The Youth Corner: Dialogue as a key to discernment
Vocational accompaniment, which is done without fear through dialogue and prayer, seeks to meet with what the person is and what he/she longs to be. Here, the will of God and the human will coincide. The pandemic brought in new habits and new fears. Suddenly, personal communication carries a lot of risks and, without realizing […]
African Alphabets: A Great Cultural Heritage
Africa is probably the place in the world where oral tradition has had the greatest influence on the preservation and transmission of knowledge. The continent has a long tradition of writing which, in some places, has led its inhabitants to develop complex alphabets and ideograms, some of which have been created in relatively recent times. […]
DR Congo: An Oasis of Hope
The Telema Mental Health Centre in Kinshasa is a place where the mentally ill are welcomed and respected. We saw it for ourselves. Many people suffering from mental illnesses live on the streets of Kinshasa. They often have to live off people’s charity and are often exposed to aggression and insults, and they can sometimes disappear […]
Guinea-Bissau: The Gospel and Social Promotion
Schools, female entrepreneurship, microcredit. These are some of the initiatives of the Oblates of Mary in this small African country. Cacine is a village of mud-brick houses, covered with metal sheets or palm leaves, built side by side along two dirt paths, where hens, goats, and pigs roam, and where children play. This small town […]
Pope Francis: “Listening is a dimension of love”
In his Message for the World Day of Social Communications, scheduled this year for Sunday, May 29, Pope Francis says listening is an indispensable first step in human communication, and a dimension of love. “Listening is the first indispensable ingredient of dialogue and good communication. Communication does not take place if listening has not taken […]
The Youth Corner: We Are a Mission
In vocation, the missionary dimension is always present. We are a mission. Therefore, we put ourselves at the service of all those we love, those around us and even those who live beyond borders. One day, while I was walking around the city, I saw the following sentence on a painted wall: “Trees do not […]
Oral Literature: The Hare, the Rat and the Lion
One day, the hare, roaming through the forest in search of food, glanced up through the boughs of a very large calabash tree, and saw that a great hole in the upper part of the trunk was inhabited by bees; thereupon he returned to town in search of someone to go with him and help […]
Sahara: A Journey to Tadmekka – Sons of the clouds
In Mali seeking the ancient capital of the Tuareg. It was once one of the most populated and richest of the trans-Sahara cities in West Africa. Tuareg: the mythical name means ‘abandoned by God’, the name which the medieval Arab conquerors gave to the nomads of the desert. However, the local name of these people […]
Colombia: Afro Centre – A Place of Sharing
In Tumaco, Colombia, a decade ago, the Afro Youth Centre was established to enable young people to work for social transformation using art, culture, group work and a communitarian experience of faith. Tumaco is located in the extreme southwest of Colombia, in the Pacific region bordering Ecuador, far from the political and economic centres of […]
Mexico: Saint Joseph ‘the Worker’
‘Labour Day’, is celebrated on the first of May along with the religious feast of ‘Saint Joseph the Worker’ in the municipality of Chilapa, Guerrero, in south-western Mexico. The celebrations held in honour of Saint Joseph the Worker begin on 30 April with a great fair. Merchants from all over the region come to sell fruit, […]