Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Lilongwe (Fides Service)- “We celebrated the Day for Women’s Rights one day later because on March 8 the diocese commemorated Bishop Bishop Luciano Nervi (see Fides 6 May 2005)” said Fr. Giorgio Gamba Italian Monfort missionary in Malawi. “In churches all over the diocese people prayed with hope and courage and faith despite many daily difficulties. Hunger, poverty, the poverty of being without a bishop and to have lost him when his presence was so necessary” the missionary said.
“In any case Malawi the Day for Women’s Rights was sad because of an unbelievable recrudescence of violence against women and very often within the family walls” says Fr. Gamba. “The causes are many: the poverty and frustration of man who thinks he is free but bears within himself a still greater slavery; a patriarchate, a culture which often leaves him alone, incapable of absorbing the changes happening around him. Hundreds of cases of violence are obliging the country to ask what is going on.
The cover of the latest issue of The Lamp magazine tried to portray the sort of violence which cuts the hands of the wife and even worse...the title of the leading article “Loving violent men” is a description of the violent days we are living. Impoverished man sees his role swept away by a woman ever more self aware. Written by a woman the article says children must be given a different education, a different freedom. And although this is the right path it is a very long one and it calls for a lot of courage...but African women are experts at courage. So at morning Mass the community thanked women and asked them not to give up but to have the courage to continue to be the source of inspiration that women have always been for Africa. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 10/3/2006 righe 29 parole 380)
