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Articles by Country
Brazil
A Vicious Cycle of Destruction
By John Din, Columban Lay Missionary
John Din, from San Miguel, Zamboanga del Sur, is the Coordinator of Columban Lay Missionares – Philippines, a position he took last year after spending almost 18 years as a Columban Lay Missionary in Brazil and Peru.
First there was the forest, then the loggers came; bare lands appeared and mining companies came. What next? This idea was on my mind when I revisited Midsalip in January 2011 to make a short video on the struggle of the indigenous Subanens and the people of Midsalip, Zamboanga del Sur against mining. My first visit to Midsalip was in the 1987 together with a group from our parish during the picket against logging companies. This visit and the participation in the picket at an early age has been the most educative experience about the care of environment in my life.
Home
By Fr Colin McLean
Experiences and people who allow me to say: ‘I feel at home in the city of Salvador, in Brazil, where I have lived for the past 26 years’.
In the coffee table book Salvador, an alluring photographic study of life of this city, the Brazilian poet, Jorge Amado, writes:
The city is prey to the spirit of adventurers from all parts of the world, who over the years have exploited her black and heavy beauty, thick as oil and deep as mystery, trying to reduce it to the value so the tourist trade. And everything is small and sad when touched by such hands. There is a persistent and criminal effort to shrink Bahia’s beauty, her dramatic ancient beauty, to the limited scope of a tourist’s curious gaze. Bad poets come from afar to sing her praises in uncomprehending verse, while movie-makers film her without feeling, and millionaires and socialites buy her without knowing her, but she has held out against them all, living on for those who understand and love her. She lives on in her grandeur, her ocean and streets, in the daily renewal of mystery and beauty.
Blessing Ritual in Brazil
‘I will pour out my spirit and my blessings on your children. They will thrive like watered grass, like willows on a riverbank.’
By Bev Trach
Bev Trach is a Scarboro Lay Missionary working in Brazil. This article first appeared in the November 2009 Newsletter of the Scarboro Missionaries whose headquarters are in Scarborough, Ontario, to the immediate east of Toronto. Monsignor John Mary Fraser, a diocesan priest of the Archdiocese of Toronto, founded the Scarboro Missionaries in 1918. Some years earlier Fr Edward Galvin, who was to become one of the founders of the Columbans, traveled to China with Father Fraser. A talk that the Canadian priest gave in St Patrick’s National Seminary, Ireland, stirred the interest of a young professor there, Fr John Blowick, who became the other co-founder of the Columbans. Father Fraser was interned in the Philippines during World War II.
Pilgrim of the Street People
An interview with ‘Henrique of the Trinity’. His cloth shoulder bag contains all his worldly possessions: a Bible, a crucifix, an icon of the Trinity and a towel.
Q. Can you tell our readers how you arrived at this special vocation in the Church?
A. I was born in France and arrived in Brazil in 1987. I began to live in one of the large, very poor favelas of São Paulo. I spent two years living there, getting to know the situation in Brazil, living in a small wooden shack, the same kind of shack that everybody else lived in all over that area. I had come to Brazil to share in the life of the most marginalized people and to try and lead a life of contemplative prayer in that setting. I did not go to the favela to help resolve the huge problems of the people there, I just wanted to work on a person to person level. I spent two years there and they were happy years, but deep down I somehow felt called to something deeper, a greater simplicity of lifestyle.
BEYOND THE BORDERS OF PAGADIAN TO THE PERIPHERIES OF JUAZEIRO
By Sister Cresencia G. Lagunsad CB
Sister Cris is a member of the General Board of the Sisters of Charity of St Charles Borromeo and is based in Maastricht, Netherlands.
Recently, I made a short visit to the Diocese of Juazeiro, near São Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. It was a dream-come-true for one with a long-standing interest in that country, fascinated by its people. There was always that wish that someday, somehow I’d encounter Brazil up close. So when the pilot announced our approach to Salvador from Lisbon, a mixed feeling of joy and anxiety overwhelmed me, normal for a newcomer, I reminded myself.
Body painting that ‘heals’
By Sr. Alice Lansang icm
Sr. Alice Lansang has been living with the Aikewara people in the faraway jungles of Brazil for many years now. Over the years she has come to learn and respect the local culture of these indigenous people. One of those things she has come to realize is that body painting is not just a pastime but has powerful cultural meaning.
To leave home forever?
By Sr. Mary Reparatrix SSpSAP
Some 50 years ago, a young Filipina decided to join a contemplative order of nuns. Half a century later she is in Brazil and she looks back and remembers that first journey to the monastery with its wrenching decision.
The Book of Slave Marks
By Fr. Cyril Lovett mssc
Fr. Cyril Lovett is on the staff of the Columban Seminary in Chicago. He spent many years in the Philippines and Brazil.
He Paints the Gospel
By Fr. Frank Pintac
