Category: Missionary Vocation

When the Russian young woman, Raissa Oumansov, began her studies at the University of Paris, she was seventeen years old and the year was 1900. It was a time of great scientific achievements and the Sorbonne was one of its centers. Marie and Pierre Curie, for example, had discovered radium there only two years before. It was natural, therefore, for Raissa to turn to the sciences for the answers she sought. To her dismay, however, she soon discovered that her professors were either strict materialists or simply did not pose for themselves questions concerning truth and meaning. Hope began to wane in her heart. Yet, she also continued to await “some great event, some perfect fulfillment.” The first step toward that fulfillment came when she met the man who would become her greatest companion during her earthly pilgrimage: Jacques Maritain.  Almost from the moment that Jacques Maritain introduced himself to Raissa, they became inseparable. They were both students at the Sorbonne, he a year older than she, and they both were searching for the meaning of their lives. Jacques Maritain came from a family that embodied the values of the French Revolution. He discovered, however, what many others of his generation would one day recognize: the agnosticism that was their heritage was too thin a soil for the sense of justice that burned in their hearts. To withstand the winds of tyranny, justice needs deep roots and a rich soil in which to sink them. It was during his search for that rich ideal soil that Jacques encountered Raïssa. In the friendship that grew between them, they undertook the search together. In the midst of their distress, Jacques and Raissa reached a fateful decision that would shape the rest of their lives. While strolling through Paris, they both agreed that if it were impossible to know the truth, to distinguish good from evil, just from unjust, then life was not worth living. In such a case, it would be better to die young through suicide than to live an absurdity. They were spared from following through on this because, at the urging of their friend, Charles Péguy, they attended the lectures of Henri Bergson at the Collège de France. Bergson’s critique of scientism dissolved their intellectual despair and instilled in them “the sense of the Absolute.” Then, through the influence of Léon Bloy, they converted to the Roman Catholic faith in 1906. God, in His great mercy, led them to Christ, to baptism in the Catholic Church and to the consolation of the Eucharist. In reading Bloy’s great novel, The Woman Who Was Poor, the Maritains encountered the greatness of the Christian saints. “What struck us so forcibly on first reading Bloy’s novel was the stature of this believer’s soul, his burning zeal for justice, the beauty of a doctrine which, for the first time, rose up before our eyes,” they later confessed.  Upon meeting Bloy and his family, they were even more impressed. His poverty, his faith, his heroic

Arakan Valley, in North Cotabato, in the island of Mindanao, is a place of immense beauty and natural wealth. Traversing fertile land from Cotabato to the boundaries of Bukidnon and Davao City, Arakan and its adjacent areas of sloping hills and steep mountains have contributed to making Mindanao the ‘Land of Promise’ for migrant settlers and wealth-seekers.  The Manobo tribesmen have lived since time immemorial in Arakan and its lush forests.  They worshiped Manama, their supreme deity. Their shamans had guardian spirits and offered rituals to the spirit world. Their warriors fought battles to defend their communities, that is why the Manobo honor their tradition of tribal struggles. Across this landscape are signposts to remind them of important events in the lives of their heroes. These events are incorporated in their epic “Ulahingan,” which continues to be chanted today, and which depicts a brave people resisting any attempt to dominate them. But while the Manobos were fierce, harmony and mutuality were maintained in the tribe through customs and laws. The pre-colonial period allowed them to establish their sense of identity, vis-à-vis the neighboring tribes. When the colonization set in, however, the Manobos’ life-world drastically changed. In the 1950s, peasants began arriving in Arakan hoping to own a piece of land they could till. They sought ways to get the Manobos to allow them to take over small plots in exchange for sardines, cigarettes and other goods from the lowlands.  An increasing number of the Manobo started retreating to the hinterlands. But they soon found out that there were no more forests, and many were forced to live in peaceful co-existence with the settlers. As more Christian Ilonggo reached Arakan, religious congregations sent missionaries to minister to them. The first to reach Arakan belonged to the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Then the members of the Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions (PIME), coming from Italy, took charge of the pastoral needs of the area, in the midst of the tensions between tribal farmers, ranchers and miners.    You and I are one In the morning of October 17, 2011, at about 7.30, Fr. Fausto Tentorio, an Italian missionary belonging to the PIME group and parish priest of the Catholic community of Arakan, was about to board his car to attend a meeting of the clergy in the capital city of Kidapawan, thirty kilometers away, when a lone assassin with a gun equipped with a silencer appeared out of the blue and shot him eight times. Fr. Fausto collapsed on the ground and the gunman, wearing a crush helmet, casually walked to a motorcycle waiting near the Mother of Perpetual Help Church compound and sped away with a companion. “I rushed to where he was and I saw him on the ground, blood oozing from his body” Leonardo Reovoca, a former parish worker and now a councilor for Arakan testified. Fr. Tentorio, 59 years old, was declared dead at the hospital – the third Italian priest and the third member of the PIME

Maurice Kagimu Kiwanuka, who was recently nominated minister in President Yoweri Museveni’s Cabinet, says he was 11 years old when his father, Benedicto Kiwanuka, was shot twice in the head by Amin himself on September 22 1972. In an interview with Ultimate Media, Kagimu reveals how his father was followed by soldiers, picked up and taken to military cells. He explains it vividly as if he was driving with him when the soldiers chased his father’s car from home to the High Court where he was arrested and later killed at Nakasero State House. The woes that led to Kiwanuka’s death started after he presided over a case involving an English man, one Stuart who was found in possession of printed materials which condemned Amin’s government over human rights violations. All the judges feared to handle the case and as Chief Justice, Benedicto Kiwanuka decided to take it on. “My father decided to handle the case and he released the white man after the trial,” says Kagimu. Kagimu is convinced that the release of Stuart was the main cause of Kiwanuka’s death. After two days, as he was leaving his home in Rubaga, four Peugeots appeared following him but he outran them. In the evening, when Kiwanuka reached home, his friends told him to flee to Rwanda but he refused. The following day, when he went for work at the High Court, the soldiers grabbed him from his car at the Court’s entrance, took him to their car and drove him to Makindye barrcaks. “While he was still at Makindye cells, the President of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, called Amin and told him to release the Chief Justice,” Kagimu says. Then Amin allegedly fabricated a document stating that Tanzanians had abducted Kiwanuka but the Ugandan Army had rescued him. In this way, Amin was trying to cover up Kiwanuka’s unlawful detention. He ordered Kiwanuka to sign the document but he refused.  The soldiers picked Kiwanuka from Makindye, took him to Nakasero State House, and told him to sign the document in the presence of Amin. He again refused. When the judge refused, Amin told him, “Don’t you know I can kill you?” “I do,” Kiwanuka responded, “But I cannot deceive the world.” “It was then that Amin removed his pistol and shot him twice in the head,” says Kagimu who was told about his father’s predicaments by family friends who were working with Amin. Amin remained in power in Uganda until he was overthrown by Tanzanian forces in 1979. He and his troops were blamed for the deaths of nearly a half–million people. Kiwanuka’s body was buried in Luzira in the same grave with then Governor of the Bank of Uganda, Joseph Mubiru, who was also allegedly killed by Amin. Little is known about Mubiru’s death but Kagimu says he was killed after he refused to print more money as President Amin had ordered. Kagimu says that there are plans of exhuming the remains of his father but there is yet

Last October 29, the long life of Archbishop Emeritus Henry Karlen came to a conclusion at the age of 90 in Zimbabwe, his country of adoption. Thousands of Catholics attended his funeral in Bulawayo. Known as the “Father of Bulawayo Diocese” for his work of building the church in Matabeleland, he was laid to rest at Athlone cemetery. Three cabinet ministers joined the many mourners who also included bishops from other churches.  The three ministers were Mzila, Moyo and Coltard, who had been particularly close to Archbishop Karlen as a witness of the Gukurahundi massacres. Mzila, a liberation war veteran who was jailed by the Rhodesian administration, was arrested last year for attending a memorial service for the victims of the 1980s massacres. As a child, Moyo watched one of Mugabe’s inner circle burn down his parents’ home. Education Minister Coltart, a lawyer by profession, was a director of the operational arm of the Legal Resources Foundation in Bulawayo and one of the main movers and authors of the “Breaking the Silence” report about the massacres.  The provincial superior of the Marian Hill Missionaries, Fr. Peter Nkomazana, said, during the funeral, that the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe had lost one of its longest–serving leaders. He said that Archbishop Karlen had been passionate about the Gukurahundi atrocities perpetrated by the people in power at that time, atrocities that he had disclosed to the world. This is why, even in his last days, he still said that he could not understand why Africans were killing each other. Moreover, till the last days, he had again passionately cared for the livelihood of the poor and for the people living with HIV and AIDS. Unsurprisingly absent from the funeral was President Robert Mugabe, the more than octogenarian former freedom fighter, still in power after more than thirty years, who had defined Archbishop Karlen as “the sanctimonious prelate” at the time of the disclosure of the massacres.   Troublesome way to independence  In the 20th–century, the sixties saw the coming of age of black Africa with the declaration of independence of the majority of its countries. Some were handed independence on a golden platter by the colonial powers, like Uganda, where transition to independence from the British rule happened peacefully. Some fought bloody guerilla wars for it like Kenya, with the Mau Mau rebellion. Generally, it was the presence of white settlers that made the passage difficult and slow, given the vested interests of the powerful minority. That was the case of Zimbabwe.  The nation of Zimbabwe, formerly the British colony of Rhodesia, is a landlocked country in southern Africa, bordered by Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia. In 1965, the colony’s white minority refused the British plan of black majority rule as a requirement for independence and unilaterally declared Rhodesia independent. World opinion and a prolonged civil war forced Rhodesia’s white dominated government to accept a limited form of black majority rule in 1979.  Guerilla attacks, however, continued until late that year, when negotiations

At the consistory of May 15, 1879, John Henry Newman was created a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church. Leo XIII, who had recently been elected pope, personally desired to confer the dignity of cardinal on the well-known English convert whom he affectionately called “my Cardinal.” On receiving the biglietto informing him of his elevation to the cardinalate, three days before the above-mentioned consistory, Newman addressed those present at Cardinal Howard’s residence in Rome. His biglietto speech was to become famous.  On that occasion, he renewed his protest against religious liberalism. He gave a precise description of this, a description whose prophetic character is obvious in our time. “Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to say just what strikes his fancy. Devotion is not necessarily founded on faith. If a person puts on a new religion every morning, what is that to you? It is as impertinent to think about a man’s religion as about his sources of income or his management of his family. Religion is, in no sense, the bond of society.” Today, we are witnesses of a mentality which sustains precisely these ideas, denounced by Newman, with very grave consequences for the cause of the Truth, for ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, for the liturgy and spirituality and for the social and cultural dimension of the faith.  Blessed Cardinal Newman can remind everyone, pastors and lay people alike, that the Truth is a very precious treasure to be accepted with faith, proclaimed with honesty and defended with force. “Commonly the Church” as Cardinal Newman ends his discourse, “has nothing more to do but to go on in her own proper duties, in confidence and peace: to stand still and see the salvation of God.”   Searching for the truth Cardinal Newman was born in London on February 21, 1801. The eldest of six children, three boys and three girls, Newman was the son of an English banker and his wife. His boyhood was just a normal boyhood, and he loved the things of children. He loved to fly his kite, loved walking and boating, but he did not enter into contact sports like rugby and soccer. He loved music and he loved to play his violin. He had an analytic mind and he delved deeper into things than most boys of his own age did. From his grandmother, Newman gained an eager love of Scripture.  At the age of twelve, Newman showed a religiosity that seemed to be extreme. His father, in his wisdom, advised the young scholar

The second part of the XIX century saw a massive emigration of poor people from the countries of Europe to America and Australia. Millions left their homeland and faced the unknown in search of land and livelihood. Scattered over immense territories, they suffered isolation and the lack of facilities essential for their lives and the healthy development of their children. On their wake, went an army of religious men and women: they built schools and hospitals in the remotest areas and were often the only hope of the pioneers. Some years ago, I was in Denver, Colorado, guest of a large school of the Loreto Sisters. I remember praying the rosary in the cemetery where rows of dozens of white tombstones spoke of the sacrifice of the many consecrated young women of the frontier, courageous companions of the millions of poor Catholics who tamed the Far West.  Convicts were the first to settle Australia. They were followed by hundreds of thousands of poor people coming from different nations. Convicts didn’t seem particularly impressed with the champions of Christianity. When Governor King ordered that they attend Church on Sundays, they responded by burning the church to the ground. Similarly, many convicts had tattooed onto their backs images of crucifixes or angels holding cups of blood. This gave the impression that when they were being flogged, Christ Himself was being flogged. The convicts were obviously good judges of character as some of Church personnel had acted in a manner that ran contrary to Christianity’s message. However, not all Christian missionaries were bad people. One shining light was Sr. Mary MacKillop. Like Jesus Himself, Mary was a troublemaker. She worked tirelessly for the poor since her early youth when she realized the plight of the immigrant children who were abandoned without education. For them, she became the Founder of the Sisters of Saint Joseph at the early age of 24 and paid for her single-minded commitment to the most isolated of them with the opposition of the Church authorities. Mary MacKillop was considered to be a woman ahead of her time for many reasons. First, in Australia, she wanted her Sisters to be under the government of a Sister superior-general who would be free to send them wherever there was a need. She wanted her Sisters to live as the poor did, in small communities of two or three members, and in houses that were poor like those of the people. She encouraged the Sisters to live in isolated places where Mass and the Sacraments may have been available to them infrequently. She saw all persons as being equal before God, regardless of social status, religion, race or age. Finally, she had a vision for the whole of Australia when it was still a country of individual colonies.    Early life history Mary MacKillop was born in Melbourne – a city that by then was only seven years of existence – of immigrant parents from Scotland. Living arrangements were primitive. Mary’s parents had

The life of Leonard Cheshire followed a classic pattern of Christian hagiography: birth into a well-to-do family; a dashing, turbulent and spiritually thoughtless youth; an unexpected encounter with God, followed by conversion, suffering, voluntary poverty and dedication to prayer and good works. To describe holiness convincingly is quite difficult, but for Leonard Cheshire and his wife Sue Ryder there is no other word that accounts for their exceptional dedication to the most unfortunate, inspired by their Catholic faith. Especially Leonard, a modest, reserved but totally self-assured Englishman, who deserved to be called by Nehru, the father of independent India, “the greatest man since Gandhi.” Leonard Cheshire was born at Chester, England, on September 7, 1917. His background was cultivated and secure. His father was professor of law at Oxford; his mother came from a military family. Anglicanism was in their blood but not taken very seriously. The family was close, affectionate and supportive. Young Leonard went to Oxford where he took a second-class degree in law and acquired a reputation for dare-devil exploits, disregard for authority and a self-assurance bordering on arrogance. He joined the University Air Squadron, learned to fly and found that he enjoyed it. In early 1939, with war clearly looming, he applied for a permanent commission in the RAF (Royal Air Force). When war broke out, between June 1940 and August 1941, he carried out more than 100 bombing missions, encountering hazards and deaths on an almost unimaginable scale.  In March 1943, he became the youngest group captain in the Service and in September that year was given command of the celebrated “Dambuster” squadron which specialized in low-level bombing. Cheshire was nearing the end of his fourth tour of duty in July 1944, when he was awarded the “Victoria Cross,” the highest British war decoration.  His citation read: “In four years of fighting against the bitterest opposition, he maintained a standard of outstanding personal achievement, his successful operations being the result of careful planning, brilliant execution and supreme contempt for danger. Cheshire displayed the courage and determination of an exceptional leader.”  Following a staff job in India, he was nominated by Churchill in 1945 to be one of the two British observers at the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. This experience affected him deeply and convinced him that no government could ever again face the risk of nuclear attack, and that nuclear deterrence, therefore, opened up the possibility of world peace. To the end of his life, he believed in world peace as an attainable goal and nuclear deterrence as a necessary condition of achieving it. On his return from the mission, he left the RAF and went home to his house: Le Court in Hampshire.    The peacetime hero The end of the war found him with no clear idea of what to do next. But the business of war, the horrors he had undergone and helped to inflict, the comradeship and discovery of his own gift for leadership had matured and deepened

Zilda Arns, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and founder of the International Pastoral da Criança (Child Pastoral), was killed on Tuesday, January 12, in the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti. She was at Port-au-Prince studying the implementation of her program in that island. Only moments before her death, she had spoken to the Assembly of the Religious in these terms: “I want to manifest my great joy to be here with you all, at Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in order to take part in the Assembly of the Religious. As sister of two Franciscans and three Religious Sisters, I feel most happy among you…”  And, after explaining with enthusiasm about her healing mission, she had concluded: “The results of our voluntary work, with the mystique of the love of God and neighbor, are in harmony with Mother Earth and all our sister creatures, flowers and fruits, rivers, lakes, seas, woods and animals. All this shows us that the organized society can be protagonist of its own transformation. In this spirit, strengthening the ties that unite our community, we can find solutions to the grave social problems that affect our poor families. Like the sparrows that care for their small ones by building a nest high on trees or on the mountains, far from predators and closer to God, we must care for our children like a sacred treasure, promote the respect of their rights and protect them.”   Education rather than charity One of 13 children, Zilda Arns was born to devout German-speaking parents in rural southern Brazil on August 25, 1934. Two of her earliest memories were of seeing her father go door-to-door on his horse to help contain a smallpox epidemic and watching her mother arrange for a sick neighbor to be taken to the nearest hospital on the back of a cart, a journey of three hours. It was in her childhood that Zilda Arns had the inspiration for her future: “My mom studied homemade medicine in German books. She saw people and knew who needed to go to the hospital and who could be treated at home.” Another characteristic of the family was discipline. “We had to wake up very early to milk the cow,” she said. According to her, this discipline was providential: “I have no difficulties starting very early and facing 15 hours of work.” In Zilda Arns’s days, there was always work to be done.  Those selfless acts inspired her to contemplate life as a doctor, even though most of her siblings became priests or teachers. Having studied Medicine, she graduated from university in 1959, working in local hospitals tending to infants; she was then given charge of a string of clinics in the impoverished outskirts of the southern city of Curitiba. Zilda Arns quickly saw that many common ailments were preventable, and began teaching mothers basic pre- and post-natal care, as well as useful tasks such as sewing and cooking. It turned out to be the perfect preparation for work that would make her famous.