Kenya Fighting Discrimination

From the Nigerian Observer

January 1, 2015 11:14 am  

IN 1958 racial tensions were running high in Kenya, a black African nation ruled by whites.
The powder-keg atmosphere was made even more explosive because Africans were split into 40 separate tribes; some, long-standing  enemies. A state of emergency was in force, the legacy of the Mau Mau rebellion  which began in the early 1950s and took more than 10,000 lives, most of them black Africans; thousands more went to detention camps. In Nairobi most native Africans were servants; few were seen
On the streets; none drove cars. In the classrooms of upper Secondary schools there were no native Africans. But what the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, would describe “the winds of change” were already blowing fiercely in Africa.
“We came to Kenya with our project, the first multi-racial college in East Africa, something for all the races and for all religions,” recalled Father Joseph Gabiola, Opus Del’s first priest in the country. “We feared the authorities would say:
‘What do you mean? This cannot be. Are you mad?”
The main obstacle was racism. Blocks of land in Nairobi, were generally for Europeans, Africans or Asians. Few could be used for the new college. The land, members of Opus Dei found, was in a European residential area and the neighbours objected. “Officially they objected because they did not want a school in the neighbourhood,” Father Gabiola said. “But everybody knew the real reason was that the school would have black Africans. There was a meeting in one of the rooms of the local council and we had to go along to answer some questions. There was a huge crowd of whites outside and the thing became quite hot. I don’t know why, but the whites were all abusing us. It was in all the newspapers, front page. And in the end they won. We lost the land.”
As it turned out losing the first battle was providential. Another block of land was found in Strathmore Road (now Mzima Springs Rd). This time there was no room for complaint—it was adjacent to three European schools.
The goal was to build a boarding school which would bridge the gap between secondary and university. Previously native Kenyans had to leave the country to get a higher education. ‘There was a big gap there,” Father Gabiola explained. “The aim was to create something to train the students in many areas: academic, human and, for those who wanted it, religious.”
After the land problem came financial problems. The first principal, David Sperling, and teacher, Kevin O’Byrne, took the brave step of starting the main building before all the money was raised. The students were all poor so it was useless looking there for help. The colonial government gave some money, some was raised through mortgages  but it was not enough; so David Sperling set off for Europe and America in search of benefactors.
When the money problem was under control critics predicted the project would be a disaster anyway. A friend of Father Gabiola, a religious, warned him: “Its going to be a failure because you will not get the students.”
“But,” Father Gabiola said, “we were determined that, with the grace of God, it would work”. David sperling and Kevin O’Byrne travelled the country looking for students to put their faith in an institution that did not yet exist, and they were successful.
“When he heard of it, my friend said: ‘Of course you will have Africans, but you will not have Europeans. And Asians, you will not have Asians.’ Later I was able to tell him: ‘We have found an Asian student.’ His reaction was: ‘Very good, very good, you will have one.’ And then the Europeans wanted to come, through friendship because by this time we had many friends, and so it continued on.”
In the early days conditions at Strathmore were primitive. The college was surrounded by bush which ran down into the Nairobi River valley. As students arrived all that could be seen over the maize in front of the new school was the boxes they carried on their heads. The land was infested with cobras. One day a leopard paid a visit, followed by a hyena which chased a student up one of the pillars at the entrance to the main building.
More formidable than the physical environment were the racial barriers. These were not restricted to differences between black and white: some tribes had less in common with each other than with the Europeans.
Father Gabiola remembered the scene on the first night:
“They had told us the African students would be jumping through the windows, all kinds of things. We were full of wonder at what was going to happen. The first night I was out in the garden he opened his eyes wide in imitation of someone watching in anticipation and then broke into laughter: “But everything was silent. Everybody was studying.”
Potential racial tensions were neutralised by Strathmore’s family atmosphere, an approach inspired by the words of Opus Dei’s founder: “We are brothers, children of the same Father, God. So there is only one colour, the colour of the children of God. And there is only one language, the language which speaks to the heart and to the mind, without the noise of words, making us know God and love one another.”
The college shield carried three hearts and the motto was ‘ut omnes unum sint”, may they all be one. In a homily at the first Mass at Strathmore on a temporary altar, Fr. Gabiola first spoke of Strathmore as a family home. He remembered the surprise on the faces of students: “It was, I believe, a very bold thing to aim at, especially considering the large variety of races, tribes, nationalities and even religions, both among the students and the teachers. It could have been taken as a beautiful thought, as a figure of sj or. as an empty dream, but it was taken in earnest, and all responded.”
The response was seen in practical things. When one of the first students, Gabriel Mukele, arrived with only one set of clothes, the other students fitted him out with ties, socks and shirts and David Sperling donated his old school suit. Despite .these gifts Gabriel felt he was too poor to continue.
He decided to drop out and take a job; but David Sperling talked him out of it; he arranged holiday jobs so Gabriel could earn enough to get by.
Integration influenced all aspects of college life. No room was occupied by students of a single race or region. The teachers’ rooms were alongside students’ rooms. Meals were served at tables of six: a teacher, a European and African students and so on.
One of the early residents, Jacob Kimengich, remembered:
“At meal time I found myself sitting at the same table with the principal and, of course, the other teaching staff were also there; and we were eating the same food. This was drastically different from my boarding school days where the food and accommodation was not shared at all. In those days who could think of eating the same food with a Mzungu, leave alone sitting at the same table and sharing the same residential building. It was totally unexpected.”
Another early student, Wilfred Kiboro, reflected: “A tradition started in Strathmore from the very beginning that everyone’s opinion, belief, custom, colour, creed was respected. We were taught to be mindful of one another and considerate. Students were encouraged to assist each other whenever possible. Hard work was a way of life.
.“Another tradition I recall was respect for individual freedom. We had no written rules, no prefects or class monitors, no general supervised study. One was given the responsibility to exercise his individual freedom: to study in his own time, and to manage his life generally. I think this is one of the traditions that truly distinguishes Strathmore from similar institutions. It was in my two years there that I came to feel that I was really accountable for my actions, not because there were rules, but because a certain standard of excellence was expected of me. If I failed to achieve it, I could only blame myself.”
Even today Strathmore is believed to be the only institution in Kenya without prefects or written rules. The philosophy was spelt out to teachers at the school thus:
“Show a man you trust him and sooner or later he will respond to that trust, Leave a person free to act and he will usually act in a responsible manner; if he does not act responsibly, then patiently show him how he was wrong and leave him free to act again.”
Strathmore continued to break social conventions with Kenya’s first interracial rugby team. The Africans had never played before because rugby was a white man’s game; the new team did not go up noticed. The first match was recorded in The East African Standard on June 8 under the headline: First Multi-racial Rugby Team Makes Debut; and in the Sunday Nation on June 11, 1961, under the headline:. An Experiment on the Rugby Field. The news reached as far south as Johannesburg, with the Johannesburg Stars carrying an action photograph of the Strathmore team entitled: Study in Black and White Rugby.
The experiment forced students at Strathmore to confront hidden prejudices. “The hooker in our team was white and the props were both big African fellows,” Father Gabiola explained. “After the first training session, the hooker came and said: ‘I don’t want to play.’ ‘Why not?’ I asked. He did not want to say, but eventually he whispered: ‘I don’t want to be with the Africans so close together.’ Father Gabiola burst into laughter:  ‘Well, it was there, the mentality was there. And it was something we had to overcome. And we did overcome it.”    . .
It was not long before 80 per cent of Strathmore’s students were being accepted at university. The college gained an international reputation, attracting students from all over English speaking Africa as well as from Rwanda and Zaire. It branched out, opening a school of accountancy in 1966, a lower secondary school in 1978 and a primary school in 1987.
Some current residents of Strathmore spoke about their experience. Matthew Ndegwa, who came to Strathmore in 1979, now works for the government as a civil engineer and is a co-operator of Opus Dei.
“Opus Dei taught me how to get my priorities right, to do first things first and to persevere with something to the very end, to carry out my duties,” he said. “I am the first born son of a family of 12. In my country a first born son must give a good example for the others. He should also use his money to help the others, to help pay for the education of the younger ones which takes more than a third of my salary. The spiritual life Opus Dei introduced me to makes it easier to cope with the 24 hours of the day. It opens up my mind to my responsibilities and helps me not to ignore them.”
Boniface Ngarachu, a teacher of accountancy at Strathmore, came there as a student in 1977. Already a Catholic when he arrived, he said he had learnt at Strathmore about the value of work, something he wanted to pass on to other people: “the idea that through work you can do something for your country, for your family, and your soul and that you can turn it into a prayer”.
“There is also something else that has struck me,” Boniface said. “Perhaps something that was very personal. I had many friends when I went to Strathmore, including girl friends, and .when I talked to the priest I talked about them. Normally one shys away, but I felt 1 could tell him everything and I realised there was more in friendship. I realised there was something noble in it.”
More than half the population of Kenya is Christian; about one third of them, Catholic. The population has been growing faster than any other country in the world, though only about 18 per cent of land is arable. Most native Kenyans still live on small farm settlements struggling to raise livestock and crops or working part time on the properties of wealthy landowners.
As you drive out of Nairobi you quickly come to tea and coffee plantations where native Africans  labour all day under the sun to earn a modest wage. The women in particular have a hard lot. You see them struggling along the side of the road under huge loads. Further inland where the countryside is dryer, hotter, dustier, where the earth has to be worked hard before it will give even the most meager returns, life is harder still. Many black Africans there live in thatched huts on bare earth floors as their people done for centuries. They are nomads, continually migrating with their livestock and their few worldly possessions in search of grazing land and water.
For those who move to the city, it is a difficult transition. Regular work schedules, the faster pace and the impersonal way of life are difficult to adjust to. And there is the problem of the unequal sharing of wealth. The extent of this problem was brought home to me while traveling on a ratty old bus from the airport into Nairobi. It was’ not a bus that whites normally used. All the passengers were blacks.
From the bus you could see the shanty houses and claustrophobic housing developments where poor blacks  lived. The little free land in these areas, including traffic islands, was used for sambas (the traditional Kenyan vegetable patch). The sea of faces waiting at each bus stop grew as you approached the city centre until there seemed to be hundreds of men, women and children trying to get on. It was a Saturday morning and on the footpaths you saw row after row of wretched stalls, sometimes consisting of as little as a few used vinyl belts on a piece of old cloth.
On the other side of town where the whites and wealthy blacks lived, things were different. The houses were impressive, even by the standards of developed countries.    They were large and airy, the gardens pleasant, the driveways long and the hedges high. It is this contrast between rich and poor which Kenya must fight to overcome.
So far the country has managed to avoid the major political or social upheavals of other African nations; but there are no guarantees about the future. Security can only come with social justice and a national spirit which avoids large class distinctions. An essential part of social justice as it is promoted by Catholic moral teaching—and therefore by Opus Dei—is the free action of individuals. The Church’s teaching recognises that good structures can never be enough to ensure social harmony and justice. No matter how good structures are, corrupt and selfish individuals can defeat them. On the other hand good citizens can succeed in making even a society with faulty structures work, the injustice of the system being counteracted by the spirit of individuals.
Over lunch in Nairobi I spoke with Wilson Kalunge, an assistant manager with an oil company and a member of Opus Dei. “One of the things which attracted me to Opus Dei was that here were people from other countries, but people who had a lot more• concern for the development of this country than many of us. It was clear these people were the way they were because of the formation they had received. In Opus Dei I have learned that unless Kenyans become more concerned about the development of others some will end up wealthy while others among their countrymen are left far behind, struggling to survive. Either we accept our duties or we will end up with a classed society.”
Patrick Mwaniki, a maths and physics teacher at Strathmore College, told me before he met Opus Dei his goals were a high salary, a big house, a good car and a comfortable lifestyle. “Now for me these are not the important things,” he said. “They are only means and not ends in themselves. In Opus Dei I have found your ambitions change to what
– you can do for people and society, not what you can do for yourself.” Patrick said at school he had been involved in the Young Christian Association, debating and wild life societies and had ambitions of getting into politics. He said he found those ambitions fulfilled in the work he was now doing with youth. “I feel I am having a real impact on society this way. Through the tutorial system at Strathmore you really get to know the students as individuals. I have had cases of boys labelled write-off and in the space of two years I have seen at least three of these ‘write offs’ completely reformed. That is satisfying. ‘e of two years I have seen at least three of these ‘write offs’ completely reformed. That is satisfying.’’
Kianda Secretarial College, the first multi-racial educational centre for women in East Africa, is another project of members of Opus Dei in Nairobi. In the beginning there were only 17 students and they were all European. When the first application came from an Asian girl, the neighbours refused to consent. Again there was the problem of finding non segregated land. A site was eventually found on Waiyaki Way, 10 kilometres outside the centre of Nairobi, and Kianda became the first integrated secretarial college for women in the country. The fact was heavily publicised. One newspaper article said if anyone saw girls of different colours walking on the streets together they could be sure they were from Kianda College.
The often hostile reaction made life difficult; but racial discrimination was not the only pressure Kianda had to deal with; there was the question of sexual discrimination. In the early 1960s most African women, if they had jobs at all, had the worst; they were poorly paid; their living conditions and clothes were poor; the fees for a secretarial course were more than they could afford. Kianda was able to talk large firms into establishing a system of sponsorships. The new opportunity enabled the girls to find a career for themselves and to help support their often poverty-stricken families and clans. When independence came in 1963 Kianda was the only college training Africans.
Kianda has similar aims to Strathmore and has faced similar challenges. In 1966 it started a residential college for students who were new to Nairobi and had nowhere to stay. The more than 5000 students who have passed through came frclm all over East Africa, Ethiopia, Zambia, Sudan, Nigeria, Lesotho and Rwanda. Up to 17 nations have been represented at any one time, moving Kenya’s Sunday Nation newspaper to comment in 1980: “Today the pan-African status of Kianda is a model for other African countries.” In 1977 Kianda opened a high school. The Daily Nation noted in 1984 that the school took only seven years to become one of the nation’s top 10 schools.
One goal of Kianda, as with Strathmore, has been to help students overcome racial and tribal differences and to build strong characters. Students are encouraged to read widely and to improve their cultural background. Kianda’s philosophy is that Kenya needs not only secretaries with fast shorthand and typing, but mature individuals with initiative, personality and responsibility. As a principal of the college, Miss Olga Marlin, described it: “people who can run an office, not just type letters.” Some of the students have become teachers at the college. Others run businesses, such as data processing firms, shops and commercial farms.
Miss Marlin, who came to Nairobi to help establish Kianda in 1960, said Kianda did not stop at giving students a sound professional formation, but helped those who were practising Christians to improve their Christian life so that it permeated everything they did. “Monsignor Escriva often warned against the danger of separating these two aspects,” she said, “living a kind of double life, with God for Sundays and special occasions, on the one hand, one’s professional and social life, on the other.” Miss Marlin’s successor, Miss Constance Gillian, outlined some of the qualities Kianda encouraged in its students as generosity, inner strength and calmness, tenacity and positive thinking.
Given the professional training that centres of Opus Dei like Kianda provide, it is clear that Opus Dei does not seek to restrict women to the home. Asked to comment on what a woman’s mission should be Monsignor Escrivá. once said he believed there need not be any conflict between family life and social life.
“I think if we systematically contrast work in the home with outside work,” the founder of Opus Dei said, ‘retaining the old dichotomy which was formerly used to maintain that a woman’s place was in the home but switching the stress, it could easily lead, from the social point of view, to a greater mistake than that which we are trying to correct because it would be more serious if it led women to give up their work in the home.
“Even on the personal level one cannot flatly affirm that a woman has to achieve her perfection only outside the home, as if time spent on her family were time stolen from the development of her personality. The home—whatever its characteristics, because a single woman should also have a home—is a particularly suitable place for the growth of her personality. The attention she gives to her family will always be a woman’s greatest dignity. In the care she takes of her husband and children or, to put it in mote general terms, in her work of creating a warm and formative atmosphere around her, a woman fulfills the most indispensable part of her mission. And so it follows that she can achieve her personal perfection there.
“What I have just said does not go against her participating in other aspects of social life including politics. In these spheres, too, women can offer a valuable personal contribution, without neglecting their special feminine qualities. They will do this to the extent in which they are humanly and professionally equipped. Both family and society clearly need this special contribution, which is in no way secondary to that of men.”
I asked several women in Kenya how Opus Dei had influenced their lives. One, Mrs. Zipporah Wandera, had been an advocate of the High court of Kenya. Her appointment as the first female Assistant Town Clerk of Nairobi created attention in the local press: in Africa women have generally been restricted in public life. Mrs. Wandera, a convert to Catholicism and a member of Opus Dei, spoke in her office surrounded by books, papers and the offices of her male counterparts.
“In my job I have to deal with departmental heads and there are often difficulties,” she said. “There are always politicians who are disgruntled because of the way you do things or because you do not want to do what they ask. African men tend to think very little of a woman’s opinion. It is the way they are brought up. But the spiritual direction I have received gives me courage to stand up to people, even my bosses and if I think they are wrong I tell them.
“That is not to say that Opus Dei gets involved in my professional life. Opus Dci gives me spiritual formation and helps me to broaden my knowledge of Christian teaching but never tells me how I should solve any problem I have come across in my job. In fact, interference is something I have never heard of in Opus Dei and that is why I feel at home with it.
Mrs. Irene Njai grew up in a rural area, but won a scholarship to study social work in Italy. She became a social worker, but when we met she was working as an airline ticketing officer because she said she could not bring herself to accept government policy promoting contraception.
“When I met up with Opus Dei I learnt about turning your work into prayer. I had been a Catholic so long, nobody had ever told me about this. I was told you should pray, but never that work could be turned into prayer; that you could say, I offer this work from eight to 10 o’clock to God for such and such a thing. I felt I was being guided in a special way. It was really very beautiful.
“It isn’t only the big things you can offer to God. When someone comes through the door at the office I think well here is a Son of God, there is a soul in this person and I try to help that person as best I can. Sometimes you will see a customer who looks very much irritated and tired and maybe frightened and you smile and you can change entirely the whole attitude of that person.
“Of course, we will never reach perfection, but little things pieced together produce something very nice. And I think this concept turns the day into something one looks forward to. To someone who has no concept of this, the day does not have this meaning. The day can be something that one dreads, as I used to dread it before. When one discovers that work is not a tragedy, it is a joy, it changes your life.
“Another thing I am grateful to Monsignor Escriva for is this idea of marriage as a vocation. For example, his praise for human love. I have never heard it from anybody else.
I had read quite a lot of books before I came to Opus Dei, but I never came across anybody who asserted marriage was a vocation as Monsignor Escrivá did. Nobody else has ever talked to me about this in the same way, showing me how to use the married life as the means for my salvation and my husband’s salvation. And also there is the idea that we are the heart of the family and we need to be at the service of other people. As Monsignor Escrivá used to say: ‘To put our hearts on the floor for the others to walk a bit more comfortably.”
The house was tiny, made from bare boards, with a tin roof and a kerosene lamp for light. Mr. Martin Ngigi and his wife, Jacinta, had invited me to dinner. Mr. Ngigi is a traditional Kenyan farmer with a two-acre shamba. He had grown most of what we ate: chicken with a maize cake called ugali and a spinach-like vegetable called sukumawiki. Mrs. Ngigi, a mother of six and a bank clerk, is a cooperator of Opus Dei.
“When I came across Opus Dei I had only two children and I had decided not to have anymore,” she told me. “But when I came into contact with Opus Dei I saw how good a Christian heart was in a big family. And I now have the four you see and I feel much happier since, so happy.”
One of the younger boys, Josemaria, 9, took this opportunity to whisper to a friend who was with me that this was how he “came to be”. “I was born in 1976,” Josemaria confided. “That was the year after Monsignor Josemaria died.”
Mrs. Ngigi continued: “I used to think working at the bank was a terrible burden and the same with housework; but it is lighter now. These days I find it, well, a lot of fun.”
Esther Lanoi Kuronoi, a member of Kenya’s Masai tribe, famous for keeping old traditions, grazing cattle and living mainly on a diet of milk mixed c blood taken from cows. As a child she had wandered the dusty plains with the people of her tribe. Nevertheless she had enough schooling to become a student at the Kibondeni School of Institutional Management, a corporate work of Opus Dei which gives girls forced by poverty to drop out of school a chance to make a career for themselves; for some it is their only chance to break away from an environment where men have six to
12 wives and where women do most of the work.
At Kibondeni, Esther had been doing the two-year course leading to the National Certificate of Institutional Management which includes nutrition, dietetics, administration and accounts, nursing, languages and sociology. She had also taken classes in religious formation provided by Opus Dei: ‘1 came to Kibondeni School two years ago,” she said. “I had always been a Catholic, but here I learnt about how to keep to a spiritual plan of life and to sanctify my work: that is offering all of your work to God.
Esther said there was no tribalism at Kibondeni. The teachers emphasised that everyone was a child of God, no matter the colour of their skin or the tribe they came from.
All the girls sat together with those of different tribes. One was from the Turkana tribe, a rival of the Masai. The two tribes had been fighting each other for a long time. At home, Esther said, she would never have been able even to talk to the other girl. “Here we tell jokes at get togethers about each other’s tribes and everyone laughs,” she said. “But we are good friends; when we leave the room, we leave holding hands…”
The experience in Kenya highlights something important about Opus Dei: why it can be controversial in some countries, but not in others. It is not because Opus Dei differs from country to country—it is always the same. The real reason is that standards of morality vary, supporting equal rights for women in the 20th Century is bound to get you into trouble in countries where women are kept out of the workplace. But it will also attract opposition in those countries; some of them developed countries, in which women are denied the choice of being full time mothers and homemakers.

See the original article here: http://www.nigerianobservernews.com/2015/01/01/kenya-fighting-discrimination/

Opus Dei training center helps lessen poverty in the Philippines

By Sandy Araneta in Asian Journal

An Opus Dei vocation center helps alleviate the widespread poverty in the Philippines through vocational education and training programs adapting the German Dual Training System to local conditions.

"The vision and mission of Dualtech Training Center is to contribute to the common good by developing young people through the dual training system to become quality-trained, skilled, productive, enlightened and morally upright persons fulfilling the needs of industry and the community we serve," Conrado Ma. Ricafort, an official of Information Office in Manila, told the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines News.

The number of graduates and beneficiaries as of 2007 are 5,455.

Last year 77 mechanics, technicians and machinists received their diploma from Dualtech Training Center and now gainfully working in different sectors.

The 12 of the 77 new graduates were trained and sponsored by Lufthansa Technical Training Philippines (Lufthansa Technik). "The only place where you can find the word 'success' ahead of 'work' is in the dictionary. As an electro-mechanics graduates, like myself, I challenge you to work hard to attain success," said Holger Beck, president of Lufthansa Technical Training Philippines, Inc., guest speaker at the commencement exercises for this year.

Dualtech started in 1982 as a social development project in vocational education and training for male high school graduates. It has two campuses -- one in Binondo and another in Canlubang, Laguna.

The school accepts 100 boys from poor families every month.

Dualtech prepares its students to be employed even before the end of the training program.

One of the graduates, Jon Jon Baldovino, said, "Before graduation, I had been working in a Dualtech partner company, Fujitsu Ten Corp. of the Philippines. Last June 18, the HRD manager of Fujitsu Ten asked me to sign the employment contract and extended his congratulatory hand to me saying "welcome to the Fujitsu Ten Corporation of the Philippines Family."

More than 300 high schools in Metro Manila and Laguna refer trainees to Dualtech. Those accepted undergo a 24-month course in Electromechanics.

Read the rest here: http://asianjournalusa.com/opus-dei-vocation-center-helps-lessen-poverty-in-rp-p5900-67.htm

ST. JOSEMARIA AND THE POOR

By DR. BERNARDO M. VILLEGAS.

St. Josemaria Escriva would have been the male equivalent of Mother Teresa of Calcutta (now Blessed Teresa) in the last century if he did not receive the vocation from God to found Opus Dei, a way of sanctification in daily work and in the fulfillment of the ordinary duties of a Christian. He spent the early years of his priesthood substantially given to the ministry of the poor and the sick in the most depressed areas of Madrid, the capital of what at that time was very much a Third World country. If he had been in the Manila of today, he would have spent countless hours administering to both the material and spiritual needs of the very poor in such districts as Tondo and Payatas.

As Chaplain of an NGO that was called the Foundation for the Sick, he spared no effort and time to attend to thousands of poor and sick people. As one of his biographers, Andres Vazquez de Prada, wrote in The Founder of Opus Dei, "The Foundation for the Sick waged war on ignorance and misery, through schools, soup kitchens, clinics, chapels, and catechetical programs scattered all through Madrid and the surrounding areas. On the ground floor of Santa Engracia, there was a public dining room, and on the second floor, a 20-bed infirmary. The parlors and bedrooms of the Foundation looked out into a large courtyard with a public church attached. There, early each morning, the chaplain said Mass." Through his personal example, he made it clear that the spiritual needs of the poor should be given the highest priority in any charitable work.

The priority given to the spiritual needs of the poor is clearly reflected in the following description given by Vazquez de Prada in his book: "There were all kinds of activities at the Foundation on weekends. As a prelude to his other pastoral ministrations, the chaplain started off in the confessional. On Saturdays, the poor and sick from the surrounding neighborhoods came to Santa Engracia – that is, those whose ailments did not prevent them from getting there – or physical and spiritual care in the clinic and the chapel. On Sundays, it was the turn of the boys and girls of the schools that the Apostolic Ladies conducted. They all gathered at Santa Engracia, and Father Josemaria heard their confessions. So many people showed up there on the weekend that an observer used to say, 'Here at the Foundation, everything is done by the ton.'"

Despite his great concern for the material welfare of the poor, he never made the mistake of converting the Catholic religion into a purely social work. He made sure that first and foremost, the poorest of the poor had access to the life-giving Sacraments. In his own words, "I went for hours and hours all over the place every day, on foot, from one area to another, among poor people ashamed of their poverty and poor people too miserable to be ashamed, who had nothing at all; among children with running noses – dirty, but children, which means souls pleasing to God. How indignant I feel in my priestly soul when they say that small children should not go to confession! That's not true! They should make their personal confession, speaking one on one to the priest in secret, just like everyone else. What good, what joy it brings them! I spent many hours in that work, and I'm only sorry that it was not more."

After he saw that it was God's will that he should found Opus Dei on that fateful October 2, 1928, Feast of the Holy Guardian Angels, he devoted all his energies to spreading the doctrine of the universal call to sanctity, a teaching that became the centerpiece of the Second Vatican Council almost forty years later. His preferential love for the poor, however, never left him. He made sure that the young university students whom he introduced to the spirituality of Opus Dei would spend many hours in the slum districts of Madrid, bathing the sick, cutting their nails, giving them all the possible mateArial and spiritual care of which they were capable, even at the risk of contamination from infectious diseases (tuberculosis was at that time still incurable). These examples from the first years of Opus Dei have been replicated thousands of times all over the world today as the faithful of the Prelature have given the highest priority in their corporate and personal apostolic works to giving material and spiritual assistance to the poorest of the poor. In all the continents where Opus Dei is present, there are hospitals and clinics for the poor; technical schools for out-of-school youth in farming, electro-mechanical skills, culinary arts, and other skills that enable the children of the poor to obtain gainful employment. In the Philippines for example, faithful of the Prelature of Opus Dei have established such technical schools for out-of-school youth like Dualtech in Manila and CITE in Cebu; Punlaan and Anihan in Luzon and Banilad in Cebu; Family Farm Schools in Batangas and Iloilo; and many other personal initiatives of individual members and cooperators.

Read the rest at: http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/362090/st-josemaria-and-the-poor

Kabataan Club: For Public School Girls

By MCS PASION, Contributor for Manila Bulletin
September 1, 2011, 4:25am

MANILA, Philippines — Values education and life-coaching are the key elements that distinguish this club that prepares public high school girls for a productive and meaningful work life…

Public education in our country does not enjoy general esteem. Lack of competent teachers, unmanageable student-teacher ratio, pathetic classroom facilities: these are but some of the culprits.

In addition, save for a handful of achievers, the quality of students who go to public schools is not at all remarkable.

With due respect, the Philippine public educational system can perhaps be likened to a dilapidated machine churning out sub-standard merchandise. The Department of Education (DepEd) can be lauded for its continuous effort to address these technical problems. But along the way, attention to character formation –a basic building block of a healthy nation- sadly lags behind.

In this need, Kabataan found its niche. Now on its sixth year, Kabataan counts on 35 woman volunteers who positively contribute to improving the quality of students who come from public schools.

TOWARDS HIGHER ASPIRATIONS

“Dream and your dreams will fall short.”

These words of St. Josemaría Escrivá, author of The Way, a book of modern spirituality, have posed a challenge to Agnes Dayao since she first read them.

With her retirement and her husband’s demise, Agnes found herself with time in her hands. She realized that apart from taking care of her grandchildren, and getting involved in a local girls’ club among the underprivileged sector, it was time to reach greater heights.

To ensure the girls’ continuous character education, she launched the Kabataan Public High School Girls’ Club, together with Nanette Corcuera, another retired professional from Las Piñas City, and other volunteer friends.

Their pilot schools were at Verdant, Golden Acres, Equitable Talon, and EastTalon, all located in Las Pinas.

The program consists of values formation classes and a mentoring program. The vision: help mold public high school girls into women of virtue to complement their technical know-how.

Kabataan teaches the basic human virtues that are the stairwell to a person’s higher aspirations. ‘’Since half of those who attend Kabataan come from dysfunctional families, we primarily aim at forming these girls to be good mothers and good workers” says Nanette.

ONE-ON-ONE LIFE COACHING

Most of the students live in the urban poor areas of Las Piñas, where it is difficult for the most basic human virtues to thrive.

“They need to have a good dose of fortitude to stand up for what they learn in Kabataan which may clash with what they usually experience at home and in their neighborhood” says Agnes. “I know how it is to be poor... but with perseverance you can improve your situation.”

The backbone of Kabataan is the mentoring program where adult lead ers volunteer their time for one-on-one life coaching. With this, they are able to monitor the academic and personal development of the students.

Crysjoy and Eloisa, both alumnae of Kabataan are now enrolled in the twoyear Dual Training Program in the Food & Beverage Services course of Punlaan School and are both presidents of their respective classes.

When asked what inspires her in life, Crysjoy talked about the STRONG virtues (Steadfast, Trustworthy, Respectful, Open-minded, Noble, Gutsy) that she learned in a workshop sponsored by Kabataan. In fact, on a recent visit, the Australian Ambassador was impressed with the storytelling talent of Crysjoy who won first prize in a school contest.

He asked about her background and discovered its roots in Kabataan. A good number of the club’s alumnae make it to the top in their respective schools. With their training in Kabataan, they pursue higher studies better equipped and with stronger convictions.

In 2010, 80 graduates of Kabataan entered college. Eight of them are enjoying scholarships in tourism-related courses at Punlaan School in San Juan and at the Maligaya Institute for Culinary Arts and Residential Services in Manila.

read the rest at Manila Bulletin.

125 Years of Catholicism in Eastern Nigeria

By Mr. Chike MADUEKWE, a lawyer in Poten and Partners.

SINCE the day Reverend Father Lutz from France stepped his feet on the soil of the ancient city of Onitsha in 1885, the history of the people of Eastern Nigeria has not been the same.

Our history changed for the better. I do reflect, from time to time, on the heroism of European missionaries who left the relative comforts of their homes to come to Igboland and the rest of Eastern Nigeria from the 19th Century in order to bring the Good News to our people. Some died on the high seas. Some died of diseases like malaria endemic in the tropics.

Some were killed by our people who innocently thought that they were strange and dangerous beings because the Europeans looked totally different from them. Yet, the Christian missionaries persisted because of their immense love of God and humanity.

Father Lutz, Bishop Joseph Shannahan, Bishop Joseph Heery and other early missionaries are a perfect example of what the Bible calls agape love, or sacrificial love. May their souls rest in the bosom of the Lord.

These authentic men of God did not just bring us the Gospel. They spearheaded the abolition of improper cultural practices like the killing of twins and the"osu" and "ohu" caste system. They brought us modern healthcare. The impressive hospitals they established in places like Onitsha, Ihiala and Adazi, all in Anambra State, several decades ago still provide our people with quality services.

The Holy Rosary Hospital at Emekuku, Imo State, and St Luke's Hospital, Anua, Akwa Ibom State, are among the numerous medical facilities established by the Church in Eastern Nigeria which have been of immense benefit to our people. Many people abandoned by their families and communities because they were afflicted by diseases like leprosy were treated in hospitals like these ones free of charge.

I hesitate to imagine what Eastern Nigeria would have been without the Church. If not for Caritas, the Catholic charity, millions of our people would have perished during the civil war due to acute hunger. The Federal Government imposed an economic and food blockade against Eastern Nigeria because, as it argued, "starvation is a legitimate instrument of war".

Caritas cargo planes were strafed relentlessly, day and night. I personally benefitted greatly from the tones of dried milk, corned beef, salt, egg yoke, dried milk and other critical things made available by Caritas.

The contribution of the Church to the educational development of Eastern Nigeria remain unparalleled. The missionaries used their limited resources to build schools all over the place, and products of these schools were competing favourably with their counterparts anywhere in the world. Generations of our best teachers, professors, lawyers, medical doctors and other professionals were trained in places like Christ the King College, Onitsha. I am a proud Old Boy of the great CKC.

Up to 1970, many of the schools in various places in the Southeast were either established or managed by the Church. Like in other parts of the world, it has always been a thing of pride to associate with a Catholic Church owned or run school.

Without the Church, there is no way Eastern Nigeria could have made the stupendous progress it has recorded in education, especially from 1945 when the Second World War came to an end.

The Yoruba people of Western Nigeria, for instance, have a historical head start over the Igbo in education principally because major Yoruba towns and cities like Lagos are located on the coast; the white people who brought formal education to Nigeria came through the sea. Yet, within only two decades, the Igbo, to use Professor Chinua Achebe's language, "had wiped out their educational handicap in one fantastic burst of energy". By 1965, the Igbo were competing favourably with the Yoruba. In fact, there were more Igbo PhD holders among the Igbo than among the Yoruba, though the Yoruba had more professors.

It is regrettable that the government took over Church schools in Nigeria, beginning with, of all places, East Central State (today's Southeast). The forcible acquisition practically sounded the death knell of sound and solid education throughout the country. Hitherto, we received a kind of education which combined high academic standards with high morals and discipline.

This was in line with the tradition of Catholic education everywhere in the world. It is, therefore, with joy that we note that some state governments have begun to return some of these schools to their proprietors. We look forward to having schools like CKC, Onitsha, and College of Immaculate Conception, Enugu, as well as St Patrick's College, Calabar, return to their days of glory.

We also note with delight that the Catholic Church has demonstrated great keenness on the development of higher education, particularly since the liberalisation of the ownership and management of tertiary institutions in Nigeria. It has far more private universities than any organisation.

Some of the higher institutions it owns directly or indirectly are Madonna University which is the first private university in the country, Catholic University of Nigeria, Tansian University, St Augustine University, Renaissance University, Bishop Godfrey Okoye University, etc.

It does, indeed, gladden the heart that the Catholic Archdiocese of Abuja, which in the mid 1990s established Loyola Jesuit College in Abuja, the most competitive secondary school in Nigeria, is working hard on building a Jesuit university in the Federal Capital Territory. The role of Opus Dei, a prelature of the Church, in the establishment and management of such famous new institutions as The Lagoon Secondary School in Lagos and The White Sands Secondary School, also in Lekki, Lagos, as well as the Pan African University in Lagos, is well appreciated.

Read the entire article here.

G-20’s promises and deficits

By Fr. Antonio Cecilio Pascual in Business Mirror

‘There is no room for complacency,” so reads the draft G-20 document, as reported by Reuters, as the global recovery is “uneven and fragile.” This weekend in Toronto, the leaders of the developed economies are expected to come to an agreement on, among other things, reducing huge government deficits.

The World Bank has urged them in no uncertain terms to focus on long-term growth, “to help developing countries which rely on revenues from commodity exports, worker remittances, foreign direct investments and aid.”

For a while there, it sounded like they were all aware of, and pondering about P-Noy’s foreboding inheritance of a deficit in millions of pesos. In fact, if P-Noy’s plan of unearthing the real costs of debt and aid that the Arroyo administration incurred in her nine years yields larger figures than the estimates he is getting now, our country rating will probably take a worse turn than the current BB, even before his first 100 days are over.

Traveling around the nation, visiting government projects to see for myself their impact on the lives of our poor prior to the “Pinoy Ako” informercial I taped as part also of my last few days as private-sector cochairman of the Flagship Programs Committee of the Arroyo administration, I couldn’t help but feel the restlessness in the countryside. Agricultural lands being converted for commercial uses, rivers reclaimed for condominiums. “Alam n’yo po, Father, mabuti pang mamatay kaming lumalaban kaysa mamatay sa gutom.”

It made me recall one of the most important G-20 promises last year that Caritas Internationalis documented: 0.7 percent of their incomes are to be spent on overseas aid. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has been tracking this and had earlier reported that overseas aid was actually short of $21 billion in 2009 of pledges made. Estimates for additional public financing for food security that will be further affected by climate change—like Ondoy and Pepeng—is already at $195 billion a year by 2020 to support only the poor countries to mitigate food crises and to develop sustainably. And then what to do with the commitment to keep global warming to below 2 degrees Centigrade when, to shrink budget deficits, we will most likely see unbridled industrialization—the better and faster to sell commodities to rich nations, while paying higher taxes.

Executive director Michael Casey of the Development and Peace/Caritas Canada said, “Faced with hunger in many parts of the world, Caritas believes that agricultural policies must promote the small farmer and local food production. G-20 countries must show the necessary leadership to reverse disastrous food policies of the past. Aid commitments must also be met. We need more aid, better spent. And we need to see effective action on climate change.”

The credo of Robert K. Greenleaf, founder and advocate of servant leadership, comes to mind: “This is my thesis: caring for persons, the more able and the less able serving each other, is the rock upon which a good society is built. Whereas, until recently, caring was largely person to person, now most of it is mediated through institutions—often large, complex, powerful, impersonal; not always competent; sometimes corrupt. If a better society is to be built, one that is more just and more loving, one that provides greater creative opportunity for its people, then the most open course is to raise both the capacity to serve and the very performance as servant of existing major institutions by new regenerative forces operating within them.”

We need not just servant leaders, but servant leaders who can turn institutions into institution-servants—neither institution-regulators who seek compliance at any cost, nor institution-witchhunters who ferret out culprits at any cost. Would a corrupt-free institution be possible? A deeper question: Would a corrupt-free institution be a caring institution, a true institution-servant?

Stephen Covey, sheds some light on how institutions can transform to institution-servants: “You’ve got to produce more for less, and with greater speed than you’ve ever done before. The only way you can do that in a sustained way is through the empowerment of people. And the only way you get empowerment is through high-trust cultures and through the empowerment philosophy of leaders that turns bosses into servants and coaches. Based on practice, not talk, [it] will be the deciding point between an organization’s enduring success or its eventual extinction.”

Today, as we also celebrate the feast of St. Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, I recall how in the 1950s, the Holy See approved the idea of the Opus Dei accepting non-Catholics and non-Christians as cooperators to assist in projects and programs without being members. For decades, we saw the mushrooming of agricultural-training centers, hospitals and clinics, primary, secondary and professional schools.

The deficit problem is really an attention-deficit disorder: we have not focused attention on the heart of the global recovery; we cannot let other countries and sectors of populations to grow at the cost of asking other nations and sectors to step on the brakes or tighten their belts to their bones. The truth of this path that St. Josemaria has lit up is the fact that we are all in this together—and because we are, more good becomes possible.

Let us reflect, with Pope Benedict XVI, as he calls attention to the chalice and paten in every Mass: “Understand what you do, imitate what you celebrate, and conform your life to the mystery of the Lord’s Cross.... As we proclaim the Cross of Christ, let us always strive to imitate the selfless love of the one who offered himself for us...the one in whose person we speak and act.”

St. Josemaria: Fight social injustice

Easter Homily of St. Josemaria: "Christ's Presence in Christians" found in the collection of homilies titled Christ is Passing By. He said that "it is not only a matter of being a considerate, loving person, but of making the Love of God known through human love."


It is easy to understand the impatience, anxiety and uneasiness of people whose naturally christian soul stimulates them to fight the personal and social injustice which the human heart can create. So many centuries of men living side by side and still so much hate, so much destruction, so much fanaticism stored up in eyes that do not want to see and in hearts that do not want to love!

The good things of the earth, monopolized by a handful of people; the culture of the world, confined to cliques. And, on the outside, hunger for bread and education. Human lives — holy, because they come from God — treated as mere things, as statistics. I understand and share this impatience. It stirs me to look at Christ, who is continually inviting us to put his new commandment of love into practice.

All the circumstances in which life places us bring a divine message, asking us to respond with love and service to others. "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left.

"Then the King will say to those at his right hand, Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. Then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you? And the King will answer them, Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me."

We must learn to recognize Christ when he comes out to meet us in our brothers, the people around us. No human life is ever isolated. It is bound up with other lives. No man or woman is a single verse; we all make up one divine poem which God writes with the cooperation of our freedom. (...)

When a Christian makes Christ present among men by being Christ himself, it is not only a matter of being a considerate, loving person, but of making the Love of God known through his human love. Jesus saw all his life as a revelation of this love. As he said to one of his disciples, "He who has seen me has seen the Father."

St John applies this teaching when he tells Christians that, since they have come to know the love of God, they should show it in their deeds: "Beloved, let us love one another since love comes from God, and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.

"He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we love God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another."

Showing the real story in Africa

By Rome Reports

Africa continues to be an unknown territory for many. Not only for those who visit it’s deep jungles or it’s deserts. Even those who read the headlines daily don’t get the full grasp of the reality on the continent.

Harambee, an NGO, says the media rarely tells the full story on Africa. In an effort to change that, it’s established the 'Communicating Africa' award, which offers professional audiovisual journalists a challenge.

Rosalinda Corbi
International Coordinator of Harambee Africa International Onlus
“It’s about recognizing Africa through a news report. The award has two categories, one for western journalists an another for African journalists. Each one can tell their own story about Africa according to their point of view.”

It’s an award for journalists to shed some light on the rich untold stories about the history of this continent. It’s not about giving a naive or simplistic view of Africa, but instead an effort to show that even in a place ravaged by war and hunger there is also hope and there’s the earnest work of many organizations.

That’s why the prize is just the tip of the iceberg and Harambee wants to gradually change the bias about the continent with as great expectations as its people.

This NGO came to be out of donations that were collected for the canonization in 2002 of Saint Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei. Since then Harambee has been dedicated to African development.

So far it’s financed more than one and half million euros 28 projects in 14 African countries. One way of providing a small contribution for development of the continent, is by focusing on the education of children.

Giovanni Mottini
President of Harambee Africa International Onlus
“We’re convinced that education is a priority to Africa because in about 10 or 15 years today’s kids will the future of these countries. Among them will be those who will be responsible for making the tough decision in these countries. That’s why education is our priority.”

Harambee means, “all together” in Swahili and it illustrates exactly what Africa needs and the nature of this organization. All together, for a continent that has so much to show the world.

The Joy of Giving to Those Who Cannot Give Back

In Social Initiatives of the Opus Dei website

While summer is synonymous with TV reruns and midnight burritos for many high school students, fourteen girls from around the US gathered in Boston this summer to spend part of their vacation in service. Service in the City is a program for high school women that engages them in community service opportunities around the city, and teaches that true citizenship starts in everyday life among family and friends.

This year the girls spent many hours every day volunteering at different charitable organizations: playing with children at the Salvation Army day care; performing a talent show at the Vernon Hall nursing home in Cambridge; compiling clothing packages at Cradles to Crayons, an organization in North Quincy dedicated to providing children with the necessary items they need to flourish. After a full day around Boston, the high school girls returned to the residence in Back Bay for workshops on topics like human dignity, moral personality, identity and freedom.

When asked for the themes they thought inspired Service in the City, the participants volunteered: Love. Friendship. Perseverance. Service. Dignity. Respect. As one explained, “Service is not only work, but also the way you interact with the people you are working for.”

Service in the City is sponsored by Bayridge Residence, a student residence for young women in Boston’s Back Bay and a corporate apostolate of Opus Dei. Bayridge residents Emily Austin, a doctoral student at Boston University, and Helen Keefe, an undergraduate at Harvard, organized and led this year’s program.

“The goal is that these girls go back home with a greater sense of love and responsibility for those around them, manifested in little deeds of service,” said Emily, director of Service in the City. “I know we’re succeeding when one girl tells me that after her experience washing dishes at Rosie’s Place, a resource center for homeless women in Roxbury, she wants to work on not complaining at home when it’s her turn to do the dishes.”

Cory Aquino and the Family Farm Schools

by Mercedes B. Suleik in Manila Bulletin



Corazon Aquino, former President of the Philippines who just passed away, inaugurated the first Family Farm School in the Philippines on August 8, 1988.

Approximately 40 percent of Filipinos are engaged in farming, and the Philippines remains a rural agricultural economy. Moreover, most of these farmers have received only the most rudimentary of education, at most, elementary schooling. Lack of education has been cited as one of the reasons for the continuing poverty of our people. While our government strives to bring the basics of education to the rural areas, it is often hampered by budget problems. However, what I also see as a constraint is the type of education that is brought to our farming communities – higher education is often geared towards usefulness in the more urban settings.

One solution to raise the level of education of families in the rural areas is to provide the children of these farmers schooling that is adapted to the conditions of their environment, rather than the usual curriculum that is intended to prepare them for college education and employment in the cities.

The concept of the Family Farm School system introduced in the Philippines by the Pampamilyang Paaralang Agrikultura, Inc. (PPAI), a non-stock, non-profit foundation whose primary aim is to promote rural development in the country, may be the answer.

The concept of a "Family Farm School" (FFS) is based on three important things: a family, a farm, a school. Such a school is aimed at education, rural development, and growth. The FFS is a unique agricultural school concept patterned after the rural schools of Europe, among them the Spanish Escuelas Familiares Agrarias system and the Maison Familiale Rurales in France. These schools have transformed rural Europe into vibrant rural communities, modernizing agriculture in their countries and making people in the rural areas take responsibility for their own development. FFS are small units of community schools that assist rural areas through relevant education for the youth and their families. FFS operate on four basic principles from which all activities and learning are centered: the participation of parents, the small group of learners, learning by alternation, and rural development.

The PPAI considered the idea of putting up a school that would show the rural community, through the formation of their young people, that farming can be rewarding, and financially too. The school would provide the students with the proper values formation – human/social, intellectual/professional, and not the least, moral/spiritual – in short, a holistic education that addresses the entire being of a human person. Such a school would instill in them a love for farming, while learning the skills and technology for successful farming. It would teach them how to manage agricultural activities as a "business" and thus prepare them for a much better life. The family farm school is service-oriented and development-based.

FFS schools offer a 3-year special secondary curriculum which is equivalent to the 4-year regular secondary program. It is recognized by the Department of Education as a special secondary school, and follows the curriculum for Secondary Education Development Program (SEDP) with special emphasis on agricultural studies.

At present, there are six PPAI schools that follow the FFS system: Three of them in Batangas, namely, Dagatan FFS in Barrio Dagatan, Lipa City, Balete FFS in Barrio Maquina, Balete, Batangas, Talon FFS in Barrio Talon, Tuy, Batangas, and the other three are Bais FFS in Sitio Sab-ahan, Barrio Cantugot, Bais City, Negros Oriental, Pax Christi FFS in Barrio San Aquiino, Roxas, Mindoro Oriental, and Dingle FFS, Barrio Libo-o, Dingle, Iloilo. Incidentally, FFS are either all-boys or all-girls schools.

British sixth-formers spend vacation helping earthquake survivors

By ICN

A dozen sixth-formers who attend an Opus Dei club in West London have spent over a week helping out in a social service project in the Abruzzo, the earthquake-torn region in central Italy.

The worst affected city in last April’s earthquake was L’Aquila, where the majority of the 300 victims died. The centre of town was wrecked and to this day it is still sealed off to cars and pedestrians, with only accredited building contractors being able to get in for demolition work. A single street and main square are open but walking around them is like visiting a ghost-town. The residents of L’Aquila who did not go to live with relatives elsewhere were relocated to tents at different points of the outskirts of the town, set up by the local authorities. Similar tents have been set up in all the villages and towns within a 50 mile radius of L’Aquila. Tens of thousands of people were made homeless, so whole families including babies and older people have had to move into tents, and are only slowly being relocated back to ordinary houses.

As part of the reconstruction process, the ELIS Foundation in Rome made an agreement with the authorities to run a summer school in the villages around L’Aquila between mid-June and mid-September for the local children aged 6 to 13 whose schools were closed last April. The villages include Fontecchio, San Felice d’Ocre, Succiano, Barisciano, Villa S. Angelo and San Demetrio ne’ Vestini. ELIS is a Technical College running vocational courses in computing, machine maintenance and sport. It was set up by members of Opus Dei and opened by Pope Paul VI in 1967.

Westpark Study Centre, an Opus Dei club in West London, got in contact with ELIS about the idea of helping out in the summer school. In the end, 12 volunteers set off from London on 19 July to work in the villages of Succiano and San Felice d’Ocre. After a day in Rome, they spent the rest of the time working with the local children, running sports, crafts and other activities. Volunteers included sixth formers from Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School, St Benedict’s and the London Oratory School.

Jack Valero, who led the group to Italy, commented: “It is always very sad to see images of devastation on TV when watching the news of an earthquake; but coming here it becomes clearer how such events affect real people whose real lives have been wrecked by loss of relatives or the loss of their possessions. It has been a great experience to be able to share some of our energy and enthusiasm with those affected by the disaster, and to give them our friendship.”

BBC: Opus Dei: Separating fact from fiction

By Christopher Landau in BBC News Special Report
BBC Religious Affairs Correspondent


If ever a religious movement has been defined in the public imagination by its depiction in a novel, it is the Catholic group Opus Dei.

Dan Brown’s bestseller The Da Vinci Code portrayed a mysterious, cult-like organisation, shrouded from the wider world.

Opus Dei insists the reality is very different and I was given a rare chance to see the wide variety of initiatives they undertake in Rome.

Some aspects, if not mysterious, are certainly intriguing. The group’s large seminary where priests are trained in central Rome is unidentifiable from the outside.

One small doorway in a high wall is apparently the only entrance, even though the community is home to more than 100 men.

Conspiracy theorists might start to raise their eyebrows but inside, I found a uniformly warm welcome from students insistent that there was nothing odd about being trained by Opus Dei.

Singing their evening prayers in a chapel built long before Opus Dei took over the ancient building, the seminarians are drawn from countries around the world.

They speak of the honour of being sent to Rome to be trained by the group, and clearly have high regard for what they refer to as the “holiness” of the priests they learn from.

However, it is ordinary Catholic lay people, rather than priests, who have dominated the membership of Opus Dei, ever since it was founded in 1928 by the Spanish priest Josemaria Escriva, who was later made a saint.

People like Marta Brancatisano, who is not a mysterious, shadowy religious figure, but a middle-aged mother and lecturer at Opus Dei’s university in Rome.

Marta teaches about family life, and the Catholic values that should underpin it, at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross.

The name itself is significant. To be honoured by the Vatican as a pontifical university shows that Opus Dei is regarded by the Church as part of Rome’s intellectual Catholic establishment.

I met Marta just after she had finished a lecture, which included comments about the dangers of social networking sites undermining traditional family values.

She could hardly be more effusive in her praise for Opus Dei, regarding it as a way to see beyond the troubles of everyday life. “This is freedom, this is joy. If it is real, this is paradise on Earth," she said.

Most members of Opus Dei are married. But single members, called “numeraries” by the movement, are also asked to undertake a spiritual discipline known as corporal mortification.

It involves self-inflicting pain in order to focus on Christ’s suffering on the Cross, something also practised by some other Catholics.

Healthcare innovation

Opus Dei is also concerned with the relief of suffering, and its innovation in healthcare is perhaps the most remarkable and unexpected aspect of the group’s work.

On a large site on the outskirts of the city, a massive hospital and biomedical research centre is Opus Dei's latest initiative.

Members of the public are treated free of charge and research laboratories work to find medical treatments that conform to Catholic values.

Rome is also the headquarters for the group’s new overseas development charity, Harambee, providing microfinance to African communities.

One man who is candid about opposition within the wider church to Opus Dei’s work is Sean Patrick Lovett, a senior official at Vatican Radio.

“There’s jealousy, there’s envy, there’s confusion, and I think they’re working very hard to clarify that and help people to understand who they are, what they do and why they do it.”

It may have become famous through the thrilling fiction of Dan Brown but the reality of Opus Dei is certainly less dramatic, perhaps even a bit more mundane.

The movement now plans international expansion, into new countries like Indonesia, where it does not yet have a presence.

Italian students to spend vacation helping earthquake survivors

Around one hundred university students from all over Italy will come together for a week in Abruzzo, Italy, to study economic ethics and work as volunteers in the tent camps set up for those who have lost their homes in the earthquake.

The event is part of the 51st Summer School “College of Humanities and Science” (CHUMS), promoted by the Rui Foundation, July 23-31. The opening ceremony will take place Saturday, 25 July in L'Aquila, as 10am, at the Aula Magna of the Reiss Romoli Higher Learning Centre. The Summer School will officially be inaugurated by Guido Bertolaso, Undersecretary of the President of the Council, Extraordinary Commissioner for the Abruzzo Emergency.

The participants are university students from all over Italy, especially Sicily, Calabria, Lazio, Tuscany, Emilia Romagna, Veneto, and Abruzzo. Many of them attend the cultural centers and universities with spiritual activities linked to the Prelature of Opus Dei. The students have chosen Abruzzo as the destination of their annual gathering, to be near their companions and share in the difficulties that have come as a result of the earthquake, taking advantage of the summer time to study and reflect on current affairs, uniting it to concrete support of the people struck by the quake.

The program for the Summer School calls for morning seminars and group workshops, and in the afternoon, volunteer activities for the elderly and young children, with catch-up programs for the children who have not returned to school since April 6. The university students will especially dedicate time to the elderly of the RSA in Fontecchio (a residence for 110 people with various illnesses, in a difficult situation of solitude worsened by health problems) and children from San Felice D'Ocre, with a school recuperation program.

Source

First supernumerary of Opus Dei in Canada: Orthopedic surgeon who helps clean up a river

From Romana, Bulletin of the Prelature of Opus Dei

André Allaire was born on September 1, 1934 in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Canada. He was the first Supernumerary of Opus Dei in Canada.

He lived in the Piedmont Student Residence when the Work’s apostolate was taking its first steps in the country. He asked to join Opus Dei on March 19, 1958.

Married and the father of four children, he worked for more than thirty years as an orthopedic surgeon in Drummondville, Quebec. His prestige enabled him to ensure that the hospital where he worked cared for the sick in accord with Christian morality. He carried out an extensive apostolate among his patients (one of whom is now a priest of the Prelature), as well as with his colleagues and friends.

He was also very active in civic affairs. In the 70’s, for example, he headed a committee that solicited the help of many public and private organisms to clean up the river that runs through Drummondville. He continued working until a few weeks before being hospitalized to undergo chemotherapy treatment for cancer.

He was president of various foundations that assisted the apostolates of Opus Dei. He lived his vocation faithfully, and was an example to other Supernumeraries with his constant smile and great determination to fulfill his apostolic assignments.

He died in Montreal on October 30, 2007.

Teachings of St. Josemaria in an African context

An article by noted Kenyan author Margaret Ogola on the relevance of St. Josemaria´s teachings to Africa.

Published originally on www.stjosemariaescriva.info

Love is perennial and youthful. So is this continent, 60% of whose population are under the age of twenty-five. The momentum of the youthfulness of the peoples of Africa will necessarily carry this continent beyond it's current woes and upheavals to the realization of a truly African dream where people will take responsibility for their homeland and cease to expect help from where none is forthcoming.

There are many things which move me deeply in the teachings of Saint Josemaría Escrivá, but perhaps the one that has had the greatest impact on my life, my outlook, my hopes, is the concept that every baptized person is expected to take full responsibility for the attainment of full Christian and social maturity. There are no second-class citizens in the world-view of the founder of Opus Dei. All are called to struggle for sanctity right where they are — sanctity being walking in friendship with God in the highways and alleyways of this world wherever his children are to be found — working, suffering, living.

“Heroism, sanctity, daring, require a constant spiritual preparation. You can only give to others what you already have. And in order to give God to them, you yourself need to get to know him, to live his Life, to serve him.” (The Forge, no. 78). This ringing call is not for a few specially gifted or set apart people, but amazingly enough it is for all. I truly found it amazing that anyone could take the lay faithful so seriously. This attitude does cut dependency at the knees. One has no choice but to stand up and be counted.

Africans too, and in particular, are not second-class citizens of the world doomed to be dependent on others for all manner of handouts. Help yes, as one brother gives to another who happens to have fallen into difficulties — culpable or otherwise — looking him straight in the eye, as a brother who stands on an equal but firmer footing, should. In this regard, I have great doubts regarding the form of aid now being doled out to Africa by the monetary institutions and governments of the west and in particular through the state. There is something disturbingly pernicious about a type of aid that leaves an entire continent not only inescapably indebted, but also totally dependent. But help yes — as one brother gives to another.

One tends to forget, perhaps because of the rapid adaptability of Africans, that only barely one hundred years ago, this continent was in the early iron-age. Within this short period of time we have had to adopt systems of thought and governance that others have had hundreds or even thousands of years to experiment with. What's more, we have had to do it in their languages. Thereby we have gained and lost at the same time. In having no choice but to learn and be facile in other languages we have had the great benefit of looking into the minds of others and into the minds of their great thinkers and have greatly benefited. But often these others have felt no great need to learn our languages and thus be in a position to look into our souls to truly understand why we laugh when we laugh and why we weep when we weep. This is diminishing, for in every language is coded generation upon generation of human aspiration and endeavour. No wonder some great attempts to assist have foundered.

In any case the African loves to learn and this longing finds powerful echo in the words of Bl. Josemaría. “Study. Study in earnest. If you are to be salt and light, you need knowledge and capability. Or do you imagine that an idle and lazy life will entitle you to receive infused knowledge?” (The Way, no. 340). Indeed Josemaría Escrivá urges all his children to strive to have the doctrine of theologians and the piety of little children. In short, he does not encourage the kind of easy formulae for rapid salvation that some look for — a formalistic or pietistic religion where attendance without commitment or emotions without thought is the order of the day. Rather he urges a deep interior transformation with a sportsmanlike approach to the interior life — never remaining down after a fall. “Another fall... and what a fall! Despair? No! Humble yourself and through Mary, your Mother, have recourse to the merciful love of Jesus. A miserere — "have mercy on me" — and lift up your heart! And now, begin again.” (The Way, no. 711). Also “Tackling serious matters with a sporting spirit gives very good results. Perhaps I have lost several games? Very well, but — if I persevere — in the end I shall win. ”( Furrow, no. 169). And Africans are nothing if not sportsmen and women.

The family is central to the being of the peoples of Africa. It is not only a social safety net for almost everyone, it is also a source of deep identity — a revelation of who one really is. The loss of family values harms every group of people, but it has been catastrophic for Africans. Indeed it is this loss that has opened doors to the Aids pandemic, which in Africa seems to acquire an increase in virulence and ferocity not seen elsewhere. Josemaría Escrivá stands out because of his single-minded defense of the family, of the sanctity of marriage and of the dignity of fruitful love. “Do you laugh because I tell you that you have a "vocation to marriage"? Well, you have just that — a vocation. Commend yourself to St. Raphael that he may keep you pure, as he did Tobias, until the end of the way.” (The Way, no. 27). Also: “In national life there are two things which are really essential: the laws concerning marriage and the laws to do with education. In these areas God's sons have to stand firm and fight with toughness and fairness, for the sake of all mankind.” (The Forge, no. 104).

Finally, the African woman carries heavy burdens both figuratively and actually, but her dependability is phenomenal. In the midst the swirling chaos of day-to-day living she holds the family together with nothing more substantial than the strength of her love. And to her the new saint has this to say: “Woman is stronger than man and more faithful in the hour of trial: Mary Magdalene and Mary Cleophas and Salome. With a group of valiant women like these, closely united to our sorrowful Mother, what work for souls could be done in the world!” (The Way, no. 982).

The teachings of Josemaría Escrivá resonate with the perennial youthfulness of love, to which Africa, amidst the crises and problems besetting her, responds. “These world crises -the founder of Opus Dei states quite calmly- are crises of saints.” (The Way, no. 301)

Margaret Ogola, M.D. is Medical Director of the Family Life Association of Kenya and for the Cottolenga Hospice for HIV-positive orphans. She and her husband, George, have four children. She is also an award winning author of The River and the Source (a novel) and Education in Human Love.

Church Sees Africa as More Than Photo-Op

ROME, FEB. 27, 2009 (Zenit.org)

Some people might give money or support to Africa because it could be considered fashionable, but the Church's role on the continent is that of being an anchor of salvation, says a Vatican aide.

Monsignor Fortunatus Nwachukwu, an official at the Vatican Secretariat of State, spoke this week about the Church's role in Africa at a conference organized in Rome by Harambee Africa International.

"The Catholic Church constitutes a reference point for the continent of Africa" the monsignor said. "Africa is being spoken about more and more, even becoming a fashionable topic. Lots of public personalities are used to traveling to be photographed with African children, but more to highlight their own public image than to contribute really to the solutions of problems that afflict the infants of Africa."

The Vatican aide said that what Africa needs above all is "to be loved." He urged eliminating negative stereotypes and said that the temptation to inertia should be offset with initiatives like those of the Church, "which has gathered and developed so many signs of hope launched in this continent."

"The Church is especially present in the Sub-Saharan zone and is called to favor reconciliation, justice and peace," he continued, citing the priorities for the October synod on Africa.

"These are the lines of action that will permit us to put an end to the conflicts, stemming from selfishness, that often provoke true fratricide," Monsignor Nwachukwu affirmed. "The politics and the military in Africa have failed because they have shown exclusive attention to the personal interests and the tribes. While, on the contrary, Catholic missionaries have not been mistaken: They have brought hospitals, education and food. Many also have sacrificed their own lives to bring the light of the world."

The Harambee association was founded in 2002, on the occasion of the canonization of Father Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, founder of Opus Dei, to promote educational initiatives regarding Africa.

Indigenous Lumad people find God through brightly colored beads

By Patricia Torres

A group of Lumad women in Marilog, Davao City in South Philippines are learning how to lift their hearts and minds to God in daily prayer through a prayer card in the local dialect to St. Josemaria Escriva and some brightly colored beads.

Most of them are not Catholics, since most indigenous peoples of the Philippines do not have any formal religion. But through St Escriva, these women are slowly learning to entrust their daily work and concerns to God.

Lumad Women

The Lumad People

There are 18 indigenous groups in Mindanao, southern Philippines. Lumad, which means “native” or “indigenous”, is the collective name for the non-Muslim indigenous peoples of Mindanao.

According to the Lumad Development Center Inc., there are about eighteen Lumad groups in 19 provinces across the country. They comprise 12 to 13 million or 18 percent of the Philippine population and can be divided into 110 ethno-linguistic groups. Considered as “vulnerable groups”, they live in the hinterlands, forests, lowlands and coastal areas.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the area controlled by the Lumads covered what is now 17 of Mindanao’s 24 provinces, but by 1980 they constituted less than 6 percent of the population of Mindanao and Sulu. Heavy migration to Mindanao of people from Central Philippines, spurred by government-sponsored resettlement programs, has pushed back the Lumads into the mountains and forests and turned them into minorities.

Jessa Mae

Outreach in Sitio Ladian

In one of these mountain villages, St. Escriva has found a place in the everyday lives of the Lumads.

Sitio Ladian, which is part of Barangay Marilog, is about 50 km from Davao City, (946 km from Manila). Ladian, which covers 79 hectares, has a population of about 426, most of them Lumads. Most of Barangay Marilog is agriculture and pasture land. Basic services are poor. Only one health center services Barangay Marilog’s entire population of 14,255 and there is no nutrition post. There are only four public elementary schools, but no secondary and tertiary schools in the area.

Last summer, a group of young people from Cebu and Davao visited the Lumads and stayed with them for a week. The girls painted some of the public school’s classrooms while volunteers from an urban poor-based livelihood cooperative in Cebu, an island in Central Philippines, taught the Lumad mothers how to make simple fashion accessories from colored wooden beads which they can sell to tourists. The volunteers also taught the Lumad mothers how to make simple native snacks to sell to neighbors.

Four young professionals, two college students, eight high school students, and two mothers from the livelihood cooperative also participated in the outreach program. A medical mission was also organized participated by 14 doctors and nurses and more than 10 volunteers.

The outreach program was organized by the Banilad Study Center in Cebu and the Lamdag Foundation in Davao. It was their first outreach program in the area and there are plans to hold such activities twice a year starting next year.

A Lumad student bead

Favors
Among those who attended the livelihood classes was Linda Laglagan, 29, mother of two children. Linda works as a village health worker while her husband is a migrant banana farm worker. Linda was given a prayer card of St Escriva during one of the classes.

Since then, she says in the local dialect, she has been praying to him twice a day. “I pray for everyday needs. In God’s mercy, my family hasn’t starved. I also pray that my husband find a regular job soon. He has applied to dig canals in the city but still has to wait for a call. We don’t earn enough for our needs. I earn P350 (US$7.08) a month as a health worker while my husband earns P120 (US$2.43) a day when he finds temporary work at the farm.”

Linda taught her friend and neighbor Mary Jane Galleto how to make the bead necklaces. Mary Jane, 29, a mother of three, is homebound because her eldest child, Jessa Mae, 10, has cerebral palsy. Jessa Mae has spent most of her life lying still on a hard wooden bed in their small one-room hut. Her father, a migrant farm worker, currently has no work, and there is often not enough food to eat.

Last summer, volunteers who took part in the medical mission brought Mary Jane’s daughter to a doctor. Somebody taught her to pray for her child to St Josemaria Escriva. She has been saying the prayer card twice a day since summer.

She happily relates that her child’s condition has improved. Jessa Mae can now kick her legs and move her body across the bed. She can also sit up and put her feet on the dirt floor.
Dorotea Soldia is a Catholic who lives among the Lumads. She is grateful for the additional income from making and selling beads. She makes about 20 necklaces a day and earns more than P100 a day ($2.00) from selling them. She also earns extra money from working as a manicurist. “Things are not so tight anymore. At least we have some money to buy rice. I pray to St Josemaria for the good health of my six children. He has helped so much.”

She also says she has changed. She now goes to church on Sundays. “Before, I was lazy about going to church. But St. Escriva has led me back to Church and to prayer.”

Inspired by their rekindled faith, the Lumad women have also rediscovered their creative genius. They have now introduced their indigenous art into the bead-making they learned and are making exciting and exotic pieces.

Harambee: Trust in mankind

Harambee Africa International. Rome, October 27th

Linda Corbi, Giovanni Mottini and Rosella Villa

“Trust in mankind, and love and be close to people of every condition. From these points of reference, the fruit of the teachings of St Josemaria, was born the Harambee Programme for Africa.” This is the way Giovanni Mottini, the president of the new charitable not-for-profit foundation, defined the profile of Harambee Africa International, presented on the 27th of October 2008, in Rome.

“In the year 2002, due to the canonization of St Josemaria, we asked ourselves what we could do as Christians to leave a sign of his teachings. And we began to get involved in Africa, avoiding an aesthetic look,” Mottini said, “that is to say looking at the continent only from the point of view of its natural riches, or else avoiding its beautiful side altogether and showing only indignation towards its dramas and staying well away from its problems. Instead, Harambee Africa International looks to give concrete solidarity, never from a distance – the solidarity of St Josemaria Escriva.

We began to get involved in Africa,” Mottini continued, “asking ourselves not so much what the Africans needed, but what they were thinking of, because we are convinced, along with Pope Benedict XVI, that the poverty is not only material but above all a poverty of hope.” This is the reason why Harambee Africa International has promoted and sustained programmes in Africa. “We concentrate on education, on improving its quality, because in this way we can cultivate the intelligence and the capacity of every one to improve their own destiny. The solidarity of Harambee by definition is less spectacular but very efficacious.”

After the speech of Giovanni Mottini, the international coordinator of the new association, Linda Corbi, showed the results obtained by the projects launched by Harambee, focusing especially on the experience of Kenya. “We have finished some days of study and work in Nairobi, where we were able to experience the potential for positive change that there is behind the programmes that we have financed to help the teachers in the schools, who are at times the only points of reference for the new generations.”

Harambee Africa International also means to promote a less stereotypical type of solidarity. For this reason there is a series of initiatives promoted by the Italian committee and coordinated by Rosella Villa. “Every month we have an issues forum in which experts on Africa will speak, guided tours of museums, projects, little events and more important ones with the common aim of raising the funds to carry forward this year’s projects. In this way it will be possible for everybody to help Africa in a concrete way.”

St. Josemaria on justice, poverty, and civic responsibility

Teachings of St. Josemaria on education and civic responsibility. Taken from St. Josemaria.info


“A man or a society that does not react to suffering and injustice and makes no effort to alleviate them is still distant from the love of Christ's heart.” (Christ is passing by, 167).

“That is what our entire life is, my daughters and sons —a service with exclusively spiritual aims, because Opus Dei is not, and will never be —nor could it be—a tool for temporal ends. But at the same time, it is also a service to mankind, because all you are doing is trying in an upright way to achieve Christian perfection, acting most freely and responsibly in all the areas of the civil life.” (Opus Dei in the Church, p. 107).

Opus Dei must be present “wherever there is poverty, wherever there is unemployment, wherever there is sadness, wherever there is pain, so that the pain is borne with cheerfulness, so that the poverty disappears, so that the unemployment is overcome.” (In A glance toward the future from the heart of of Vallecas, Madrid, 1998, p. 135. Words from October 1, 1967.)

“We try to bring about a world with less poverty, less ignorance, more justice. I will tell you that the first means is prayer, self-sacrifice, which you can do in your work, doing it well.” (In A glance toward the future from the heart of Vallecas, Madrid, 1998, p. 138. Words from October 1, 1967)

“It is easy to understand the impatience, anxiety and uneasiness of people whose naturally Christian soul stimulates them to fight the personal and social injustice which the human heart can create... I understand and share this impatience. It stirs me to look at Christ, who is continually inviting us to put his new commandment of love into practice.” (Christ is passing by, 111).