Europe has become the first continent in arrival of immigrants. Faced with a movement unprecedented since the second world war.

The human tragedies occur in the Mediterranean. The successive single immigrants do call into question European countries politically and legally. Contrary winds create a climate of hostility to immigration.

Political instability and wars in Africa and the Middle East released the inhabitants of these States to the roads of exile. Let us look at what has come to occur in Syria and Libya!

The gist of this South-North exodus through the Mediterranean through mafia traffickers.

These traffickers headed to Europe to tens of thousands of immigrants in dramatic conditions, after having extorted with sums of money that borrow families whole.

These slavers of modern times do not have the minimum scruple. They build up men, women and children on unfit vessels, causing sometimes themselves the shipwreck.

These tragedies are a huge challenge to human dignity and the values of the founders of the European Union.

The walls of shame:

Since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, it was believed that it was not going to see that raise more walls in Europe. But the lack of security and the strategy of fear make to decide walls anti immigrant, the barbed wire, walls of shame. Does not protect immigrants, protect the borders.

Strengthening wanted by the European Union for the means of control does not prevent that waves of immigrants continue coming to Europe. But at what price! Those risks is enlarge, the networks of traffickers is reinforce, the situation human is degrades…

Countries like Hungary and Poland invoked “national sovereignty”, but national sovereignty cannot face the problems concerning Europe as immigration or the climate of the planet. The recession is a dead end. It is an illusion to think that national sovereignty can be “alone”. In the European Union need a “solidarity” sovereignty where each State assumes its share of the European and global interests

The future is in solidarity and brotherhood.

Despite this difficult context and so little opening, the initiatives put humanity above all.

Thus, humanitarian ONG’s commit themselves to the rescue of refugees in the Mediterranean.

Small countries that pass through political and economic difficulties are shown solidarity. The impulse of the solidarity of the Greek people is exemplary. The huge influx of refugees hosted by Jordan and the Lebanon should question the policy of closure of the European Union.

I have returned from Albania, where in the capital, Tirana, have hosted some 3,000 Iranians who were in danger of death in Iraq, in a camp near Baghdad. Thanks to an intense diplomatic activity, they could be released to reach Europe, but most of the European countries did not want to run the risk of receiving them. To not bother to the Tehran Government, Albania has received them worthily, placing at their disposal necessary for easy insertion.

Germany has been generous to accommodate immigrants.

Francis Pope has launched a call to Christians to open their hearts and their homes to welcome refugees. This call has been received. In the community where I am, we have received to start an Afghan from Kabul and a Kurd from Mossul. The two, Muslims. His humanity, his grace, his sense of others, have marked the community. The refugees are a blessing for those that host them.

On the ground there is an important civic responsibility. Numerous municipalities are committed to a policy of welcome and hospitality in the face of the refugees. Many networks of solidarity show that fraternity is possible.

The future is not in denial or exclusion of the other. We are all called brothers to build a world where everyone lives on the other.

Jacques GAILLOT,
bishop of Partenia.
Iesus Caritas Fraternity for Priests

PDF: illegal-immigration-jacques-gaillot-eng

Sorry, this entry is only available in Português.

Celebrating 100 years of Bro Charles, a witness of Jesus and his Gospel

Asian Assembly 2016 – July 15-22, 2016

In the centenary year of the martyrdom of Blessed Charles de Foucauld (1916-2016), we, the 57 participants came together in Cebu City – Philippines. Our Assembly was composed of Priests, Little Sisters of Jesus, Little Brothers and Members of the Lay Fraternity.

We came from 6 Asian Countries (South Korea, Myanmar, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and the Philippines). We were blessed with the presence of our International Responsible, Fr. Aurelio Sanz Baeza of Spain, a member of the International Council, Fr Emmanuel Asi of Pakistan, Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales, a founding member of the Philippine Fraternity, Archbishop Angel Lagdameo of Iloilo and Archbishop Jose Palma of Cebu.

We send you greetings of fraternal joy. We are specially happy and grateful to the Spirit who gathered the Spiritual Family of Bro. Charles for the first time with our Lay Fraternity Members and the strong presence of our Korean brothers – 11 young, enthusiastic priests!

We are grateful for the gift of Bro. Charles whose martyrdom we remembered with renewed spirit and hope for our fraternities all over the world. We celebrated Bro Charles, who as a witness to Jesus and his gospel, simply “steps forward, states his name and then steps back because he is not the message” (from a talk given by Little Sister Kathleen in Montreal in 2016).

The beauty and significance of the place

We gathered in the beautiful and historic place of Cebu, the seat of Christianity in the Philippines where in 1521, Magellan and his men, together with some Friars landed in search of spices. The natives welcomed the visitors. Following their leader, Rajah Jumabon and the Queen who accepted the faith, the natives received baptism and as a reward, the Queen received the image of the Santo Nino (image of the infant Jesus) whose devotion is synonymous with Christianity in the southern Philippines.

Nestling on a hill with a good panoramic view of the city of Cebu, House of Silence is a Retreat House on a 6-hectare hilly land managed by the Franciscan Sisters Pro Infante et Familia. It is not only a House of Silence but a house of awe and wonder at the beauty of Cebu city from afar with matching fruit-bearing trees planted all over the place. It was a joy to pick Avocados during our manualia. We also enjoyed fresh herb-combo drinks at mealtime.

Coming from parish exposures, the airport and the pier, we all converged on the 18th of July at the Archbishop’s Residence for a continental lunch warmly hosted by Archbishop Jose Palma after which we moved to the House of Silence and settled down.

As we unpacked our bags, we also unpacked ourselves to each other in Introduction Session. We felt the fraternal welcome and it is in the same spirit that we celebrated the Opening Liturgy with Archbishop Jose Palma of Cebu presiding.

In this five-day Asian Assembly, we always started the day with an Hour of Adoration to the Blessed Sacrament and ended the day with the Holy Eucharist. We continued with the usual practice of the fraternity – Lectio Divina, Review of Life, Manualia, dishwashing, socializing and Desert Day. It was suggested not to bring any book or pen or anything unnecessary in our Desert Day and meet the God who is always in search of us in our abject poverty. The day in the desert was a special grace for most of the participants. Many discovered the need to face the contradictions in our own life. Very often, what we say sometimes contradicts how we live.

Nazareth, Universal Brotherhood and the gift of Brother Charles’ Martyrdom

We listened to the presentations of Fr. Aurelio and Fr. Asi. Fr. Aurelio encouraged us to feel the pulse of our brothers and sisters and open ourselves to allow God to find us where we are; that membership in the fraternity is not membership to a religious group although we are the fourth largest group of priests (4,500) in terms of membership after the Jesuits, Franciscans and the Salesians but to a movement, a way of being universal brothers founded on empathy, listening, transparency, respect and self-giving. He further said that the challenge of Bro Charles to our Church today is how to live Nazareth.

Fr. Emmanuel Asi spoke about the Grace of the Martyrdom of Bro. Charles. Fr Asi emphasized that martyrdom is not one single event but an evolutionary process of dying to self until it is culminated in the final act of self-giving. He challenged us that in our Asian context, we need to rediscover the meaning of martyrdom today. We have to reach out to each human family in Asia and to live out “Universal Brotherhood” in the mind and spirit of Blessed Charles. This is our Asian way of celebrating the 100 years of Charles de Foucauld, a witness to Jesus and his Gospel.

Gifts, Realities and Challenges of the Fraternities in Asia

We listened to the reports from the different Asian countries and from Little Sisters, Little Brothers and Members of Lay Fraternity about the realities and challenges we are facing. Our Asian Assembly this year was unique in having representatives from priests, sisters, brothers and lay people. We celebrate the gifts of Missionaries founding fraternities, the inspiring presence of Little Brothers and Little Sisters to our local fraternities, the witness and fidelity of old members, the enthusiasm of the young members, old members reuniting with other members, of being a minority and of the gift of Asian contemplative spirit in doing mission.

We see the reality of the Paschal Mystery (dying and coming back to life) and the vulnerability of our Fraternities, of members lukewarm, divided by distance, not faithful to monthly meetings, of the poor quality of our monthly meetings, not doing the Review of Life faithfully, of local fraternities perceived as elite group, (the bishop’s inner circle), of using the Fraternity as passport to travel abroad for free, members in crisis feeling not supported by brothers, fraternity reduced as “mutual affirmation club.” We are challenged to:

• First, strengthen our local fraternity as a support system, especially through fraternal visits and being available to brothers in crisis;
• Second, to deepen the quality of our sharing by honestly doing the review of life in the desert;
• Third, to discover, uncover and recover the Asian face of the fraternity by constantly going back to the core of our being – following Jesus of Nazareth through Bro. Charles– as we constantly live the paradox of Gospel in dialogue with culture;
• Fourth, to make our fraternities more life-giving by always referring ourselves to the directory as our guide to practice Nazareth, universal brotherhood, simplicity of life and to even critique our lifestyles that are counter to them.

In the course of our business meeting, Fr Arthur Charles, our Asian Responsible, while thanking his previous councillors, announced two new councillors, namely; Fr. Prakash Sagili from India and Fr. Philipp Yon from South Korea.

We look forward to the future with renewed enthusiasm and hope as we venture on the following:

• Week of Spirituality in Pakistan in November 2017
• Month of Nazareth in the Philippines in July 2018
• Asian Assembly in Korea in October 2019 and
• World Assembly in Bangalore, India in January 2019.

The Assembly ended (or began) on the Feast Day of Mary Magdalene, the Apostle to the Apostles. We went home bringing with us Jesus’ command to Mary, “go and tell the brothers.” With Mary’s joyful enthusiasm, we can only tell you what we see – Jesus and his Gospel is very much alive in our fraternities and that we are invited to be universal brothers in the spirit of our very own Bro Charles de Foucauld.

From
Sisters and Brothers of Asian Assembly
Friday, July 22, 2016

PDF: Letter from Cebu

Aurelio, our international responsible, came to Paris to meet me in brotherly encounter. He asked me to share something of what I would like to say to the priests of the Fraternity. To share with you about your ministry and your life.

However to speak of priests is to speak of Man, of those to whom we are sent. Are we not at the service of the people?

One night, taking the Metro at rush-hour, I found myself hemmed in at all sides and unable to hold on to anything for support. Whenever the Metro braked I had to support myself against others. Someone recognised me and smiled at the situation in which I found myself. We got off at the same station, and I had to tell him: “Don’t you see? What supports a bishop is the people.”

1. Parting from what is human.

Following Charles de Foucauld, we are marked by the spirituality of Nazareth: a simple, poor, life style mixed in with the ordinary life of the people. Jesus, the man of Nazareth, lived a myriad of experiences because of his work, the injustices of his day, his links with the poor, his presence among families, sharing their joys and sorrows, his prayer to the Father while alone. His heart, as a result of these encounters, burned with love for the people. This unhurried maturation prepared him for his prophetic mission, which began in an incredible manner in the synagogue of Nazareth.

His hour had come.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring the Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year of favour from the Lord” (Lk 4,18-19)

Jesus’ whole public life would be the putting into practice of this Nazareth preaching. It is not a religious discourse that speaks of the law: it is a discourse that only speaks of being human.

It is not a discourse on God, it is a discourse on man.

It is not a discourse of restoration, it is a great message of life-changing liberation.

What a stunning discourse!

The spirituality of Nazareth does not suggest a dead-end to this proclamation.

It is what gives a prophetic dimension to our ministry and to our life as priests.

Like you, people come to me saying:

“I am non-practicing” or “It is a while since I stopped practising”.

For these people, it is clear that religious practice is what they are speaking of. But the basic practice of the Gospel is justice and love for others. That’s not religious practice!

At the last judgment I will not be asked how many times i have celebrated Mass or blessed marriages. I will be asked, “What have you done for your brother from abroad, the prisoner, for the one who was sick or hungry…?”

What is essential is the practice of being a brother, the practice of solidarity. Nobody is dispensed from this, even if he is retired. How should we deal with so many Christians who have not discovered the importance of this practice of love and justice towards their neighbour?

In the Nazareth synagogue Jesus announces that he has come to bring the Good News to the poor. He does not speak of the rich, of the powerfull…

He opts for the poor. He begins with them. He puts himself on the side of the oppressed not of the oppressors. On the side of victims and not of the powerful. On the side of the humble and not on the side of those who exploit.

Jesus from the start sided with the rejected, the forgotten. He made the choice of beginning with the poor, opening himself to all, without rejecting anybody.

It is rare in a society such as our Church, to opt for the poor from the outset.

I am glad that Pope Francis has decided to canonize Archbishop Romero, who is a prophetic and fighting figure for justice.

“The changes needed at the heart of the Church, in her pastoral, education, her priestly and religious life, in lay movements, which we could not have achieved from the perspective of the Church alone, we are making now when we turn towards the poor”.

“It is starting with the poor that the Church can be for all, that it can serve the powerful by means of a pastoral of conversion; but not the reverse as has so often happened”.
(Discourse in the University of Louvain on the occasion of his title of Doctor Honoris Causa, 2nd February 1980)

“It is no honour for the Church to maintain good relations with the powerful. The honour for the Church is that the poor feel that she is theirs”.
(Salvador, Homily of the 17th March, 1980)

2. To be hope for the poor

Once a remark of Bishop Helder Camara caught my attention :“If I am not a hope for the poor, I am not a priest of Jesus Christ”.

Léon Schwartzenberg, the renowned oncologist, campaigned on his retirement in the association for the undocumented of which he was a member. He was a friend, atheistic Jew, and used to call me “my favourite bishop”.

On his death we brought him to the cemetery of Montparnasse in Paris, to the jewish plot. Crowds of poor came to the event, filling the cemetery. The undocumented, the homeless, came, some from afar, for “Léon”, who had done so much for them and who was a sign of hope for them.

When Víctor Hugo, the author of Les Misérables died, crowds of poor people filled Paris from all directions to accompany him to his final place of rest: the Pantheon.

He didn’t want theprayers of the Church, but in the hearse for poor people that he had asked for, he received the recognition of the “miserables” of Paris.

Today, who do I think bring hope to the poor?

When I was leaving Évreux, in my last sermon in the cathedral, I addressed the people:

“Every Christian, every community, every Church, that does not begin, above all, to be the bearer of help for people, has no chance of being understood as the bearer of Good News.

Every man, every community, every Church which in principle and first of all is not a brother to all people, cannot find the way to the heart, the secret place where one can welcome this Good News”.

Jesus was a great hope of the poor. He approached them with mercy, without excluding anybody. The poor felt loved by God. The most deprived discover with surprise that they are God’s favourites.

In the Gospel, the only approach of deliverance for each person, is to recognise their dignity.

3. Crossing frontiers

Have you seen the amount of walls that are being erected all around? The walls that separate people and prevent them from circulating. The barbed-wire fences to protect them from immigrants. The association of the undocumented of many countries have as a slogan, “No to walls between peoples, no to walled-in people”.

I dislike walls. When I visit prisons, I feel happy coming out leaving behind the walls that rob me of all horizons.

Jesus spent his life removing walls: Walls of wealth, walls of prejudice and distrust, walls of indifference, walls of forgetfulness. And, especially, by his death on the Cross, he brought down the wall of hatred that separates us from one another. To see the light of the Easter sun, one must come out from behind walls.

Crossing frontiers “within ourselves” is difficult. It demands conversion. However, isn’t this what is needed to be a universal brother?

We can go on mission to the end of the world with an outdated and inappropriate cultural model.

We belong to a Europe with societies no longer marked by traditional Christian values. Why wish to impose values on all when they are only of the few?

New wine, new wineskins.

When same-sex marriages were authorized in France, what a scandal! Even for priests themselves. This public recognition of homosexual couples, was not about tolerance but a right. It was a huge cultural shift.

Today, with globalization, different religions are present in the large cities. They are in schools, in hospitals, in prisons, in work-places… A prison chaplain commented to me:

“For thirty years I was the only chaplain. All was fine. Now there is a rabbi, an imam, a pastor and an evangelical who I don’t get on with at all. It’s time for me to retire!“

This reminds me of a proverb:

“When one is alone, one goes more quickly; when several of us go, we have to go further!“

How can one be a universal brother and not accept others?

And if we touch on the social status of priests? I live in a country where priests are scarce and where Christian communities are attractive.

I cannot shake off a dream, the dream that you could call on men or women of experience, be they married or not, with a job, with a profession, with free time, with the agreement of the communities and of the bishop who would lay hands upon them.

It is not a matter of waiting for candidates to present themselves, but of taking the initiative of making a call depending on the needs of the local Church.

By the way, are those who are in the seminaries today the priests that the Church needs tomorrow?

Father de Foucauld was sensitive to events. Events got him moving. A man on the way and one who was searching, he was able to go from one place to another. He never ever settled. For him, to settle was death. For the sake of Jesus and the Gospel he was willing to go all the way.

We have changed to a new world. We are witnessing the end of a world. Witnesses also to the birth of another world where one doesn’t know what will become of it. Our course is revealing new horizons and opening up to change.

In France when we meet faithfully each month in fraternity, it is striking to see us arriving burdened by years, with disabilities, tired…

We believe we are nearly dead. But with this thought we feel we are seeds. Seeds of life!

A new day is coming.

+ Jacques GAILLOT,
Bishop of Partenia

(Thanks so much, Liam, for the English translation)

PDF: Prophetic Priests, Jacques GAILLOT. engl

PDF: Card STELLA, 20ABRIL2016