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One day, those who attend the Comboni Sisters’ nursery school at Bethany and the many other thousands of Palestinian and Jewish children, who now live in the shadow of the wall of hatred and division, will also dwell in concord and peace – without walls and barbed wires. This is, at least, our dream and our hope.
Fr. Vincenzo Bordo, a missionary who manages a soup kitchen and three Family-Houses for boys in Seongnam (close to Seoul, South Korea’s capital), is quite happy with the kind of life he has been leading for twenty years. It is his daily routine that fills him with joy: to beg out of love; to bow in front of the poor; to extend a caress to the boys before sending them to bed; to praise the Lord before falling asleep. Amid the daily endeavors, these simple gestures give him serenity.
The kindness and compassion that Sr. Brenda Imdeke showed towards a woman, defaced by a terrible illness, conquered the hearts of Muslims in a little town in Kenya. Kind gestures have the power to make wonders.
Murder, rape, torture, pillage and displacement of a large number of civilians in Darfur, have turned this Sudanese region into a hell. Portuguese Comboni Missionary, Fr. Feliz da Costa, who has been working in Sudan for 20 years – the last three in Nyala – is a privileged witness of the crimes committed in the territory and of the people’s longing for peace.
A Korean-born Maryknoll priest recognized as an “honorary” Seon (Zen) Master maintains that Seon is a way of praying rather than a religion, and Jesus was a “grand Seon master.” According to Father Kim Alfonso Hak-boum, who has been learning and practicing Seon meditation in Japan and Korea since the mid-1990s, Seon can also be an effective tool for inculturation and interreligious dialogue.
“Islam transformed the life of Charles de Foucauld,” Brother Ventura said. His own, no doubt, equally has been deeply affected by his long sojourn in the prayerful isolated Christian enclave in the middle of the Algerian desert, a sort of cathedral shaped by Nature.
In Seongnam, a commuter community close to Seoul, the South Korean capital, Fr. Vincenzo Bordo is a very well-known figure. Indeed, it is not easy not to know him, because he is a sort of a “street missionary.” His goal: to feed the hoboes, drunkards, ex-cons, the poor and elderly, the mental cases, the disabled – all of those who have no permanent place of their own and are “street people.”
Sr. Mary Batchelor celebrated 60 years of religious life, 60 years dedicated to God and to the education of thousands of young people in Australia and Africa. Her students in Mapuordit, Southern Sudan, call her Mary, our diamond.
Filipino missionary Bro. Simplicio Buena Soliven has been working in Marsabit, a mission in the Eastern Province of Kenya, 250 km from Ethiopia, since last year. As a social minister, he is happy to share his faith, talents and knowledge with the Kenyan people, especially prisoners and youth. He is doing exactly what he wanted. And says: “I am in love with Kenya.”
Death of parents, poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence, family breakdown and lack of love push children to the streets. It is estimated that there are over 60,000 street children in Nairobi. The Koinonia community has a few rescue centers for them where, from April up to December, they learn to live as a family and prepare to be welcomed in one of their houses in January of the following year. One of them is in Kibera slum.
