We leave you with a new video about San Daniel Comboni.
Prepared by the Comboni missionaries in Brazil, it tells us about the historical Comboni and the challenges that our founder’s life continues to launch today.
Saint Daniel Comboni (1831-1881)
Brazil
The Women, visible sign of the love of God
I write today with great joy, remembering that we have already been here in Brazil for nine months. It has been a full experience of growth and of spirituality. Every single day we experience a meeting with the Lord in different marvelous and inexplicable ways that suggest a tender planning on His part. A little at the time we have discovered the longings God was planting in the heart of St. Daniel Comboni. In each one of our days we have discovered Divine Providence and the knowledge that what we are living is nothing but God’s will.
Much of this has been thanks to my connection with the women through many different activities. At Comboni House I have been meeting them personally. Every Monday about 40 or 45 women come to learn crocheting, paint on cloth, and carry on various activities. Right now, I am teaching them free hand drawing. This started because several of them wanted to do their own drawings in order to paint them on cloth. Earlier in the year, I was not able to recognize them all, but now I already know several by name and have a closer relationship with some of them. It was interesting how it all started, because at the beginning I only had five students in it, and they kept on working even though I had to leave them, because painting needed more help. However, at the end of the semester there was an evaluation and many of them were interested in learning how to draw. It was a great gain, because now I have 24 women who are striving to learn free hand drawing. For me, it is a form of confidence, learning to give each one her proper space, welcoming them each Monday, being mindful of what they need, thus creating an atmosphere of mutual trust, resulting in this desire to be together. Today, I am happy with this little step I have taken. It took time, but now I understand what the missionaries have been saying, namely, that it takes at least one year to get to know the community and, especially, to earn the people’s trust. I am also working with a group of women in Ype Amarelo where we started with three women and now we have seven. We have made candles, engaged in printing activities and we are now starting with embroidering. I was very impressed by the response of the women of St. Hedwig. This group started after an evangelization mission our pastor held to animate the community. Now there are 16 women attending faithfully to learn crocheting. Later on, we will move on to painting and drawing.
The striking thing about these communities is the relationships of friendship that arise among the women and the good it does to their personal development. Many of them suffer with problems related to their children, spouses and work. Alcohol and drugs are very much part of these families’ life and “craftwork” is their space where to feel strong, stop smoking as one of them said, to curb these desires and turn from bad habits to art. These activities also help some of them to earn a little extra income, because what they have is not enough to live on. Certainly, I would love to have something extra to buy material and help them more, because for sure some have the means, but for others it is difficult even to make a little contribution. Now I feel closer to them, and it is easier for me to better understand their decisions, their joys and their sorrows because we live in the same neighborhood, in the same conditions, under the same influences and social problems. I know that, in the midst of all this, there is hope and the smiling faces of these women, enlivened as they rise out of depression, as they find this creativity within themselves and feeling valued and useful, is beyond comparison. Without any doubt, God is present and allows me to know him in this way, in his chosen daughters, the beloved for whom he came into the world.
These are valiant women fighting against the current, in a society that marginalizes and judges, but where the Lord makes their faces shine with his light.
Mission changes our lives, and it is changing mine making me be more compassionate with those who suffer and making me understand that there is a reason for every decision for better or for worse. It is only necessary to let go of our skin and live under someone else’s in order to share the same feelings, the feelings of Christ.
A warm embrace. Keep on praying for us, that our family life may accomplish God’s will.
Ana Cris, CLM
Vocational and missionary week in Balsas, Brazil
Some members of the Comboni Family (a priest, a brother, a sister and laity of the Group of Comboni Spirituality), most of them originally from the diocese of Balsas, held a week of missionary and vocational animation in Balsas (MA) in the parishes of Our Lady of Perpetual Help and of St. Anthony. There were several celebrations with beautiful testimonies, moments lived in a family atmosphere and missionary passion. The activity was also held in view of the Great Parish Missionary Week that will take place in November in the same city, and also marked the celebration of the 25th anniversary of consecrated life of Sr. Maria do Socorro Ribeiro, a Comboni Missionary Sister of Balsas, which was celebrated on the Feast of the Assumption of Mary and Day of Religious and Consecrated Life in Brazil. The missionary and vocational week was an initiative of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish and was carried out with the commitment and participation of the Group of Comboni Spirituality together with some invited religious and missionaries.
Fr Raimundo Rocha, mccj
We cry with Mother Earth tears of mud and blood
No to impunity!
The Churches and Mining Network cries with the victims of the socio-environmental crime of Brumadinho, Minas Gerais (Brazil)
We are writing today from this violated community, which we know well and which we visit again today, after having celebrated with it several times in the walk, life and resistance to the expansion of mining.
We also write from the many Latin American communities affected by the arrogant violence of extractivism, today silently embraced the little Brumadinho, in tears.
We are in solidarity with the families of the victims and the communities of faith, who will have the hard challenge of rebuilding hope. We also join the Archdiocese of Belo Horizonte, which with the words of the Gospel defined the tragedy as “abomination of desolation”, referring to the “absurdities born of the gains and contempt for the other, the truth and the good of all ”
We continue accompanying and advising the churches involved in the territories injured by mining and in all open conflicts between extractive companies and communities (Only in Brazil there are more than 70 Dioceses where these conflicts were mapped).
Impunity consolidates crime
The company VALE SA, together with BHP Billiton, is responsible for 19 deaths and pollution of the entire Doce River basin, on November 5, 2015. The same damage was repeated three years later, with a trace of much more serious deaths, is the confirmation of the incapacity of management and prevention of damages, disinterest and criminal behavior.
This responsibility also involves the State, which grants licenses to extractive projects and should monitor them to guarantee the safety and dignified life of the communities and the environment.
The State’s responsibility is twofold, because impunity and the lack of complete and enough reparations for the victims of the Navy crime was one of the main conditions that allowed the new crime of Brumadinho.
Revolving doors
Embraced, the capital of mining companies and political power, facilitate the installation or expansion of large extractive projects, minimizing the conditions and licensing rules thereof. The “Córrego do Feijão” itself, whose deposit of toxic waste was broken, obtained in December 2018 an environmental license for the expansion of 88% of its activities. In the Council of Environmental Policies of the State of Minas. Only the National Civil Society Forum on the Management of Hydrographic Basins (FONASC) voted against the expansion, denouncing “insane” mechanisms to reduce the demands in the licensing of large mining projects.
Disasters caused by irresponsible behavior of companies allied to the public power can not be called “environmental accidents”.
Organized civil society but not listened
Since 2011, the population of Brumadinho and the region are demonstrating in an organized way against the mine, its impacts and threats. The FONASC, in December 2018, wrote an official communication to the State Secretary of the Environment, requesting the suspension of the licensing of the “Córrego do Feijão” mine. The International articulation of those Affected by the Vale denounced in the Shareholders’ General Assembly of the Vale, in April 2018, “the dangers of the repeated process of reducing expenses and costs in its operations”, making explicit mention of the various waste deposits.
Those responsible for these crimes cannot claim justifications for ignorance. On the contrary, in the name of progress and the profit of the few, there is a systematic disqualification of different voices.
With energy, we echo the words of Pope Francis in the Encyclical Laudato Si ‘: “in the debate, local inhabitants must have a privileged place, those who question themselves as to what they want for themselves and their children and can take into consideration the purposes that transcend the immediate economic interest “(LS 183).
Make it flexible until it breaks
The newly elected President of Brazil, in response to the pressure of the person who financed his campaign, expressed the plan to make environmental control and licensing as flexible as possible. He criticized the alleged “environmental fine industry”; his government stripped powers from the Environment portfolio, suspended contracts with NGOs committed to defending the environment, extinguished secretariats that worked for public policies against global warming.
Also the previous governments facilitated the uncontrolled expansion of mining in the country, promoting the National Mining Plan and reformulating, by decree, the Legal Framework of Mining.
Recent events demonstrate, violently, that these policies are a collective suicide and a threat to the lives of future generations.
This growth model is unsustainable and lethal; You cannot blackmail people who need jobs to survive in regions controlled by mining, without guaranteeing safety, health and social welfare at the same time. The problems are not solved “only with the growth of the profits of the companies and of the individuals”. “It is not enough to conciliate, in a medium term, the care of nature with financial income, or the preservation of the environment with progress. In this issue the average terms are only a small delay in the collapse. It’s simply about redefining progress. ” (LS190,194)
False Dialogues
Frequently, companies and governments appeal to the mediation of conflicts with communities through “dialogue”. They seek, even, the intermediation of the churches, to offer these processes greater credibility.
Also, institutionally they have invested in extrajudicial mediations and terms of behavior adjustments to make more effective and quicker the repair of damages and environmental violations.
The lack of implementation of mitigations and reparations, the neglect to prevent new disasters and the repetition of irresponsible and criminal practices confirm that: this type of proposal is not a true dialogue. It is a strategy of companies to seduce public opinion, guaranteeing a kind of social license to pollute, reduce popular resistance and avoid big capital can be converted to the values of sustainability and the common good.
More than this “dialogue”, asymmetric and disrespectful, we trust in the democratic rules of environmental protection and the rights of the populations, as well as in authorities that effectively monitor their respect and punish those who violate them. We support a Binding Treaty for Business and Human Rights, at the international level, and a responsible, effective and prompt judicial response for those who bet on impunity or, at the most, a slight financial incidence of rare fines applied.
Socio-environmental crime is not an accident!
From Brumadinho and from Latin America, January 26, 2019
Happy New Year from Brazil
For the Glory of God we have been here a month and a half. We thank ALL the people we know, who consequently are a part of our lives and of this project of life, whom we constantly place in the Lord’s hands.
By the grace of God we have been adapting within the Brazilian community, especially in Ipê Amarelo. Above all, it never ceases to surprise us how God already was here, namely, God always takes the initiative and no one is ever excluded from him, as we realize it over and over just by our being here, so far from the earthly place where we were born and lived, but where others live: my brother, my brothers.
During this time we joyfully celebrated the 60th birthday of Lourdes Viera. She has been a tireless CLM and charter founder of the CLM in Brazil for about 20 years ago.
For us as a family having her is a great blessing, she is our Vovó, especially to the children. She has been introducing us with great energy and with great charity to this community and to mission life in general.
We also celebrated Christmas (Natal in Portuguese) with great joy and enthusiasm because it was our first Christmas away from our home and our family. By God’s grace our children spent it in a normal and happy way. God’s gift is the fact that our being together is our greatest strength.
Gratefully, the CLM family of Alejo and Tere de Ramirez, who have provided a lot of inspiration for us over the years, decided to spend Christmas here at home. In fact, we had not known them up to now, because we had only seen a picture of them four years ago. They, too, have been part of the CLM for about 20 years, and even though they could never leave their country, they did it in the way God asks us to do it on a daily basis: moving from within themselves towards the others and for the others as a family, like many others who have not been able or have chosen not to leave. They are a beautiful couple with three daughters, and they have worked in the spiritual formation of many CLM and are an example of Christian life to be followed.
We are grateful to God for the coming of the New Year when we had the opportunity to spend it at home as a family, which is what we personally like to do. It gave us time to talk about all the blessings we have received from God our Father during the year that just ended. The best moment was to be able to exchange blessings, each one of us personally to recognize ourselves as a united family blessed by God now and forever. You may ask? Are the children aware of what is happening and of what they are doing? As it is for many things in life, this is not an exact science, but we are together and, from Lucia, the smallest, to Esteban, who is the most aware, each one is valuable, important, worthy, loved, and they know it and this is how we feel towards them: Our most cherished treasure!
Our local pastor here in Brazil, Fr. Agustinho, already said it during the last Sunday of the year, dedicated to the Holy Family: “the family is the best hospital, the best doctor, the best school, the place where we live in love, a place we have in common.”
We wish you all a Blessed Beginning of this Year of Humankind and a blessed life, as we entrust ourselves to the hand of God and to your prayers. We say good-bye to you with the blessing that our Father gives us through the Church every year to enable us to start anew:
“The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up his face upon you and give you peace.” (Num 6:24-26)
The Camey Family, CLM in Brazil
