(Rome, Italy) On October 20, 2019, the whole world celebrates world missionary day which this year has an extraordinary connotation due to the adjective used by the Pope to highlight this missionary month on the theme, “Baptized and sent: The Church of Christ on mission in the world”, to commemorate the centenary of the promulgation of the Apostolic Letter Maximum Illud of Pope Benedict XV, and for the Amazon Synod in which we perceive the fervor and dynamism of ‘the work in progress’.
There are numerous journalists, websites, and local networks that are involved to narrate this ecclesial event, an event not of facts and documents, but of faces, voices, and living witnesses who recount directly the concrete situations that the indigenous populations are living. Cardinal Claudio Hummes, President of REPAM – Panamazon Ecclesial Network, who before the Synod had expressed this desire saying, “The people, especially the poor indigenes, and the Amazon communities are the protagonists of their own history. In this case, they should also be the subjects of their own voice within the Synod, so that we may have a vision on the horizon of their future, in political, economic, cultural, social, and religious terms.” Thus during these days, the Vatican is colored by the ornaments typical of women and men thankful to Pope Francis for his fatherly attention to their land, and who took this whole journey, as one of them said when participating at a conference with the journalists, “Not to ask for compassion, but for concrete help in defending these lands which are our common home.” These are lands which the indigenous populations have always sought to take care of, notwithstanding the violence and oppression by those who try to appropriate them with avidity. They are souls that ask to be listened to for the good of the planet and of the whole of humanity. They are the representatives of 390 ethnic groups that precisely in these days have been welcomed by Pope Francis at the Vatican to bring ‘the cry of the Amazon’ and of the whole world.
It is a cry that requires everyone’s commitment, as the Pope expressed in the Message (link) for this Day, “The providential coincidence with the celebration of the Special Synod on the Church in the Amazon leads me to underline how the mission entrusted to us by Jesus with the gift of His Spirit is still actual and necessary also for those lands and for their inhabitants. A renewed Pentecost opens the doors of the Church so that no culture remains closed in itself and no people is isolated but open to the universal communion of faith. No one remains closed in their own self, in the self-referencing of their own ethnic and religious belonging”.
A cry that touches all of us who are sent in virtue of our baptism, and belonging to the same Church. Mother Yvonne, in her last circular n. 990 calls for living the missionary month precisely with this attitude, “How can we not feel deeply touched by this fundamental and demanding appeal that involves the Church and, in it, the Salesian Family? We feel the need for a new enthusiasm that opens the heart and mind to true missionary conversion. The Institute was born missionary and the Salesian charism was raised by the Holy Spirit to spread and, therefore, destined to expand to the ends of the world, overcoming barriers of cultures, languages, nationalities, and religious confessions.”
As Salesian Family, our commitment must be to keep the memory alive and to give young people the example of the many missionary testimonies of those who knew how to make themselves neighbor to the indigenous peoples, sharing their joys and sufferings – such as Blessed Maria Troncatti, apostle among the indigenous Shuar of Ecuador – but also to bring to light the work of so many Daughters of Mary Help of Christians and Salesians who live in the daily proclamation of the Gospel and support for local populations, at the service of the whole Church because as Pope Francis reminds us, “Our filial belonging to God is never an individual but always an ecclesial act: from communion with God, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, a new life is born together with many other brothers and sisters. And this divine life is not a product to sell – we do not proselytize – but a richness to give, to communicate, to proclaim: this is the meaning of the mission.”
