Questions of conscience

As we are about to fly from Cairo to Rome, I would like to have a chat with Progetto readers.
In Ethiopia (as before in Latin America, in Kenya, in Tanzania, in Algeria) I met people who know how to spend their lives in a way that seems particularly interesting to me. Men and women, young and not young (at the registry office), priests, religious, nuns, lay people who I like to put under this common denominator: people who know how to spend their lives. They made a choice.
What does this choice consist of, what do they do in Ethiopia? Together with social work, which is a providence for people who live, for the most part, in subhuman conditions, everyone is committed to bringing the message of Christ, a message of light and hope; all with the testimony of life: even the athletic Toni, the Comboni brother, proud of his mechanical workshop, even Sister Gemma, the Eritrean who provides the kitchen.

Naturally, the priests first and foremost act as "missionaries": they make arrangements, catechumenate, baptize and prepare for Christian life, with the help of the nuns and local catechists, all volunteers. And if it takes a day or two by car and then 10 hours on the back of a mule to get there, you'll get there! Communities are born and grow (there are pastoral councils that can teach ours). Among those who have made this choice there are those who ask themselves: "Is it possible that so many Christians in Italy sit around doing nothing, while here there is so much to do and it is such beautiful, such exciting work?" (even if there is no shortage of thorns and grains). In saying this, they are probably exaggerating; but I confess that, in these two weeks, it also sometimes occurred to me and I wondered why in Italy there are not more, much more young men and women who, whether priests or nuns or lay people, do as these people who have learned to spend my life.
But we have long since left Cairo and are flying over the Mediterranean. Who knows if when I arrive in Italy I will find the answer?

(excerpts from Progetto (now NP) November 1980 n. 11)
 

By the editorial team
​NP October 2023