fter three years as general superior, half way through my term, I could say that I feel a sense of inadequacy in the face of the new and urgent challenges of the mission, but at the same time joy for everything that the Xaverians do in the world, despite their limitations,” Father Rino Benzoni, general superior of the Xaverian missionaries, told MISNA on the occasion of the third anniversary of his election.
Born in San Lorenzo di Rovetta in the province of Bergamo in 1952, he was ordained priest in 1977; after a long stint as a missionary trainer followed by seven years in the Democratic Republic of Congo, he served as adviser to the general superior for six years. He has led the congregation founded in 1895 by the then 30-year-old priest Guido Maria Conforti, who subsequently became archbishop of Ravenna and Parma, since 16 July 2001.
“For health reasons, the Blessed Conforti never left on a mission,” says Father Benzoni. “However, struck by the biography of Saint Francis Xavier, the Jesuit missionary who took the message of Christ across the whole of Asia as far as China, which he read as a young man, he realized his desire to continue the work of evangelization by creating a missionary congregation.”
Today there are 840 Xaverians: priests, brothers and students who have taken religious vows. Of these, approximately 560 are Italian, followed by Mexicans (120), Indonesians (51), Spanish (26), Brazilians (25), Congolese of ex Zaire (21) and a handful of Americans, Britons, Colombians, Cameroonians, Bangladeshi and Filipinos. They serve in 19 countries, in the so-called ‘North’ – in Europe (Italy, Spain, Great Britain and France) and in the United States – but especially in the world’s South, in Latin America (Brazil, Colombia and Mexico), Asia (Japan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Philippines, China and Taiwan) and in Africa (Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Chad, Burundi and Mozambique), “where they are asked to announce the Gospel”, says Father Benzoni.
Today all Churches are called to be missionary churches. This is mission from the five continents to the five continents. Every church, however small, is called to announce the Gospel to the whole world. The Xaverian family is also offering its experience and its contribution to the missionary work of these churches by receiving young people from almost every nation in which the Xaverians operate, who are sent to announce the Gospel in other parts of the world.
“Xaverians have a different role and way of operating according to the continent in question,” points out the Superior. “Asia, for example, is certainly the continent that has greatest need of evangelization, with its huge population (60 per cent of the global population lives in Asia, ed.) but where the Churches are still small. With humility, the missionary operates ‘like yeast in dough’, trying to contextualize the Gospel and to enter into dialogue with great religions and age-old cultures. In Latin America – he continues – despite the great need for internal evangelization, the Church is opening up to the ‘mission ad gentes’ in the awareness that it can no longer only receive missionaries but also give to the mission. There, alongside direct evangelization and social work, Xaverians are rediscovering a role as missionary and vocational animators for these Churches.
As regards Africa, the Xaverians’ mission is sited fully within the local Church, a Church that in many places is in full development, where many new vocations have already been registered,” he said. “Everywhere it is important to point out that today the missionaries are no longer on their own, ‘solitary heroes in distant lands’, but that they work in close contact with the local Churches, to which they try to bring the contribution of the universality of the Church and the experience of 2.000 years of history.”
What contribution can the young Churches make in exchange? “Certainly today mission is not just about giving but also about receiving. The young Churches are alive and dynamic and, despite the difficulties encountered along the way, they bear witness to the fact that today faith is possible. Young churches that announce to the old churches in the North the youth of the Gospel, the ‘most beautiful gift that we can share with humankind’, in the words of the Pope.”
“In this proclamation of the Gospel – continues Father Benzoni – the mission often comes into conflict with serious situations of war, violence, hunger and violation of fundamental human rights. The missionary tries to respond to these challenges. It is important to remember that the missionary does not do it alone but together with the Churches to which he belongs, his church of origin and the one where he is serving. Furthermore, the motivation for this service needs to be rediscovered: the Gospel. It is necessary to return the mission to its primary sources, the Good News of Christ and the testimony to new life and new relationships between people that stem from it”.
At the dawn of the new millennium, Father Benzoni insists on another concept: “Mission no longer leaves just from a few Churches, which are rich in peoples and means, towards those parts of the world where the Church is still in its early stages or where it is not yet sufficiently strong. Today all Churches are called to be missionary churches. This is mission from the five continents to the five continents. Every church, however small, is called to announce the Gospel to the whole world. The Xaverian family is also offering its experience and its contribution to the missionary work of these churches by receiving young people from almost every nation in which the Xaverians operate, who are sent to announce the Gospel in other parts of the world.”
Father Benzoni recalls the example of the diocese of Gitega in Burundi, which has recently sent three ‘fidei donum’ priests to Cameroon. The Xaverians are highly active in three African nations that are particularly badly hit by war with its inhuman consequences on the civilian population: Sierra Leone, Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo. “Mission is not just about hunger and war, but where necessary you face these realities as well, trying to share them alongside the population.
Sometimes this communion can have the highest price,” says Father Benzoni, recalling the martyrdom of the Xaverians Ottorino Maule and Aldo Marchiol; together with the lay volunteer Catina Gubert, they were killed by soldiers in Burundi in 1995. “In some situations, staying really is a risk. Numerous Xaverians have been abducted in ex Zaire and Sierra Leone in recent years. Thank God they were subsequently freed. However, the martyrdom of a missionary is also a daily affair: it is to remain alongside those who suffer,” says Father Benzoni.
“Often we can do nothing more than remain close to the population, for whom we represent a reference point, a ‘source’ of security, a ‘stick’ to rest upon. Our presence gives people the hope that they have not been completely abandoned by God and by men, and that their situation will be known, and therefore that it can change. In this sense, the press and missionary publications play a major role by maintaining a spotlight on situations that are totally ignored by other media.
Obviously I would be pleased if the missionary press, and MISNA in particular, did not have to cover only the tragedies of the missionary world, but could give more space to the life and initiatives of the young churches and to positive events, even if these are less newsworthy. Unfortunately the mainstream international press only takes an interest in the world’s South in the event of massacres, then it forgets about them and rarely does it try to explore the causes of what happens. Causes within the various countries, which must not be forgotten, but also with roots that go further and that challenge the international community and each one of us as the problems of the world’s South are often due to the selfishness of the North.”
In conclusion, Father Benzoni makes a wish and voices a cause of suffering. “The thing that causes me greatest suffering as General Superior is when I have to say no to bishops who ask for missionaries because of the limited number of missionary vocations. My wish is that the proclamation of the Gospel might make the missionaries more evangelical themselves and therefore more holy because, in the words of the Pope, the true missionary is the saint.
(From MISNA)