Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Tbilisi (Agenzia Fides)- The John XXIII Community has only just arrived in Georgia but it is already at work to provide assistance and promote development. “We started our activity about 10 days ago at Georgia's main port city Batumi on the Black Sea” Giampiero Cofano, head of Comunità Giovanni XXIII project in Georgia told Fides.
“ At the moment, thanks to Mgr. Giuseppe Pasotto, Apostolic Administrator of the Caucuses of the Latins, we have two family homes where we have accommodated 8 people. The community workers are two boys from Croatia and an Italian girl from our community in Croatia. In September two more helpers will arrive. The people we are helping have problems with alcohol abuse. They are all men but in another home run by the local Caritas with which we have established good collaboration there are some homeless people including a few women”.
In Batumi, situated only 13 km from the Turkish border, there are people from many different places and with many different social problems due to the poverty in which most of the population lives. “Alcohol abuse is a serious problem and drug abuse in increasing” Cofano told Fides. “Georgia is on one of the routes used by drug traffickers to deliver heroine to former Soviet territories and the rest of Europe, and part of the drug load is peddled locally”.
“ Georgia is also crossed by a crime route which sends girls to Turkey for prostitution” he said. “Besides girls from Moldavia and Ukraine, Georgian girls are also lured into prostitution. When we first thought of opening a community here we contacted Don Andrea Santoro, Fidei donum priest from the diocese of Rome who was shot dead on 5 February 2006, while praying in his little Catholic church at Trabzon, Anatolia (3 hours drive from Batumi). We wanted to discuss with don Andrea how to help the girls leave the circle of crime. But he was killed two weeks before our planned meeting ”.
The charisma of the John XXIII Community is to help people in need by inserting them in extended families . “Wherever we open a community we must learn to local language” said Cofano. “This is not easy but it is indispensable for our vocation: we must be able to communicate with people if we are to live with them 24 hours a day. We prefer to learn the language ourselves rather then use an interpreter. In Georgia many people speak Russian and this makes things easier because I myself and others helpers speak Russian. But we are learning Georgian to be able to communicate with the people”.
In the future the John XXIII Community hopes to open a centre in Tbilisi, although “for the moment we intend to consolidate our activity at Batumi, thanks to collaboration of the local Catholic community small but active and united ” Cofano concludes. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 2/7/2007 righe 44 parole 593)
