Italy – Page 4 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

ECONOMY, LAND OF MISSION

8 September, 20214 September, 2021 by Alberto de la Portilla

A new perspective on Europe and the world for the Comboni Lay Missionaries

Saturday 11 September 2021, 10h am – 1h pm (central Europe)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-_1UzNojFeGAiUMch1wFJQ

On the 20^th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York, the Comboni missionary and journalist Fr. Giulio Albanese MCCJ will talk about civil economy in the webinar “Economy, land of mission “, promoted by the European Coordination of Comboni Lay Missionaries. The meeting, in line with the “The Economy of Francesco” project, will be broadcast in live streaming, with simultaneous translations in English and Spanish, on Saturday 11 September from 10 am to 1 pm on the youtube channel of the Comboni Missionaries:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-_1UzNojFeGAiUMch1wFJQ

The recording of the meeting will later be available on the same channel.

Starting from a geopolitical analysis of the European continent, Fr. Albanese will reveal the mechanisms of the shadow banking system, one of the main causes of the increasingly unbridgeable gap between the North and the South of the world, further exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The missionary will then reflect on the theme of solidarity, understood as the co-responsibility of citizens, believers and non-believers, in combating social exclusion and in taking care of the “res publica”, or the “common home” of humanity. The reference to the words of Pope Francis is clear, “ours is not an era of changes, but a change of era”.

Hence the crucial question: is it possible to reconcile business with the demands of the common good for a more equitable, just and supportive society?

The answer is yes and this is the key message of the webinar: appeal to citizenship, and in particular to the Comboni Lay Missionaries, so that we take care of the common goods together with local administrations, an invitation already sanctioned by the Italian Constitution in the last paragraph of the art. 118, based on the “principle of subsidiarity”.

“What to do then in practice, thinking above all of the needs for development and progress in the peripheries of the planet?” – asks Fr. Albanese – “It is clear that the missionary world must take the field, evangelizing even in the economic area. We need consecrated persons and lay people who are able to study new strategies as hoped for by Pope Francis in the historic summit of young economists in 2020 in Assisi ”.

Hence the really concrete proposal, from the point of view of the real economy, of an innovative model that involves civil society, the so-called “social business”. The objective of the model, conceived by the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus (1940), Bengali economist and creator of modern microcredit, is the creation of enterprises with social purposes to be conceived and run as real companies, but with the imperative of social advantage instead of profit maximization. Keywords? Sustainability and the concept of shared wellbeing, never exclusive.

The meeting will continue in private form the afternoon, from 5 to 7 pm, as a laboratory for the European and extra-European Comboni Lay Missionaries, invited to reflect on the teachings of Fr. Albanese and the real opportunities to put the Yunus model into practice.

Father Giulio Albanese MCCJ (Rome, 1959) is a member of the Congregation of Comboni Missionaries and a journalist. He directed the New People Media Center in Nairobi and founded the Missionary Service News Agency (MISNA) in 1997. Author of 15 books published by houses such as Feltrinelli, Einaudi, EMI Editrice Missionaria Italiana, Messaggero di Padova, he collaborates with numerous newspapers and radios, including L’Osservatore Romano, Avvenire, Radio Vaticana, Giornale Radio Rai, apart from previous collaborations with BBC, CCN, Radio Svizzera Italiana. He has taught Missionary Journalism and Alternative Journalism at the Pontificia Università Gregoriana in Rome and has directed the missionary magazines of the Pontifical Mission Societies (Popoli e Missione and Il Ponte d’Oro). In 2003 the Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi awarded him the title of Grand Officer of the Italian Republic for journalistic merits in the South of the world. Since January 2018 he is also editor-in-chief of the Amici di Follereau magazine. He is a member of the Committee for charitable interventions in favor of Third World countries of the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI) and host of broadcasts and forums on issues related to Africa and the South of the world. He carries out his pastoral ministry in the Regina Pacis parish of Fiuggi.

Comboni Lay Missionaries (CLM)

They are men and women of all ages – individuals, couples and families – inspired by the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth and the charism of his disciple St. Daniel Comboni (Limone sul Garda, 1831 – Khartoum, 1881). They live off their work and set up choices and lifestyles at the service of justice and peace and respecting the environment. They are part of the Comboni Family together with the Comboni Missionary Sisters, the Comboni Missionaries and the Comboni Secular Missionaries. Along with them, they are committed to carry out the Comboni project “Regenerating Africa with Africa” (1864) through periods of voluntary service in the South of the world (“missio ad gentes”) or where they live and work every day (“missio intra gentes”). CLM are present in Europe (Austria, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain), in Africa (Benin, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Togo, Uganda) and in the North, Central and South America (Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, United States).

Dialogue and Social Friendship

10 May, 2021 by Alberto de la Portilla

The diocesan center of the diocese of Bologna organized a meeting on the VI chapter of Fratelli Tutti in connection with Emma Chiolini (CLM in Brazil).

Here is the interview with her testimony (in Italian)

Where the Spirit blows

19 March, 2021 by Alberto de la Portilla

He is no longer “the same person who left” in 2017, Simone Parimbelli, 38 years old, Comboni Lay Missionary of the Diocese of Bergamo, who returned in September 2020 from Mongoumba in Central African Republic. Because, as he says with light in his eyes, “the mission opens the heart and the horizon and being outgoing changes you: from the conception of the missionary style to the relationship with time and space, with oneself and with God”. It happens when you are “in close contact with the sufferings and joys of the other” and live for three and a half years in the heart of the tropical forest, in the diocese of Mbaiki, in Mongoumba, where the Comboni Fathers have been working with the AKA pygmies for more than 30 years.

“It seems absurd, but these people are not recognized by other ethnic groups and have no access to education or health care; enslaved by the Bantu masters and without a birth certificate, they are ghosts in the flesh,” says Simone, denouncing a country that, despite many riches, lives in a condition of colonialism and misery.

“Being next to them, you become a door to knock on”, continues Simone who, as a layman, has sometimes “managed to enter into the concrete lives of people much more than priests, divided between the administration of the parish and the Eucharistic celebrations over a vast territory”. When he arrived in Mongoumba, he proposed several activities of animation, transforming for example the school of Ndobo, close to the pygmy camps, in an oratory, like the one of his parish of Osio Sopra, where growing up, at a certain point, he asked himself “what is the use of my faith?”.

From the question about vocation to the answer to a call, the step is, so to speak, short: it’s 7,500 kilometers along with everything else. But “when you have perhaps intuited what you can be in the world and for the world, you have to prove it”.

So, the diocese of Bergamo, Bishop Francesco Beschi, the Missionary Center and the international movement of the Comboni Lay Missionaries give him “the possibility and the grace to live this experience: 1,300 days of fragility and brotherhood” in a young Church “that knows how to generate children in faith and where joy prevails”.

Sent and welcomed: in a continuous cycle that, in the future, perhaps, will push him elsewhere, where the Holy Spirit blows, which, in Sango, the language of the Central African Republic, is called Yingo-Gbya.

(By Loredana Brigante, POPOLI e MISSIONE magazine. February 2021)

1300 days of…

7 January, 2021 by Alberto de la Portilla

…FRAGILITY

The parish of Saint George in Mongoumba runs a small dispensary to help the structural deficiencies of the Central African health system and the non-existence of the welfare state. Here the Comboni Lay Missionaries carry out the service of welcoming life, “to make common cause with the most abandoned”, “to embrace the whole human family…, to hold in our arms and give the kiss of peace and love to our unhappy brothers and sisters”, would say St. Daniel Comboni. Newborns, children of all ages, young people, mothers, fathers, elderly people, find in the small dispensary a point of reference, a home more than a hospital, where they can be recognized as human beings, listened to in their pain, cared for in their suffering. Every day, day and night, at all hours, we met the mystery of our human fragility, we experienced human limitations and we returned to the great existential question: “Where is God in suffering and pain, when we need Him most??”. Even doing the best of our abilities and possibilities, sometimes, not to say often, we lost the battle with life, we had to surrender to the awareness that we were not omnipotent. There is a human limit that we cannot overcome, we are fragile, however… faith remains… in other, Other with a capital O, and when we touch the bitterness of defeat only tears and prayers to God, Father of all humanity, remain…

…BROTHERHOOD

St. George’s Parish in Mongoumba runs a school to support the Central African educational system, which is cancelled every time war breaks out, in order to guarantee a minimum of education for the new generations. St. Daniel Comboni writes: “…I think it is more useful to invoke the action of the missionaries for the education of the young blacks of both sexes in various institutes… this education must aim to prepare in the pupils to become the future apostles…”. As a Comboni Lay Missionary, I have tried to transform the school into a small oratory, especially the one in Ndobo, 5 km from the center, near the pygmy camps. The oratory is a house of regeneration, a space of brotherhood, even without having mega-structures, and mixing school lessons with dances, manual workshops, games, music, the school of Ndobo, a small red brick building surrounded by forest, had become a place of social promotion, human growth and evangelization. The transformation in oratory style worked, “…the Plan works…”, being present every day, and almost all day long, working on time and not on space, created relationships and bonds, we became a big family, we all became brothers and sisters, and we were able to talk about Jesus, our Brother, and to witness God, Father of all humanity: “an infinite myriad of brothers and sisters belonging to our same family, having a common Father up in heaven” …

…FRAGRANCE

The day began early: 5.30 am wake up, just enough time to wash my face, have breakfast and then I leave, at 6.30 am already out of the house on the road to Ndobo, on foot, with the backpack, the radio for dancing, the football bag, frequently with the computer to watch movies, on Monday with the box of clean aprons to start the week. While people were having breakfast on the side of the road, before going to work in their fields, I walked through the village and after about 50 minutes, I arrived at the school and we started the day by playing ball, dancing and jumping with the music blaring, blasting through the forest. If during the week I went to see the children, on Sunday they would take the opposite route, they would come to the parish; and if it rained, they would arrive all muddy, soaking wet and shivering with cold. We had time to wash our hands, faces and feet, to put on clean shirts and shorts, to receive from Cristina (CLM from Portugal) talcum powder and a splash of perfume, and off we ran to church, leaving behind us a trail that spread through the air. After Mass, we had breakfast together with hot milk, cocoa and cookies, the place was filled with the sweet aroma of chocolate, then we continued with music, dancing and games: “it was an attempt to find a probable way in order to begin a measure of regeneration” would say St. Daniel Comboni, it was our look of closeness and proximity to make present the joyful and tasty fragrance of Jesus, our Brother, and of God, the Father of all humanity…

Simone Parimbelli, CLM Mongoumba (CAR)

Mission Sending Mass for Emma Chiolini

24 June, 2019 by Alberto de la Portilla

On June 13, at 8:30 in the evening, the diocese of Bologna, with a Mission-sending Mass celebrated by Bishop Zuppi, sent me off as a Fidei Donum missionary. This second tour Ad Gentes was born within the diocesan mission center, to which I belong, that decided to start a partnership with the diocese of Salvador, opening new ways of cooperation between the two dioceses. This pleased me immensely because it would make it possible to open a new window on the Latin American reality, in this case on Brazil, for the missionary center that is currently only involved with the diocese of Mapanda, Tanzania. It is also an “unusual” sending for the CLM, because this is not a commitment of the CLM or of the Comboni Missionaries, but rather the result of an external cooperation which could produce new openings in the future. I will continue to belong to the Comboni Family as a CLM, keeping my contacts and ties with its organization, with the various groups and the central committee that approved my choice by stating that “mission belongs to God and not to human beings.”

I will be part of the Community of Trindade, that welcomes street people, and I will be involved in welcoming and listening to the people who are welcomed, besides taking part in workshops and services, including a street newspaper published by the Community. It will be a totally new, hard, concrete and authentic experience, including sleeping on the floor, sharing common street problems arising from marginalization, dependence and resurrection but, as Comboni says, lived with daring and perseverance in the journey. And I add: with feet firmly on the ground and eyes gazing up to heaven. “I wish you to wear a dress that will never be fashionable; I wish you strong hope in your feet, Pants of commitment and two-color sweaters: The color of freedom and the color of co-responsibility. And wear a beautiful hat, the one of knowledge and of a critical sense. We must dress up this way all the time.” (Fr. Luigi Ciotti)

Emma Chiolini, CLM