Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Brussels (Agenzia Fides) - I arrived in Belgium a few days ago and, with the help of the local Caritas office, have already met immigrants of various nationalities. On Sunday I went to the ethnic market in a tunnel close to a railway station. Many the veiled young women. North African sounds and smells reach me before I even see the first stall. I want to talk with them. At a CD stall. “Original?” - I ask one of the two vendors. Surprisingly he replies in Italian: - “Certo!” turning the Lebanese up in volume. Many, many people around me. I insist: “ I don't speak Arab. Can you help me?” . He laughs and puts three CDs in a paper bag. “You like? And in the bag. I choose. Trust me.” I pay. Not very happy. My face betrays me. “You no trust me. But great.”
I leave with the feeling that I was not in Europe. I was a tolerated stranger. “ You no trust me. But great.” What was great? The songs? The voice? The rhythm? Or his faith, his honesty, his talent for selling. I am in a car on my way to a monastery, and I ask my friend from the Nunciature who is accompanying me: “aren't you concerned about the presence of so many Muslims? So many veiled women. Everywhere”. He is silent: “The truth is that I come from a place where all women cover their heads and so I do not see what you see”.
However it is a fact: Muslim immigration in Europe is increasing everywhere. Moderate and extremist. My interlocutor, a wise and travelled diplomat, skirts the issue. “You are concerned with a problem which is part of the migratory flow. A complex reality. People on the move are driven by basic needs, but also by a longing to reach places like this, where people are free to express their beliefs.” The car pulls up. We have arrived. From the porch we enter a large hall looking on to a magnificent garden. A priest welcomes us with a magnificent smile: “I know, I know all about you. You are investigating emigration and the problems it brings with it. I too am an immigrant here, although the earth was created by the Good Lord for everyone. I have lived here in Belgium for 24 years, the previous 32 I lived in Asia. When the war between Communists and the other side started I was in my third year of theology. The Communists arrived. I gave up my studies. I was sent to work in the fields. My bishop asked me and four others to take care of a parish in a very poor area. We grew crops to eat and to help the diocese. In 1976 the Communists asked me to work as a secretary for “Communist Youth”. In those times few people had any education at all.
Ag. Fides: Father, in those conditions, how did you live your vocation, your work of evangelisation
Vocation? In that period I gave up the Christian religion. Communist pressure was strong, and blackmailing against the Christian religion, the pope, the bishops and everything to do with Christianity. I gave in. Three years. I felt robbed of everything. Without the Christian faith my life was empty. I forced young men to work. I was an accomplice of mistruth. I spoke, but I knew my words were lies. We made promises, but we had nothing to promise. I left “Communist Youth” in 1979. About half way through the same year the Communists called me for another initiative a movement called “Basic Instruction for Illiterate Persons”.
Three times a week from eight in the evening I was available to teach people to read and write. The plan, good in itself, was unrealistic. Rather than to read and write, rural village people need to know how to survive, how to work the fields, and then, as if that is not enough, in the evenings care for the animals and the home. I spent the whole time alone. No one came. At the end of the year, for the exams, I asked children to come instead of adults. With fear and joy we announced that illiteracy in our village had been eradicated. But reality was totally different. I was disillusioned: there was no agreement between the aims of the regime and reality. In 1982 I resigned out of honesty and was immediately arrested.
I was sent to a forced labour camp. I was suspected of being a spy because my family had gone abroad. I was forced to declare in public my disagreement with my parents and brothers and sisters. I promised loyalty to the Communist Party. They watched me every second. In the end I managed to leave the country. It was a long journey. I arrived in Belgium. Everything was so different: I was bewildered, empty handed. Four days after my arrival I came to this monastery where I was welcomed with charity and warmth. In 1985 deacon and in 1986 ordained a priest, today I am in charge of four parishes in Brussels.
Part of my experience as an emigrant, is the pain of cutting all ties with my roots, my mother tongue. The Lord knows every language but for us it is difficult to speak a foreign language, difficult to express feelings coming from the heart. The second experience concerns work. Here the mentality is quite different. For Asians things and ideas are related. Here relations are difficult. When I speak in public, in parishes, in churches, in front of a hundred or even three hundred people, I am always a foreigner. I am a yellow priest celebrating Mass for white people. For the whites it is just as difficult initially.
But there is also enrichment. In my own family there are two religions. A Buddhist father and a Catholic mother. I grew up with these two realities. For example I teach meditation to eight year old children preparing for First Communion. Different cultural riches can help fill the void in a country where too much is produced and too much is consumed, and people have too little time for the spiritual life. Two of the priests working in my four parishes are from Congo, then we have a Rumanian, a Magyar, only one Belgian and myself, an Asian. Our team is international and we get on well with our parishioners who are not all Europeans, there are also Africans, Asians and people from other continents.
Ag. Fides: A second and final question. Tell us about your life in this missionary community operating in the heart of Europe ?
I live in a community of friars from all over the planet. My superior is an Asian from Burma. The vice superior is Togolese. We have an American confrere in charge of formation for missionaries, a Congolese confrere as assistant parish priest, and so on. Coming from different countries, we share our different cultural riches. This situation, this stemming from different cultures, enables us to be open to others, to accept others. To communicate we must either learn French, or each use our own language. Obviously sharing our different foods, ideas etc,. is also mutual enrichment. The same is true for liturgy, individual prayer, spiritual life: every friar has something to contribute to community life. (from Brussels, Luca De Mata) (12 - to be continued) (Agenzia Fides 22/1/2009; righe 84, parole 1227)
