Millions of young people will be streaming to Rio de Janeiro to gather for the 14th World Youth Day event between July 23-28 2013. We remember World Youth Day in Sydney only five years ago and how captivating it was.
For some Australian and New Zealand World Youth Day participants heading for Rio, a Columban experience awaits them in Santiago. Columban Fr Dan Harding the present editor of The Far East magazine, who worked in parishes in Santiago, Chile, for 20 years realised that World Youth Day pilgrims would be going through Santiago - why couldn't they visit Columban parishes there, meet the people, have an experience of mission and engage with Chilean people.
After a lot of hard work on both sides of the Pacific,
Fr Dan's vision has been realised. Four parishes in Santiago and Valparaiso, a city port 120kms from Santiago, will receive pilgrims who comprise youth, adults, priests and bishops. They will come from dioceses in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania with a Kiwi contingent from Christchurch included. Santiago in winter is somewhat colder than winter in Melbourne according to Fr Dan.
On a recent Columban visit to Chile they had an earth tremor of five on the Richter scale; something quite common there. Unfortunately earth tremors are well-known in Christchurch, I don't know how Australians would react to one?
World Youth Day will be a faith gathering in Rio and it will be an exciting one. Fr Dan believes the experience will be challenging and moving for pilgrims because they will come face to face with families living in different degrees of poverty coping with winter. Pilgrims will encounter poor people probably unlike any other experience of poverty they have had in their lives. But at the same time they will encounter great nobility of spirit and generosity.
Fr Dan says there is great excitement in the parishes and a palpable sense of anticipation to welcome the visitors; it enables them to participate in World Youth Day.
One of the insights of Latin American theology is the use of a social model of 'centre/periphery'. The centre has the power and influence and wealth, the periphery has no power, no influence in comparison and is materially poor.
Pope Francis who is from Argentina has called on the Church to be a Church of 'the periphery' and at the Chrism Mass in Rome last Easter he called for priests 'to go to the periphery'. Columban priests, sisters and lay missionaries have chosen consciously to work on the periphery in Chile for the last 60 years.
This is an exciting venture because it has given Columbans in Australia and New Zealand the opportunity to make contact with a new generation of youth. It allows the pilgrims to see first-hand, Columbans at work in a missionary situation.
Fr Gary Walker
director@columban.org.au
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LISTEN TO: From the Director - Santiago, here we come! (Duration: 4.40mins, MP3, 2.13MB) |