On the road to a more just society with Saint Daniele Comboni
March 15 is an important date for Comboni missionaries, who commemorate the birth date of their founder
On a day like yesterday 194 years ago, on March 15, 1831, St. Daniele Comboni was born in Limone sul Garda, a small town in northern Italy.
To his intercession we entrust today our family members, friends, collaborators and benefactors and our pastoral work as the Comboni family (Comboni Missionaries, Comboni Missionaries, Comboni Secular Missionaries) in the service of God and his holy and faithful people, so that we may be as he wanted us to be: “holy and able,” a true “cenacle of apostles” in the service of the poorest and most abandoned peoples.
For him, evangelization goes hand in hand with human advancement.
In Africa as a missionary priest, Comboni became aware of the slavery African peoples were suffering from, and at the First Vatican Council (1869) he opened the Church’s eyes to this dramatic situation.
His insight “to save Africa with Africa” will lead him to train African peoples by making them protagonists of their own history and liberation: African doctors, lawyers, professors, priests, so that they will also be agents of evangelization and not just objects of evangelization.
St. Daniel Comboni’s dream and passion encourage us today as a Comboni family to bring the Good News not only to Africa but to the ends of the earth.
In Latin America, our presence includes, among others, the indigenous world, the Afro-descendant and Andean populations, and the peripheries of the great metropolises.
In Europe, among others, we are present in pastoral work with and among migrants, in the world of communications, in the missionary animation of the local Church.
Without forgetting the great missionary work of evangelization in Asia.
lowing his example, we want to respond with joy to Jesus’ invitation to love everyone without excluding anyone, promoting human dignity, building daily a more just society, a world that is not simply our home but also our home, in which as “brothers all” we love and respect our “common home,” our mother earth.
Long live Comboni!
Source and image
- Fb profile of Fr. Alessio Geraci