JPIC – Letter 20
Thursday February 9, 2023
Dear sisters and brothers in the Chevalier Family,
At the beginning of this new year 2023 we may all have been impressed by the 40th pastoral journey of Pope Francis to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. On Feb.3rd he started his visit to the Church in Juba – South Sudan (together with Anglican archbishop Welby and the head of Scottish Presbyterian church), another country that suffers because of an unending situation of conflicts. Although the Pope has urged peoples of Congo, a nation that has seen its eastern provinces devastated by several decades of war, to bring about peace through “forgiveness, community and mission”, he didn’t hesitate to beg the world to hear the cry of their blood. “Hands off Africa! Stop choking Africa: It is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered.” “This country, massively plundered, has not benefited adequately from its immense resources,” “Stop getting rich at the cost of the poor, stop getting rich from resources and money stained with blood!” At his arrival on Tuesday 31st his language was straight forward and all the other speeches/homilies were limpid and were enthusiastically welcomed by a population exhausted by decades of international exploitation and national political mismanagement and corruption. There’s a race between superpowers like China, the U.S. and Europe because of critical natural resources like lithium, cobalt and copper … And the people are suffering because of this competition. The country’s oil supply and forests are also being depleted without adequate consideration for the local communities’ survival or peace. The Pope said: “May no one be manipulated, much less bought, by those who would foment violence in the country, and exploit it in order to make shameful business deals,” charging the country’s leaders to be good stewards of their land, which he said serves as one of the “great green lungs of the world.”
The Pope had a meeting as well with a large delegation of victims from the Eastern Kivu province and gave them the opportunity to share their cruel stories. Dramatic is the situation of the female population. It becomes clear that violence against women by systematic rape and other atrocities is intended to destabilize local families and turn raped women into “surrogate mothers” of the blood of the attackers. This is rape as a “weapon of war”.
PAX CHRISTI INTERNATIONAL launched now a documentary entitled Empowering New Generations: Active Nonviolence in the Great Lakes region of Africa (surf to their YouTube channel). Since 2018 PAX is training young people and religious sisters of the Great Lakes region in active non-violence education. Now the Pope exhorted the region: lay down your arms, embrace mercy!
Pleading the cause of justice and peace in S. Sudan had a result: the president Salva Kir lifted the suspension of the Peace Talk initiated by San Egidio. The Revitalized Peace Agreement signed in 2018 needs to be implemented. The president recalled the spiritual retreat in which he and the vice-president participated in the Vatican in 2019 during which the Pope “kissed our feet and asked to remain in peace”. This “rare gesture” he said “did not go in vain”. Don’t forget this pilgrimage was an ecumenical activity of the 3 main Christian churches in S. Sudan !
AMAZONAS
While the Pope made his pilgrimage for peace in Central Africa, another drama is forgotten by the international community: famine in the biggest indigenous reserve-territory (about 27.000 inhabitants) in Brasil where the YANOMAMI people are starving because the previous government under Bolsonaro permitted that in the States Amazonas and Roraima near the border with Venezuela, the population became victims of armed criminal gangs of garimpeiros (illegal diggers for gold). The new president Lula declared the state of emergency because of this ‘genocide’ of the Yanomami (already 570 children died). Under the previous government infant mortality raised by 29%. “Gold-fever” is the main cause because it is done now in an industrial way by big companies and with complicity of the drug traffic. The lead that must separate the gold from the waste pollutes the rivers and kills the fish. This mining activity also disturbs the animals in the forests and makes hunting problematic. The army has been called to intervene and to stop this drama.
PHILIPPINES
Caritas is alerting because almost 20 million Filipinos are trying to survive in deep poverty. UCA News reports that a poverty incidence of 2021 said 18.1 % of the country’s total population was living below the poverty line. Since the Covid lockdowns, many household relied on donations from Catholic Church groups like the Vincentian project, “Vincent Helps,” which feeds the poor.
The Center of the Poor in Butuan (Fr. Richie Gomes MSC) was reaching out to the populations in Cotabato & Maguindanao (Nov.) and Osamis (Jan.) that were devastated by typhoons these last months.
On Feb. 1, a magnitude 6 earthquake hit Mindanao. The Philippines is regularly rocked by earthquakes due to its location on the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’ that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
All calamities seem to come together. The Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources announced on Jan. 30 that Manila Bay was lifeless due to a lack of oxygen and that no fish or living thing can survive in its waters. The bureau, as well as the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, urged fishermen to stop fishing in the Manila Bay. “Since 2000, they have recorded 12 oil spills in Manila Bay that increased the presence of oil and grease in the water, together with the presence of oil terminals and the discharges from industries and cargo ships that dock in Manila. The fisheries bureau conducted a study on traces of metals such as copper, cadmium, and zinc on the surface of the water coming from the bay’s seabed. These minerals technically cover the entire bay like plastic that reduces the oxygen content in water. The result, of course, is dead fish because fish need oxygen to breathe, not to mention these minerals are also harmful to other creatures like birds. Environmental activists blamed seabed quarrying, a project allowed by the government, as the root cause of the bay’s pollution. In 2021, Joseph Cincua, a marine scientist from the University of the Philippines established. most of the pollution of Manila Bay was from land-based human activities, including the discharge of municipal, industrial, and agricultural wastes, land runoff, and atmospheric deposition. About 21% of the organic pollution in Manila Bay came from the Pasig River Basin, with 70% of this amount derived from household waste”. (UCA News, Feb.1)
At the same time the USA increase the military cooperation and gets access to 9 military bases in the country, because of the increasing tensions between Taiwan and China…
In JPIC Letter 19 of December I promoted the movie launched in October by the Dicastery for Integral Human Development. It is my pleasure to forward gratefully now a review made by Fr. Peter Malone MSC from Australia.
THE LETTER, A MESSAGE FOR THE EARTH US, 2022, 82 minutes, Colour.
Pope Francis, Aroune Kande, Ridhima Pandey, Chief Cacique Odair, Greg Asner, Robin Martin. Directed by Nicolas Brown.
In 2015, Pope Francis issued an encyclical letter Laudato Si on ecology and the environment, using the title of his now a-namesake, Francis of Assisi, his Canticle of the Sun, Praise be. The significant thing was that it was addressed to readers beyond the church, to people of all faiths, secular and none. (At the opening of the film, we can hear some dissenting voices, that the Pope should not be political, that he was doing a disservice to theology.) How to communicate, publicize, this letter and its message?
A film, YouTube, stories, visuals, and Pope Francis himself. The Letter is a film for all audiences, telling the story of Francis and his writing Laudato Si, but the writer-director, Nicolas Brown (noting that he is agnostic but was impressed by Francis and his encyclical) takes his audience into a meeting, what might seem an ordinary day for the Pope, but he has filmed it to make this day and the meeting readily available for the whole world. The occasion is an encounter with Pope Francis with chosen representatives coming to the Vatican to discuss environmental issues and commitments.
The film introduces us to the representatives, introducing them, Aroune Kande from Senegal, Ridhima Pandey from India, Chief Cacique Odair from Amazon, Greg Asner and Robin Martin from Hawaii. They tell the audience their stories and commitment. We see letters from Rome, written, posted, stamped, received – and the surprise of each of them to get a letter from the Vatican. And the group are representatives chosen to represent refugees, environment, youth, wildlife. We see lives and issues through stories and images.
Araone thinks of leaving Senegal, a refugee, but, as we see, flimsy boats, full, capsizing and refugees drowning. He decides to be active in his home country. Ridhima Pandey is 13, confident, outspoken. In the Amazon, the chief explains the destruction of the forests and the dire consequences. (He is striking in his large feathered headgear, which he wears around Rome and for the papal meeting). Greg and Robin work in Hawaii with technology, gauging wildlife, especially under water.
We sit in on the meeting with Francis (close-ups to see his emotional facial expressions, speaking in Spanish to express himself personally). He bonds with the delegates as they speak to him, as they commit themselves to the causes. We also join the group as they visit Assisi, join in the spirit of Francis, suddenly interrupted as Aroune receives text and video from Senegal, his friend’s school completely flooded and the children having nowhere to stay. Some comfort for him from the group who have now bonded as a family.
The Letter is very easy to access and free. Go online, Google The Letter Pope Francis Movie – click and the film will come up. (An indication for a short Google clip appears at the end – worth having a look at, what the representatives have been doing since their meeting.)
Since Letter 19 Fr. Manfred Ossner of the South German-Austria province informed about their choices for the Laudato Si DECLARATION that was published on www.ametur-msc.org. Are there other provinces that made a choice for 2023 ?
- Fabio da Silva has informed that the JPIC Commission of the Rio Janeiro province met in Juiz da Fora on 8-10 July. The purpose was to discuss and adopt the Statutes of the commission and to establish an action plan.
Dear members confreres and all the members of the Chevalier Family, in this very special year of the MSC general chapter I would like to invite you once more to discuss in your chapter assemblies also the questions about JPIC commitment as this is not just optional in the life of our Congregation. Once Pope Francis said on Feb. 2, the Day of Consecrated life : “I am counting on you ‘to wake up the world’, since the distinctive sign of consecrated life is prophecy”.
On March 13th we’ll start the CHEVALIER YEAR to commemorate that 200 years ago Jules Chevalier was born and became a gift to the Church by founding in 1854 the ‘little Society’. His spiritual legacy we find expressed for our time in our Constitutions. “To those who come to Him he gives His own strength and courage to help them live and work for justice and peace” (CS 7).
This our rule of life is very much in tune with various Church documents, not only with the Social Doctrine of the Church. In the Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consecrata we read in n. 82 : “The option for the poor is inherent in the very structure of love lived in Christ. All of Christ’s disciples are therefore held to this option; but those who wish to follow the Lord more closely, imitating is attitudes, cannot but feel involved in a very special way. The sincerity of their response to Christ’s love will lead them to live a life of poverty and to embrace the cause of the poor”.
That we may all walk together one of heart on this way in 2030. Keep us informed.
Andre Claessens MSC (andreclaessens50@gmail.com)
