Brazil – Page 25 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

“Take off your sandals, for the place where you stand is holy ground”

3 May, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

This land is called Pau-Brasil, Irajá, Comboios, Caeiras, Olho d’Água, indigenous villages in the state of Espíritu Santo.

I spent nine days with great intensity, important days, beautiful, full of friendship and sharing, we as Comboni Family (priests, religious, laity, scholastics) and the Tupinikim indigenous people, people of this holy land.

The simplicity, humility, sharing, hospitality, are words that I remember celebrating those days.

The availability, tenderness of the families we met, visited, lived, brought forth the beauty of true and sincere principles that value the encounter with the Other and the sacredness of knowing how to welcome.

The Tupinikim people, as all indigenous peoples, fought for the recognition of the land that was always theirs and they lost with colonization, besides losing the right to be resident.

Indigenous land, holy land.

A fight that began in 1979 until 1981 for a territory increasingly exploited by another colonization, a foreign multinational, supported by the lobbies of political and economic power.

Many attempts were made by the police with guns and threats to the Tupinikim in order to leave their land. Many were the processes, finding letters and documents to prove it was an indigenous land and finally in 1993 came the land demarcation and recognition that protects the indigenous territory, their communities and villages.

The struggle for life, fight for rights, respect for a culture that is being lost and resist the increasingly dominant homogenization that wants to treat everyone as objects and consumers.

Threats ended and the law has confirmed a truth that has always existed, now is the time to recover a territory exploited by a (foreign) industry that planted eucalyptus trees at each site by market interests, for the manufacture of cellulose.

The problem is that these trees grow faster and take water from the land, impoverishing the soil and occupying the space of the native forest.

When the weather due to drought does not help, everything becomes difficult and complicated for those who live from agriculture.

Restart, caring for the earth and its fruits, through an indigenous tradition that always respect the Pachamama, living with essentials, is a beautiful lesson of life that indigenous taught us.

In this land we were welcomed, we felt at home and there is no more beautiful thing for a foreign pilgrim that being accepted and taken in hand.

Comboni Family: Father Elias, Father Savio, Sister Josephine, Emma, Wedipo, Cosmas, Fidel, Grimert.

Emma Chiolini (Italian CLM in Brazil)

Visit the House of Mission Santa Terezinha, Comboni Lay Missionaries

16 April, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

My trip to the house of Mission of the Comboni Lay Missionaries (CLM) take placed between 4^th and 10^th of March of this year. I was fortunate to meet the Comboni Missionaries in August 2014 in Piquiá, Açailândia (MA) and this visit to Ipê Amarelo, was certainly inspiring to my vocation, find more lay and watch their actions and activities is indeed the way to clarify the dedication of some years of my life to the mission.

“Here I come, with pleasure, to do your will Lord” (Ps. 39)

I attended the meeting of the Pastoral Care of Children, the paint workshop for women, youth group, disciples of Emmaus, catechesis and the Way of the Cross in the Community. Activities that I experience in my community San José de Egypt, Parish of Our Lady of Fatima in Imperatriz / Maranhão.

In the days when I was in Nova Contagem, Minas Gerais, I could see projects, as the Combonis House Justice and Peace, the space called “Hope” in the community of Our Lady Auxiliadora – ACCSA and even from a little further the project of the Industrial School of Carapira in Mozambique, through our conversations with Lourdes.

Undoubtedly, every detail has marked this experience, especially the affection of all, the sharing and the prayer requests by Lourdes to each member of the communities we passed, it is important for this phase of decision.

“I slept and dreamed that life was joy. I awoke and found that life was service. I served and I found happiness”.

Raylene Bananeira

Emperatriz-Maranhão

We cannot bury our missionary spirit!

5 April, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

On March 15, we met in the city of Curitiba to continue the meetings with people interested in the Comboni missionary lay vocation of this region. At this second meeting, continuing with the theme of vocation and mission, we had the opportunity and commitment to pray together on the birthday of St. Daniel Comboni. United with all the Comboni Family we dedicated to pray and reflect on his life and our commitment to the mission for humanity.

It is inspiring to see that Comboni did not measure efforts to meet Christ in the face of African brothers, traveled great distances, helped encourage the Church and make visible where life was threatened. His testimony managed to attract many, he was to meet the people, he put himself on the way, used all the resources available at the time and was not afraid of difficulties.

To reflect on the importance of the missionary call, we also saw the documentary “Mission and ecclesial communion” of the Missionary Campaign of 2010.

The Mission also nowadays requires an urgent and courageous response. Mission beyond our borders and Missionary Animation, two essential points of the vocation of all baptized. These moments are important to rekindle our missionary call and help to create missionary awareness in the Church, with the hope that more people awaken to this vocation

We also share how the organization of the CLM in Brazil was born, a brief overview of these almost 20 years of existence. It always good to remember what the Pope Francis recommended in the message of the missionary month “remains of the great urgency of the mission ad gentes, which are called all members of the Church, because this is, by nature missionary: the Church was born in “exit”.

Let us continue walking, being a small sign, sharing life and in the defense and promotion of Life for everyone.

CLM Brazil

“I was in prison and you came to visit me”

23 February, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

Among the various pastoral activities of the parish of Santo Domingo, led by the Comboni Missionaries in Nova Contagem, it is also the prison ministry, in charge of 15 volunteers, including the Comboni Lay Missionaries, which are part of the parish.

Every Tuesday and Wednesday morning, the group meets to visit the pavilions of the maximum-security prison of Nelson Hungria, located in Nova Contagem, with about 2,000 inmates. The meeting is at 08:00 in the square next to the prison.

The prison situation in Brazil, as in other parts of the world, suffers from high overcrowding due to prison system with little attention to the recovery of prisoners.

Prisons in Minas Gerais, for example, can receive 32,000 prisoners, divided into 144 prisons; actually, there are 54,000 inmates in the different units. This situation only gets worse the living conditions of prisoners, with a further object of punishing instead of re-educate and re-socialize, with serious violations of human rights.

The action and commitment of the group of Prison Ministry, composed mainly of women, is to believe in a work of promoting human dignity, respect for human rights, and the overcoming of the limits of the current prison system in favor of a model that allows effective recovery and reintegration of the individual.

The most important of our pastoral activity is the testimony of a God who does not discriminate anyone, in a place marked by contempt, prejudice and violence, making ours the words of the Gospel: “I was in prison, and you came to visit me “. It is the pedagogy of Jesus, method, model, who heads the way of this pastoral, recognizing the face of God in every person, including the prisoners.

There are many challenges and difficulties in our pastoral activities, such as excessive bureaucracy that often delays and complicates our work, controls, restrictions on visits, limited permissions; but with courage, this small group of volunteers are facing difficulties. This has allowed in 2014, to create two groups of catechesis in prison. And it was possible that some inmates, who had requested, receive the sacraments.

For this are fundamental the moments of ongoing formation that we make at the end of the month, to have a dedicated space of programming and training, allowing prison pastoral agents learn the actions that will help to improve prison visits and the relationship with the inmates. In this also helps the training conducted by the diocese.

In short, this would be the work of the prison ministry. A simple action, giving hand, encountering real faces, listening to the life stories of those who are on the other side of the bars, to bear witness to the dignity of every human being, because as the Gospel says “by this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (Jn 13, 35.).

Emma Chiolini, Comboni Lay Missionary

Child Pastoral today

31 January, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

This work is done in Brazil voluntarily by 218,000 people participating in this network of human solidarity that unites faith and life. Thanks to this volunteering Brazilian reality has changed. To this story of success were incorporated different complementary actions, such as income generation, literacy, community playgrounds, food security programs, mental health, etc.

This large network of human solidarity has spread throughout Brazil and today is present in 3,616 municipalities, accompanied by approximately 79 thousand 500 pregnant women and more than 1 million and 630 thousand children. The national average is 12 children per leader, more than 90% of community leaders are poor women.

“THE WORLD WILL NOT BE BETTER IF RICHER, BUT IF EVERYONE GROWS IN EQUALITY” (Zilda Arns)

Thanks to the team of 189 sector leaders, who enthusiastically and with great fellowship throughout 2014 made possible the Child Pastoral in the area of Renza in the parish. Santo Domingo, Icaivera and Jesus Obrero.

By Maria de Lourdes, Lay Comboni Missionary