Comboni Lay Missionaries

Lay missionary experience of Ilaria Tinelli and Federica Rettondini in Modica

LMC Italia

“What is essential is invisible to the eyes.” We wish to begin with this beautiful phrase, taken from The Little Prince, because it perfectly sums up what has affected us most in these months of life lived to the full here in Modica.

After spending a few weeks in Verona, attending the course at the Unitarian Center for Missionary Formation (CUM) and receiving the mandate from the Bishop, we returned to this land so rich in life and passion, which we missed so much. We spent a few days passing through the community of Avola, for testimonies in the parish and in some schools. Here, too, we touched with our own hands so much generosity, warm welcome and gracious kindness, but above all the “thirst” for a God who is fullness of life and truth, and also that great desire that each of us carries in our hearts to always be sister/brother, or “home,” to someone.

When we returned to Modica, as always, people welcomed us with open arms, and we became part of the various activities going on, such as the Italian school, in the morning, with the immigrant women and, in the afternoon, with the children at the “Crisci Ranni” educational worksite and the boys here at the Badia.

Well beyond the activities that take place, the beauty of this experience lies precisely in seeing and especially feeling that people are really generous and beautiful, always ready to dedicate themselves, with all the love and passion they possess, to assist others and create an extended community where everyone feels called to make common cause and feel like one family.

What struck us in a special way-and was felt by us as a “great gift”-were the young people we met in the schools, during catechism classes, especially in preparation for Confirmation. Amazing were the high school youth (in particular, those from the Liceo Classico and Ginnasio in Modica Bassa), capable of delivering us so much “beauty” made of values, hope and joy. In them we sensed a great desire to live a “big life,” to spend themselves in something great. But they need us adults to learn to listen to them, being close to them and accompanying them.

There were some moments in class when they “gave themselves up” in a profound way, and we understood how gently and carefully their lives need to be guarded. How often we adults, on the other hand, judge these young people, “labeling” them perhaps even just by the way they dress. Instead, they have their own world of expressing themselves, and they need to be helped to “bring out” what they have inside.

Here is a fact that struck us. One evening, we went for a little walk in Modica Alta, to see the view, to contemplate the beauty of creation. Arriving at the locality “Il Pizzo,” we saw a group of 20 to 30 boys laughing and joking. We approached them and slowly, very gently, greeted them and then chatted a little with them. Nothing special, mind you. But great was our surprise when they thanked us for the simple fact that we had had the courage to greet them, to stop, to share our lives with them, and also to listen to them. They told us, “Usually, if not almost always, we are ‘criticized’ and kept away.”

With this few lines, we wish to invite you to have the courage to “get our hands dirty,” to dare in our lives. Life is worthy if we spend it for the last! And when our path encounters obstacles, let us continue undaunted on our way, knowing that the Lord is always present and ready to guide us. The important thing is not to give in to any compromise of any kind, but to continue faithfully on “the way of the Lord.”

Thank you, guys. You are the “beauty of this life.” And we are certain that “beauty” and “created fullness” will always remain indelible in the heart of each of us.

Thank you, Modica, for making us experience six super-dense months of fullness. We will always carry you indelibly in our hearts!

With affection and deep gratitude,

Ilaria Tinelli and Federica Rettondini

Happy New Year from Kitelakapel

LMC Kenia

Greetings from Kitelakapel!

We hope you are doing well. We are doing great. We are starting the new school year. Linda and Pius return to schools to teach life skills. I spend more and more time in clinics. I am patiently waiting for my official work permit. Our pastoral work, the Why Blue Sky project supporting teachers, also return to the regular schedule.

Last 3 weeks, the turn of the old and new year, we spent on the road. Just after Christmas, which we spent in Kitelakapel, we went to the Turkana region inhabited by the tribe of the same name. We went there together with Guilia and Hani who visited us again 🙂 . We went to visit two Comboni missions in Lokichar and Lodwar. Built from scratch by the Comboni Missionaries. In the middle of nowhere. In Lokichar there is a church, a school and a center for children with various disabilities. In nearby villages there are further schools built by the Comboni and handed over to the people. Similarly in Lodwar. Schools, chapels, health centers. From people to people. Created with love to serve others.

On Monday we returned from Nairobi. We spent a week there, completing various formalities, but also getting to know numerous projects such as a children’s center in the middle of the largest slums in Africa, run by our friend from the CLM community, or the Kivuli Center street children’s home founded by the diocesan priest Kizito. As an international community, we also participated in the annual meeting of the Kenyan CLM group. Together we summed up 2023 and planned 2024. During the meeting, new leaders were elected and at the solemn Holy Mass, one of the candidates, Mercy, officially became a lay Comboni missionary. It’s amazing how much we feel part of this group.

We have various ideas in our heads and planned workshops. The new year promises to be intense. We will keep you updated on what’s going on with us.

Marzena Gibek

Comboni Lay Missionary –Kitelakapel, Kenya

CFR: school of resistance

LMC Brasil

Today is Monday, one of the busiest days, another week begins again at Casa Familiar Rural, the agricultural school where I am helping out. Off we go: 7:30 a.m. me and Nete, the school’s cook, start doing the week’s shopping for the 30 first-year students, 8:15 a.m. shopping done. 8.30 am I call the driver of the two buses to confirm transportation for the students, some come from very far: they leave home at 6 am, only after 3 hours by bus they arrive in town.

In the square in front of the market everyone gathers, they come from various parts of the region, and at 10 a.m. a bus picks up the boys and goes to the school.

The Rural Family House is located in the middle of a mixture of “countryside and forest.” To get there you’ll have to pass through the working-class Jardim de Aulidia neighborhood, a cluster of houses all looking the same scrolling across the hilly horizon, a sardine quarter just outside Açailandia. After passing it you will find yourself in front of a mud house, as we would say, built with biomaterials, finally surrounded by greenery.

Now you continue along the long unpaved road, on either side flow pastures as far as the eye can see in an up and down between the hills of the valley. Halfway along the road the landscape changes, on the left there is cultivation in Agroflorestry System while on the right there is an area of living forest, still intact, until, at last, in front of you is the Casa Familiar Rural.

Don’t imagine a big school like the ones we are used to; a maximum of 35 to 40 students a week study here. It’s a friendly environment, very rustic, it’s a “schoolhouse,” with dormitory spaces, two classrooms, the large dining hall with wooden tables, the library, the computer room and the lab. And then all around green spaces managed in various ways: vegetable garden, fruit garden, bee house, medicinal plants, chicken house and pigsty. All in function of study and learning.

The students in the house are young people between the ages of 15 and 19 who are doing “ensino medio,” which lasts three years and is the equivalent of our high school with an agricultural focus. These young people come from the countryside, from farming families where they are labor force as well as children, which is why the school uses what is called the Pedagogy of Alternation, since during the year they constantly alternate a week in school and a week at home, so as not to take away an important support from the work in the fields, but also because through these years of study the goal is for the boys and girls to take home new techniques and improve the family agriculture by developing it from an Agroecological perspective.

A special feature is that there are 10 hours of lessons each day: basic subject and technical subjects: from mathematics to animal husbandry, from bovine-culture to history. An intense program between practice and theory, a school that becomes family because of all the time spent together, and becomes home because everyone has responsibilities to keep this place clean by doing their part.

But this is not just a school like any other: it is a school that symbolizes RESISTANCE. In fact, here it is necessary to resist in order to survive what is called AGRONEGOTIUM, that is, those big producers of Soja and Eucalyptus, who with their monocultures invade, devastate and undermine the preservation of the environment, incentivizing deforestation and the use of agrotoxics through aerial dispersion. A tool that is killing in small doses communities still trying to live off the countryside and family farming.

Those who choose to come to this school choose to give a different future not only to their family but also to their community. The goal is to train these boys and girls to care for their land through innovative agricultural methodologies capable of adapting to the environment without destroying it.

Anna and Gabriele, CLM in Brazil

National Assembly of Italian Comboni Lay Missionaries (LMC) in Venegono Superiore.

LMC Italia

The Comboni Lay Missionaries (CLM) of Italy gathered in Venegono Superiore, Varese, from 8th to 10th December last, to celebrate their National Assembly. About 80 participants came from Palermo, Lecce, Florence, Bologna, Verona, Milan and Venegono Superiore. Also present were two Comboni missionaries (Father Eliseo Tacchella, provincial councillor, superior of the Mother House in Verona, and Comboni missionary contact person for the CLMs-Italy, and Father Alessio Geraci, from the community in Palermo), a Comboni Sister and a Comboni Secular Missionary, Mr Alberto de la Portilla, from Spain, Coordinator of the CLMs, Mr Marco Piccione, from Italy, member of the Central Committee, and Father Arlindo Pinto (contact person of the General Council of the MCCJs for the CLMs, in Rome, and member of the Central Committee).

During the first two days, five round tables were held on some specific topics, during which the CLMs had the opportunity to share their views on the sense of belonging, the specific service of the laity, and the rules for sending CLMs on missions to countries other than their home countries, the national and international organisation and structure of the CLMs, and collaboration within the entire Comboni Family.

On the afternoon of Saturday, 9th December, they were able to meet online the CLMs engaged in missionary service in Brazil, in Kenya and in Castel Volturno, in the province of Caserta in Campania.

After a prolonged exchange of views, the participants in the assembly decided to adopt the guidelines for formation approved in their international assemblies into their formation plan, as well as to support dialogue with the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, in view of the recognition of their CLM Movement as an International Association of the Faithful (IAF) by the same Vatican Dicastery.

At the European level, it was decided that the CLMs will continue to promote the ‘Stop Border Violence’ campaign against torture crimes committed at our borders.

Next January, the current coordination group (currently made up of two representatives from each local group, which is so large that their meetings are difficult) will meet to elect a new coordination group of only five members, who will be responsible for coordinating the activities of the CLM Movement and animating the joint initiatives decided on the various topics discussed.

The Assembly concluded with the celebration of the Eucharist, presided over by Father Arlindo. After the communion, the ceremony was held to send Ilaria and Federica, who are leaving for the mission in Carapira, Mozambique, and Julia, who will go to Kenya for a short time of missionary service.

Original in https://www.comboni.org/es/contenuti/115835

Essa Luta is Nossa (This is Our Fight)

LMC Brasil

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.

YOURS EDVAR DANTAS, PRESENT!

Anna and Gabrielle, CLM in Brazil