The buds take shape
25.11.2008
About 25 years ago, Fr John O'Connell asked me, "Leo, how long is Mission?" I responded, "Fifty years, I'd reckon." At the time I had no idea where this answer had sprung from and it certainly surprised Fr O'Connell and myself.
Recently we celebrated 50 years of Columban missionary commitment in Peru and it's probably the only time in my life I have in fact been prophetic.
This month the first group of four young Peruvian lay missionaries going overseas head for the Philippines. As an old hand I was asked to share a bit of our Columban history in Peru with Antonio, Anna, Maria and Marisol.
Marisol, was all smiles and with good reason - she had an Ace up her sleeve. Once I was finished talking she placed it on the table - a photo of her baptism, with her parents, her godparents and myself.
About the time John asked about the length of mission I baptised Marisol Rojas Tomasto in the parish of Tahuantinsuyo, Lima.
Marisol was delighted with herself and I was a bit overwhelmed, but thrilled. I now had a personal as well as a Columban link to this first group of young missionaries.
A further delight was being with her parents at the liturgy wherein her family and parish community sent her round the world in their name.
This new venture of sending out young lay missionaries didn't just happen overnight. People from our parishes in Lima have been going to Andean villages for years as lay missionaries. This began under the personal initiative of fellow Columban Fr Paul Prendergast in the 1970s. Later,
in the 1990s the Columban group in Peru began to develop the idea. Fr John Hegerty, a Victorian from Kyneton took a leading role in furthering this thrust as a regional project.
The Saturday night of her baptism Marisol would have been one among a score or more infants and youngsters. This took nothing from my tremendous thrill to realise the tiny part I had played in her Christian development.
The leaves fall and as they do the buds take shape.
Fr Leo Donnelly first went to Peru in 1958.
