and Gabriel, and this is Ciranda, the podcast about our mission experience in Brazil. In which we try to take you into the everyday life choices of people living in this part of the world.
We start with a question that we have been asked on several occasions over the past year: what does it mean to leave with the Comboni Lay Missionaries? Who are they? And why specifically in Brazil?
We got to know the reality of the Comboni Lay Missionaries (CLM) after some word of mouth until we met this reality in the Venegono area. The LMCs were created following the charism of Saint Daniele Comboni. A priest, from the first half of the 1800s, who dedicated his life to the mission in ways that were new for the time and probably also for today, with the goal, as he said, of “saving Africa with Africa.”
Comboni Lay Missionaries carry on this spirit in the various missions around the world by accompanying the presence of Combonians on the ground.
To better understand this new way of doing and being mission, which is different from what we had known in the past, we did a 2-year journey of getting to know the CLM, at the end of which, together with our reference group, we were proposed to do a period of experience in an international reality. We had proposed ourselves for the mission areas of Latin America, and at the same time in the mission in Brazil the urgency had arisen to find a couple of volunteers who could carry on the presence of the Laity, already inserted for several years in the reality of Piquià. So, in May 2022, we left, leaving our little house in Cuneo in the direction of Brazil, in the state of Maranhão, municipality of Acailândia, specifically in the small neighborhood of Piquià. This 3-month experience allowed us to touch the Combonian way of life, to learn Portuguese, and to observe the reality of the various projects in which the Comboni family is involved. These are mainly 3 realities: the casa familiar rural (a school for children from rural areas), the reality of Piquià de Baixo (a community affected by pollution from steel industries), and the interior families living in the countryside, isolated and affected by the world of agribusiness (i.e., deforestation and monoculture of soy and eucalyptus).
The time spent in Piquià was a short time but enough to make us realize that this would be our home for the next 3 years.
The uniqueness of this experience is also the choice to do common life with the Combonis, who live in the house next to ours. Therefore, not only are we included in the parish and engaged in the various pastoral activities but we share with them prayer times, dinners and other moments of daily life, making choices in common. This is the Comboni family, where lay people and Comboni fathers do mission together.
Last October 13, 14 and 15 in the Parish of Our Lady Mother of the Good Shepherd, belonging to the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus (MCCJ), in the city of Cali, Valle del Cauca, the Comboni Lay Missionaries of Colombia (CLM), lived a very special meeting with the community; in this meeting we had planned important events; The first was to meet personally the members of the community who are in the process of formation, in the stage of discernment (because all our formation meetings have been virtual), this meeting in person this year lent us to share the feelings, meet the personalities and discover the desires of each of the members who are part of this lay process. The second moment was so that through the experiences of three kinds of missionaries in the world, we could get a better idea of what it was to discern in the life of each one of these persons. And last, but the greatest moment, was the great step taken by three CLM, who have been formed for more than 3 years in the service of the mission, choosing the last and the abandoned as our first option; Father Franco Naschinbene, spiritual advisor appointed by the MCCJ to accompany the CLM of Colombia, consecrated Yaneth Rocío Escobar, Felipe Eugenio Mora Parra and Patricia Rodríguez Cerquera, consecrated us as Comboni Lay Missionaries, so that from our lay life we would commit ourselves to focus our efforts and to give reason of the eternal love, in which we believe, through the liberating service to our poorest and abandoned brothers and sisters.
Our meeting began on Saturday, after prayer, with the support of Marco Farias, a MCCJ religious brother about to take his permanent vows. He shared with us from his life story, his moment of discernment and showed us how through daily life, God makes the call and sows the seed necessary to follow Him; Brother Marco, at this time, is in his period of preparation for his final vows, that after living two years of mission in South Africa, this fact revealed to us that formation and preparation should always accompany our journey to and from the mission. At the end of Saturday morning, we complemented our reflection with a time of meditation; we were in a beautiful park in the middle of the city of Cali, there we “eclipsed” trying to guide our discernment, helped by a navigation instrument, which was a compass, which symbolized our constant effort to seek God through the mission among the last ones.
Saturday afternoon was completed with two wonderful testimonies, which in spite of being different, complemented each other perfectly; Tito and Regimar, a CLM married couple of Brazilian origin who are in Mozambique, in one of the international missions of the CLM, shared with us their daily life and their joy of serving among the people, they showed us how to survive the “hurricane” (literal and symbolic) that is the change of life in a mission, how, day by day God is showing us the way and that even though we have estimated and planned our destiny, it is He who is giving us the guidelines to follow it; This married couple shared with us their joy of the option they have taken and that after two years in mission, they plan to renew for another two years.
Finally, at the end of Saturday afternoon, we received the testimony of Xoan Carlos, a Spanish CLM who has been living for 24 years in Brazil accompanying the indigenous communities of the Amazon and the peasant people of the State of Maranhão in the northeast of Brazil; here he is doing a mission from another point of “combat”, that of justice and peace, defending the rights of marginalized peoples, especially in the mining area of Açailândia and rebuilding the rural sector from the people themselves, through peasant homes. This testimony made us see the importance of the integrality of the mission and that although he arrived in Brazil for a three-year mission, God, in his infinite wisdom, extended it a little more, extending it to his whole life.
Marco’s testimony focused on the ability to decide for a life option in the midst of so many possibilities offered by the world and the testimony of Vladimir and Regimar and Xoan Carlos focused on two of the different services that as CLM we have for the missions around the world. To close the day Father Franco, gave us a retrospective of the process of discernment of Jesus, that from the biblical context, where he clearly identified the humanity of Jesus, the son of God in the midst of the world and the option he took to do the will of the father in the service of the poor and forgotten.
On Sunday morning during the main Eucharist, we made the act of consecration as CLM in Colombia, a consecration that has generated in us a serious and responsible commitment that also “stoked the fire and the ardor” of the longing for a missionary outing. Through the act of consecration, we were officially recognized as part of the great Comboni family and became Comboni Lay Missionaries of Colombia consecrated to the service of the last and abandoned.
At the end of the Eucharist we went out in groups of two to make some visits to families of the community, in these tours we found wonderful stories of the community, that trying to summarize them here would be a challenge almost impossible to meet; in these visits the community transmitted us mainly the joy of the personal encounter, but also gave us to know their own and different realities and how, despite so many difficult situations, they live the experience of the community serving their neighbors, their family, the parish or simply whoever requires it.
On Sunday evening we lived a moment for recreation, thanks to the animation of a trio of Andean music, offered as a detail of the host laity of Cali and the community; this moment was for the encounter with ourselves, a moment of evaluation and sharing the feelings of the whole experience.
This type of meeting and the fact of sharing personally with all the Comboni Lay Missionaries, help us to continue on our way, to continue preparing ourselves for the moment that will lead us to live our mission experience, whether here in the country, in Africa or wherever God has prepared our missionary journey.
Photo. Consecration Eucharist.
Photos. Moment of consecration as CLM.
CLMs consecrated in 2023.
From left to right in order, Patricia Rodríguez, Felipe Mora and Yaneth Escobar.
Photo. Retreat participants
From left to right in order, Father Franco Naschinbene, Jenny Trujillo, Father Alfred Mbaidjide, Brother Marco Farias, Yaneth Escobar, Luz Elena Silva, Hector Vela, Patricia Rodriguez and Felipe Mora.
By Patricia Rodríguez Cerquera, CLM consecrated from Colombia.
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