Pope Benedict XVI's prayer intention for the month of June “That through its presence and deeds the Church in north Africa may bear witness to God's love for every human person and for all peoples”. Comment by Fr. Vito Del Prete, PIME, secretary general of the Pontifical Missionary Union

Tuesday, 29 May 2007

Vatican City (Fides Service) - The mission of the Churches' present in the many countries which form the vast region of North Africa is to bear witness to God who is love and who cares for all his children especially the poor and the suffering. It is no easy task in this part of the world where wars, terrorism, hunger, maginalisation of whole peoples and endemic diseases flourish and are hardly signs of God who cares for his children so much that not one hair shall fall from their head without their Father knowing it.
In some countries of North Africa, such as Algeria, Sudan, and to some extent Egypt and Morocco, different parts of the population are in conflict for cultural and religious reasons. In Algeria a non declared civil war continues to reap thousands of victims. At the moment the Darfur region of Sudan is where humanity is most brutalised and humiliated for religious and economic reasons. Not to mention the wars afflicting countries such as Ethiopia and Eritrea, for years an open field for warlords.
Other countries suffer from an exponential spread of poverty caused by corrupt systems of government, and endemic disease including AIDS, which put already weak local economies on their knees and threaten even the survival of the people.
Solutions to these evils are sought in a return to pure Islam sometimes with the imposition of Sharia Law on the whole population, including followers of traditional religions and Christianity. Almost every country in North Africa are effected by resurgent religious fundamentalism which in turn is the source and cause of wars and discrimination. In those countries we have Muslims martyrs who refuse to accept this theory and practice of Islam. We have Christian martyrs like the seven contemplative Trappist Monks assassinated in Algeria, simply because they were there.
The Churches in North Africa live in the same conditions and have the same mission as the early Christian communities spread all over the Roman Empire. These small minorities not rarely subject to discrimination, unprotected, prevented from practising their religion have the mission to announce to those peoples that God is love and that God wishes the human community to be founded on the law of love which implicates justice and respect for the freedom of every man and every woman.
This announcement, the principal task of their activity of evangelisation, is only possible with a fruitful presence of silence, prayer, contemplation and suffering. This is the model of evangelisation inaugurated by Blessed Charles de Foucauld, who lived for years in Tamanrasset, in the solitude of the desert, made fecund by contemplation of God present in the mystery of the Eucharist.
This path of evangelisation is founded on waiting for the times which God has reserved for every people but which is a waiting of love, respect, hospitality, self giving, caring for the poor and the suffering. Even to the point of offering one's life. This is the mystery of the God who is Love whom the Churches there are called to incarnate and render operative in front of an image of God which exalts mainly his justice.
The prayer of the universal must rise continually to God, that the Churches of North Africa, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, may be clear and effective signs of the God who did not hesitate to give his Son up to death to redeem all his sons and daughters who had wandered far from him. (Fr. Vito Del Prete, PIME) (Agenzia Fides 29/5/2007, righe 42, parole 610)


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