|
KENYA, BEYOND EMERGENCY, IT NEEDS A CHANGE OF MENTALITY |
 |
 |
 |
|
Scritto da P. Josè M. fernandes
|
|
Venerdì 30 Settembre 2011 00:00 |
 Interview with Monsignor Virgilio Pante, for the last 20 years bishop of the diocese of Maralal, one of the regions hit hardest by famine and drought: “They protect their livestock and let their women and children die”
He has seen plateaus since he was a child in Asiago, Belluno, where he was born. Virgilio Pante, 65, a Consolata missionary, has lived in Kenya since 1972, in close contact with the shepherds of the Samburu, Turkana, Pokot, and Rendille tribes. For the past ten years he has been the head of the Maralal diocese, one of the areas hardest hit by hunger. The region is located on the border of Ethiopia and Somalia, with 200,000 inhabitants (including 40,000 Catholics) living in an area of 21,000 square kilometers. Secular intertribal tensions have led to struggles that have verged on genocide and civil war, with the most recent tensions arising in 2007. Immediately after being named bishop, but before his episcopal ordination, the missionary decided to ride his motorcycle over the territory of his future diocese. “I clutched my heart at the sight of completely abandoned villages, schools, little churches, grazing lands…” he recounted several years ago in the journal Missioni Consolata. “There was not a living soul for kilometers. The atmosphere was filled with fear. Social progress had been thrown back 20 years. I wondered what could be done, as a shepherd of the Church, to heal those wounds - and so much hate. I would have to focus not on the construction of physical structures, but of a counterculture of peace and reconciliation.” From this journey, Monsignor Pante drew inspiration for his episcopal coat of arms: he thought of a passage in Isaiah, where the prophet describes a messiah who brings cosmic peace: “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together” (Isaiah 11:6-7).
|
