VATICAN - Secretary General of POSPA: "Prayer and charity, even in times of pandemic, are the channels for carrying out the mission of evangelization"

Wednesday, 10 June 2020 coronavirus   pontifical mission societies   missionary animation  

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - "In general, the Covid-19 pandemic can be considered to have caused fewer victims in Africa. Faced with this disease, many people in sub-Saharan Africa keep calm. They are in fact accustomed to other more virulent diseases, which leave death in everyday life. For example malaria, yellow fever, typhoid fever, cholera, meningitis, etc. Covid-19 is just another disease". This is what Fr. Guy Bognon, PSS, Secretary General of the Pontifical Society of Saint Peter the Apostle (POSPA), who is originally from Benin expalins to Agenzia Fides, describing the impact of the coronavirus in Africa.
"We must learn to live with the virus, as we have already done with other diseases", emphasizes Fr. Guy quoting an official from the National Coordination of the response against Covid-19 in Togo, and continues: "Without too much talk or hesitation, without waiting for sophisticated and more effective remedies, the health centers quickly started to treat the disease with the few means available. The positive results are sometimes spectacular. At a political level, in several African countries, each government has taken measures to deal with the disease and its consequences, pledging to help the population with hygiene and protection measures, as well as with financial and economic means to alleviate the difficulties associated with the consequences of isolation".

Can you give us some examples of these initiatives?
For example, in Uganda the government has started to distribute food to the poorest of the capital Kampala and its surroundings. In Senegal, the city of Dakar has delivered several hundred tons of rice, sugar and soap to the mayors of the municipalities, to be distributed to the most vulnerable citizens. The country has spent a significant sum on the purchase of emergency food aid. In Burkina Faso on April 3, the President pardoned 1,207 inmates to curb the spread of coronavirus in prisons. Two days later, 5,000 prisoners were pardoned in Morocco for the same reason. However, the pardoned prisoners were chosen based on their age, state of health, length of detention and good behavior.
In Rwanda, the government has forced Rwandan ministers and senior officials to give up their April salary. The corresponding money is used for social programs to help the poorest to resist the impact of the economic crisis. In Niger and Togo, the State provided social support, taking care of electricity and water bills of the lower social groups for three months. In Benin, until May 20, 135 cases were registered including 71 recovered and 2 dead. In addition to the government's efforts, supported by foreign aid, in the context of the response to the disease, people demonstrate an increasingly generous support for public action undertaken for the well-being of the people, with a strong momentum of solidarity.

What response is there at an ecclesial level, to highlight the relationship between charity and evangelization?
At an ecclesial level, there are direct actions, in private, in favor of parishes. In some parishes of the cities, for example, the lay faithful have decided to financially support the parish priest and staff with donations in cash and in kind. Having been informed of the existence of the PMS Emergency Fund for Covid-19, several dioceses are making requests for assistance for parish priests and other ecclesial needs.
The relationship between charity and evangelism during this Covid-19 period is not easy to describe. I limit myself to what is happening in Benin. With the confinement measures and above all the closure of parishes, it can be said that evangelization has been temporarily interrupted. There are no more pastoral activities. It is true, however, that evangelization is not limited to what is seen, what can be quantified. There is a profound and lasting work of the Spirit, without which any mission would be activism without fruitfulness and without any fruit for the kingdom of God. In this perspective, the Bishops’ Conference of the Country invited the Christian people to strictly follow the established preventive measures by the government, urging above all to give priority to sacrifice, fasting and prayer, to intensify the daily recitation of the rosary and to meditate on the stations of the Via Crucis, and to show solidarity towards all those affected in some way by the pandemic.
This exhortation from the Bishops’ Conference directs hearts to the essential: prayer and solidarity, manifesting the relationship between charity and evangelization.
In fact, on the one hand, if mission puts us first of all in relationship with God in faith and prayer, from this prayer associated with charity, mission pushes us to meet our neighbor in his needs for well-being, in his thirst for divine. On the other hand, if charity can promote evangelization by making available ways and means to achieve it, evangelization stimulates and revives charity. Prayer and charity are the channels through which the Pontifical Mission Societies express and carry out their mission of evangelization". (SL) (Agenzia Fides, 10/6/2020)


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