Brazil: Indigenous People, the risk of extinction
Miners, loggers, developers invade indigenous lands. With them came violence and diseases. Consolata Missionary Brother Carlo Zacquini was ministering among the Yanomami people in a remote area of Brazil, near the border with Venezuela, when gold miners invaded their lands. After a violent confrontation in which miners killed four Indians and the Yanomami killed four […]
Amazon Synod: To proclaim the Gospel in Wapishana
Language is more than just a way of communicating. It opens a window into indigenous cultures and enables to help indigenous people maintain their identity. In an open-sided circular building beside the Catholic chapel in this Amerindian village, Scarboro Father Ron MacDonell was explaining how the tongue, the teeth and the vocal cords work together […]
Vocation Story: To be Witness of the Gospel
“I was searching for a direction in my life, a direction which I hoped, could lead me somewhere closer to God…I was searching for this presence with the wrong initial perspectives… and it took me a while to understand that I was getting lost”. A Comboni Brother, Paolo Rizzetto, tell us his story. I lived […]
Kenya: To prepare future leaders
This year, the Institute of Social Ministry in Mission, at Tangaza College in Nairobi, celebrate 25 years since its foundation. The story of the Institute of Social Ministry in Mission (ISMM) begins with one great visionary, a Comboni Missionary, Father Francesco Pierli. He had completed his term as the General Superior of the Comboni Missionaries […]
Martyr of Amazonia: Sr. Dorothy Stang
On 12 February 2005, the whole of Brazil was stunned by the news that Sr Dorothy Stang had been assassinated. That morning, the gunmen contracted to kill her found her alone on a track in the middle of the Amazonian forest. When the armed youths blocked her way, and having already received death threats, she […]
South America’s Amazon: culturally diverse, globally vital
When Pope Francis came face to face with more than 2,000 Amazonian indigenous people in Peru in January 2018, he told them the place where they live is holy ground, and that they and the Amazon region are important to the Catholic Church and the entire world. For most of October, more than 100 bishops […]
South Sudan: Being able to share
He could have left, and lived a better and more comfortable life. Instead he preferred to stay and put himself at the service of the weakest. Peter Sunduk is no longer a young man, but he has kept a young, courageous and confident heart, by constantly swimming against the tide and making tough choices. Despite […]
Vocation Story: South Sudan – A Brother to cure the sick
“The medical care offered to the sick is more than a profession; it is the fulfilment of my missionary vocation. The work of a doctor is a mean to manifest the love of God for people, especially the most vulnerable and the sick”. A Comboni Brother tell us his story I am a religious brother […]
Ethiopia: Meskel – The Feast of the Holy Cross
There is no feast in Ethiopia, religious or civil, so popular and with such large social and family roots. What is celebrated on the day of Meskel? The New Year begins in Ethiopia on September 12. That date should be the starting point for the activities of the school year. But, although it is officially […]
African Witness: Bishop Ireneo Wien Dud
Wien Dud was born in 1912, son of Dud Akot, the chief of the Jur. His father was the first chief of the South to open up the area of Mbili to the missionaries. At the age of ten Wien began his Christian journey by joining the catechumenate at Mbili parish and received the sacrament […]