Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Calavi (Agenzia Fides) - The young students of the Education Center of the Society for African Missions (SMA) in Benin have chosen to serve Africa as missionaries. "I was allowed to be part of a somewhat special mission during my training in Calavi, where the Society of Africa Missions has an international training center for its seminarians from different continents", writes Father Filippo Drogo at the end of the five-year formation period for SMA seminarians.
"At the end of this path, our young seminarians go out with an idea in their hearts that motivates them to devote their entire life to the mission in Africa: This idea was given by the founder of the Society of African Missions de Brésillac: We should 'go to the most abandoned'. "In this context, Drogo reminds us that the poor, the abandoned, are still there today." We must pay attention to where the Spirit is leading us in order to understand what poverty is today and who is most abandoned today".
"On arriving here - concludes the missionary - I discovered the Church of Benin: a Church aware that the faith was brought to Africa thanks to the gift of so many missionaries. Many Beninese priests grew up in the shadow of the SMA fathers and missionary nuns who came from Europe, and they owe everything to them: the transmission of the faith, but also material help, the construction of churches and seminaries".
It is a young Church that only 160 years ago saw the first missionaries arrive (see Fides, 14/4/2021). "Here we see a fresh church committed to making radical choices based on the gospel. Their dynamism is a wealth, an important aspect of what I have experienced in these five years and which I will take with me when I return to Italy. I will try to pass it on to our Christian communities in Italy and in Europe". (FD/AP) (Agenzia Fides, 8/6/2021)
