Mgr. Gianfranco Masserdotti

A NEW MISSIONARY MISTICAL EXPERIENCE
The legacy of Dom Franco Masserdotti, Bishop of Balsas – Brazil

Fr. Fernando Zolli, mccj

Dom Franco Masserdotti offered a dynamic contribution to the field of missionary service. He had a busy schedule of initiatives; his agenda was full of events and activities: meetings, seminars, courses of spiritual exercises, initiatives to develop and improve the human condition, training animators of basic Christian communities and pastoral agents, coordinator of social apostolate and commitment for justice and peace, schools for socio-political awareness, visits to groups and friends of the mission, missionary commitment in Africa, support of the indigenous and afro-American pastoral work, various services given to the Institute and the Comboni Family.
A question arises spontaneously: Where did Dom Franco find all that energy and what was the strength that sustained him in his missionary work?
We can draw inspiration from the experiences we had together, recalling the stages of his life and reading his many writings and letters sent to friends from the year 1972, the year he set off for the first time to Brazil, till his death that tragically overtook him in Balsas in September 2006, together with the ideas assimilated by Dom Franco in such a way as to become deep convictions. From such convictions sprang forth his lifestyle that was original, specific and innovative for his missionary life and for the life of those who had the opportunity to know him and to live by his side.
These inspirational ideas were like a compass which directed Dom Franco’s spirituality, pointing out to him the right road to travel and motivating him to make his main choices. We shall present some of them, those that to us seem more representative, so that we may be admitted with great respect to the richness of his soul and as a way of understanding that his missionary praxis reveals an underlying mystical experience which renews the mission, and starts with the conversion of the heart and the renewal of the ecclesial, social, political and economic structures.


I THE MAIN POINTS OF HIS MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE

1. A new Church model

In the first place the implementation of Vatican Council II during the years of his youth and the application of its principles in the situation of the Latin-American Church, through the Assembly of CELAM (Bishops Conferences of Latin America) that took place in Meddelin (1968), Puebla (1979) and Santo Domingo (1992). Moreover the various Latin American Missionary Congresses (COMLA) and the many meetings at international level in Brazil, find Dom Franco open to seize the wind of change blowing through the Church and to live this kairos.
Dom Franco believes in a Church willing to shake off traditions that are too linked to historical times, obsolete laws and legalistic prescriptions in order to move with the times and to get closer to a humanity that is thirsty for God, peace , justice and solidarity.
A Church that knows how to listen to the cry of the oppressed and, like a “good Samaritan”, comes to the rescue of the poor and defenceless, the type of people who cannot have access to the benefits of progress and science, the commodities that unfortunately are not always at the service of all and often used as instruments of power for the few, means of exploitation and exclusion for masses of people.
During his first months in Brazil, Dom Franco clearly wrote: “I do not wish to sustain a Church which in practice shows that it does not believe much in the strength of the Gospel and feels the need to bolster it up by ambiguous allegiances with power, money or enormous projects and organisations” (May 1972).
Later on, while serving as coordinator of the Comboni province of Brazil Nordeste, he used to say: “… I believe that this is exactly where the Church is called to give its contribution to a society in turmoil: to announce the hope that comes from Christ the Liberator of all kinds of oppressions, to give an example of the new social relationships through the participative style of basic Christian communities, to educate and make people aware, to support popular groups (which are emerging always stronger), their organisation and claims…” (December 1988).
Finally, during his ministry as bishop, he said: “Our main concern is to renew and improve the style of presence and work in our Church, so that it may become ever more welcoming, missionary and supportive of the poor, and may rely more and more on the co-responsible collaboration of the laity, in particular through the basic Christian communities” (Christmas 2003).

2. The poor making inroads into history

A second aspect of the deep convictions of Dom Franco is the awareness of the poor making inroads into history. Following the preferential choice taken up by the Churches of Latin America during the famous conference of Medellin, Dom Franco considers the poor not only the object of his compassion, but the theological ground from which to begin to discover the will of a God who became man, who, by offering himself on the cross, calls everyone to life in abundance. His theological and sociological formation allows him to articulate well the two poles: that of compassion and that of transformation, that of merciful love and that of integral liberation.
“It tears my heart to see and receive everyday mothers, children, elderly people – he tells his friends – who come to ask for help, to receive a word of hope, a sign of fraternal love. The Lord helps us not to get discouraged, not to close ourselves into a self-centred religiosity, but rather to believe that He moulds history through little acts of love of the poor” (Christmas 1999).
Dom Franco has always had an enormous respect for the culture of the poor, for their history, for their expression of faith, patiently awaiting the time to “give reason for their hope” (1 Pt 3:15) and breaking the chains of fatalism, resignation and discouragement.
The poor fill time and occupy space; are privileged and teachers. They are those who, when listened to religiously and loved tenderly, determine the choices made by Dom Franco as a missionary, father and bishop.

3. To become immersed in people’s lives

A third aspect is the necessity to “be with” and to become immersed in people’s lives with humility and perseverance, but always conscious of being a guest and a “foreigner”. He writes during his first five years in Brazil: “I am convinced that one of our main duties as missionaries is that of becoming one with the people and the provisional aspect of our presence, thus gradually creating the conditions for an autonomous local Church. Avoiding then to settle and install ourselves, though with the people we get on well indeed” (September 1975).
In Dom Franco’s vision, incarnation was always a condition that could not be renounced, either in the journey of the Latin American Church or among the people of the sertão in Brazil Nordeste, as well as among the favelados of São Paulo, São Luis do Maranhão and Teresina. By walking with the poor he was taking up the spirit of their humanity, their jeito (‘way of being’), their persistence, their trusting and optimistic perception of life and nurturing the firm hope of a world sem males (‘without evil’).
During his time in São Paulo, in the scholasticate of the Comboni Missionaries, he says: “Living in contact with these poor people, trying to share their difficulties, their hopes, making an effort to understand their values, it is a great help for us to come down to what matters and to try to convert our outlook and attitudes. The poor set the tone to our prayer and lifestyle. Even though we do not succeed in being always coherent” (June 1986).
Incarnation for Dom Franco was not a missionary’s strategic or optional choice, but first and foremost an interior and indispensable attitude, the result of an obvious awareness that the true protagonist of evangelisation is the Spirit of Jesus Christ. So he told his friends: “The journey of evangelisation is slow and it daily carries its surprises, because the most important thing is to discover the initiative of Christ who works through the sufferings and hopes of the people. This is the reason why the incarnation of the word and of ourselves is hard and difficult” (April 1976).

4. Like people on exodus

The theme of the exodus constituted a fourth aspect which demonstrated Dom Franco’s deep motivation; a conviction that allowed him to open up roads, shorten distances, overcome barriers, shatter taboos and surmount obstacles. Every time he had to leave the work he was doing, and this happened fairly often, Dom Franco felt sorry about it, as he confessed when he had to leave his first missionary commitment in Brazil: “I am sad to leave my humble work in Pastos Bons and Nova Iorque: I believe that in order to guarantee work continuity, a priest should remain in a parish not less than five years” (January 1975). And again when he had to leave the scholasticate of São Paulo: “These months have been for me very busy and also rather difficult. I felt sorry to have to leave my community and the poor people of São Paulo: I am realising more and more that these separations are the bread, in truth rather sour, of a missionary life” (February 1987).
But he did not dwell on regrets. His flexibility to adapt went along with his capability to assimilate and to push himself further. Hope is the engine of life, as he would later say, after another of his many departures: “I think that my departure for the mission has helped me to know that what is really important is not to come to Brazil or to remain in Italy, (each one has his own route): more important is to depart everyday from self and from a vision that is unchanging, resigned and accommodating, in order to open ourselves to new routes, which keep our spirit alive and creative and nourish within ourselves hope, genuineness, search, openness to others and the joy of life” (February 1986).

5. God’s Kingdom becomes visible in the encounter with other people

The fifth and final aspect deals with the firm conviction that God’s Kingdom reveals itself through human and evangelical relationships. The encounter with another person is always to be considered an opportunity for growth and the promotion of values. Dom Franco always welcomed people as they were, with their limits and their capabilities, without making judgements, but opening his heart to them as if to a brother, because trustful love cannot and must not be measured.
“Anyway, I am certain – he wrote soon after been appointed coordinator of the pastoral work in the diocese of Balsas – that my role as coordinator requires above all the effort of making friendship grow among all of us, the joy of coming together, of helping one another, of each one opening a way for the other, of encouraging one another without settling down and being satisfied with ourselves, because also this undertaking is a sign of liberation and growth in the service of people” (April 1975).
Towards the end of his life, this idea was being expressed with greater clarity and insistence through images which had become in keeping with his feelings: “The missionaries are called to give and receive and share. They are like Christ’s bees which look for flowers everywhere and among peoples. In making contact with them, they gather the pollen and they work on it to produce life. It is a work of great patience, a humble and respectful presence which will produce a honey that will have a thousand different flavours and make one feel the unlimited sweetness of the encounter with God in this world through the journey of all the peoples” (From an article of Dom Franco: Journeys and Challenges of the Church in Latin America).
The need and urgency to create networks of solidarity and interchanges to make the world more supportive, urged Dom Franco in his ministry as bishop to have grand dreams and to make a plea to all the Churches all over the continents: “Wouldn’t it be desirable to organise continental mission assemblies in Africa, Asia and Europe, just as there are in America, and to make these assemblies merge into a vast ‘Worldwide Mission Forum’, which, in communion with the Pope and all the churches and open to ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue, may become a sounding board against the present market globalisation, ethno-centrism, violence and war? It would be a meaningful tool towards a new life project based on sobriety, sharing, respect for cultures and national sovereignties” (From an article of Dom Franco: Journeys and Challenges of the Church in Latin America).


II FEATURES OF DOM FRANCO’S SPIRITUALITY

The inspirational ideas Dom Franco had assimilated were being put into practice through his daily routine, taking on a clearer form and quality, thus characterising his spirituality.
Borrowing a simile from Segundo Galilea, Dom Franco used to say that spirituality is like water for the lawn: it is useful to keep it moist. You don’t see the water, but it keeps the lawn green and growing. Then, perceptively, would add that, if the water remains stagnant, the grass dries up and the lawn becomes wetland.
In this way Dom Franco has helped us to understand that spirituality cannot remain still, it has to be part of the choices and different life options, it has to be brought into question by the challenges of times and places, constantly nourishing itself at the fountain of the “living and gushing” water that springs from the Word of God, from sharing in the life and situations of the poor; it becomes stronger in fraternal life and in the contemplation of the open side of Christ, it remains faithful even during suffering, trials of life and the experience of the cross.
It would be pretentious to expect to define all the aspects of Dom Franco’s spirituality. We will mention those which most pertain to the figure of this great missionary and bishop; at the same time to motivate others to follow in his footsteps.
We believe that his profound mystical experience may inspire men and women of our time in Latin America as well as in Europe, in Africa as well as in Asia, motivating them to a life lived in the strength of the Spirit, so that they may translate into today’s world and in the places where they live and work those values of the Kingdom so loved and practised by Dom Franco.

1. In the service of life

As a bishop, Dom Franco chose for his coat of arms’ motto: “Ut vitam habeant” (that all may have life) (Jn 10:10).
Service on behalf of life was his most unflagging value (virtue?) and the most meaningful aspect of his spirituality. To this service he devoted all his energies, as it was the unvarying thread linking all his activities, initiatives and worries.
Dom Franco had such a warm heart as to never make any difference between people; his missionary eye, nevertheless, made him particularly attentive to those who were excluded and somehow ostracised by society. Wherever life was being trampled on and humiliated it was essential and very important to intervene. Dom Franco would never show cold-heartedness; he had to find solutions and provide solutions. Hope was not to be just eyewash for the poor: it had to be made perceptible, even if just partially.
The landless and the jobless, fishermen, lepers, drug addicted, young people, Indios, afro-American, women, elderly… to all Dom Franco showed special concern and a desire to help, knowing that this service on behalf of life would give him in return an inner maturity, because it is in giving that we receive.
“I am now in Pastos Bons – he wrote at the beginning of his pastoral work. Practical situations made me immediately enter the fray. I realise that I have to hold back a little the emotional reactions when faced with so much misery, so that I may work with a clear head and have the best attitude for doing a true service to these people. I also have to allow myself to be helped by their own great values, even though buried on account of a secular oppression of which they have been and are victims” (July 1972).
“This afternoon – he said during his ministry as a bishop – I visited a very poor neighbourhood where there are 22 lepers. We are trying to help them spiritually and materially. The suffering of these brothers and sisters of ours moves me deeply” (Easter 1998).
When faced by natural calamities he does not dilly dally to open the doors of churches and community centres to welcome the flagelados (‘displaced people’): “The homeless have been welcomed and given hospitality in our churches and parish halls, where the communities are still now committed to provide food, mattresses and things of first necessity” (Easter 2002).
In tune with the entire movement of Land Reform in Brazil, Dom Franco devotes a lot of time to the solution of land problem; he starts with the situation that he found in the parish where he began to work: “When I arrived in Pastos Bons we had to deal with a very difficult problem: a huge extension of land was taken over by the people in an irrational way (the people call it ‘St. Benedict’s legacy’). We are now attempting to freely give it to the people in a legal manner through a just and rational allotment system, securing at the same time the setting up of a community management, but it does not appear easy, given the difficulty of the circumstances” (September 1972).
Commitment to promote life’s values in a context that was becoming ever more violent and oppressive should have discouraged him, but Dom Franco found strength in the Paschal mystery to look foreword and to keep hope alive: “I perceive only the violence of this hour, as the people are not the protagonists, but passive bystanders and perhaps will have soon to face the possibility of having to leave their homes, because these large extensions of land will have to be used for cattle breeding, a work that does not require much manpower. These are the challenges requiring ingenuity in our pastoral work. This year’s Easter and its promise of liberation will have to reckon with such problems. I find it difficult to make a real distinction between horizontal and vertical prospective: they are both mutually dependent. Prayer must begin by taking into account such problems, God’s Word puts us at difficulty with our pre-cast schemes. The people’s human hope is the necessary sacrament for the fullness of total hope that the risen Christ is proposing and offering to us” (April 1976).

Confronted by so much suffering and abuse of authority, Dom Franco, motivated by his insight, tries as a true frater familias to find concrete means to carry out the many initiatives that filled his missionary life. The first to cooperate with him are the poor themselves, but he never tires to appeal to the sensibility of his friends in Italy and by contacting organisations for finding support.
We have to underline that he never became paternalistic with his charity, but he used it as an opportunity to build solidarity, both locally and globally, among the pastoral agents, religious communities, his Comboni family, men and women of civic societies, his friends and mission benefactors.
Charity in Dom Franco’s motivation was always the first step towards love and trust for the poor, so that they themselves would become the protagonists of their own liberation.

Love for the poor, however, is also an appeal to the poor not to close themselves in on their own problems, but to open their heart to the needs of other poor, near and far.
For this reason he does not waste time in committing the Church of Balsas and the other Churches of Maranhão region to a chain of solidarity for the poor in Mozambique: “There is another good news I have to tell you: the good launching of the solidarity project of the dioceses of Maranhão with that of Lichinga in Mozambique. It is an experience of ecclesial exchange we have been planning for some time. We have already reaped the first fruits. We have managed to prepare and to send the first four missionaries. In August three more will go. According to human logic it is nonsensical that we try to help other churches, when also here we are much in need of personnel. In the Gospel’s logic, though, I am sure that we have always to share what little we have with those who have even less. I know that this sign of ecclesial sharing will help our dioceses to grow and mature” (Easter 1998).

Commitment in defence of life has also to reach down to the causes which determine and in a sense perpetuate the misery and exploitation of the poor. For this reason Dom Franco does not hesitate to get personally involved in the process of liberation.
Dom Franco explains: “Liberation overcomes the boundaries of history because Christ is the one who grants it to us, but without passing history by; the different historical liberations are signs and sacraments of the total liberation. The growth of God’s Kingdom is the growth of humankind; to evangelise is to effectively announce the Word and to actively promote people in all their dimensions: spiritual and material, mundane and ultra-mundane, temporal and eternal” (September 1977).
Often in his writings and formation courses he used to say that it was not enough to teach someone how to fish, but that it was also necessary to clean out the river, so that there would be abundant fish for all, not just for a few selfish people.

2. Discerning the signs of the times and local situations

One of the most important orientations of Vatican Council II has been to remind the Christians and the Churches of the importance of seeing and discerning the signs of the times in pastoral work (GS 4). The appeal of the Vatican Council highlights the warnings of the Gospel to all those who cling to the law, to the strict observance of precepts and norms, to the splendour of orthodoxy, forgetting that by doing so the life rhythm and the events of history will disappoint them as they attempt to raise long-lasting, solid and secure structures, because time will inevitably sweep them away, like sandcastles on the seashore.
The Christian instead is called to be salt and yeast, ever ready to provide new, up-to-date, concrete and effective answers. Without though reflecting on the events of history and of life, the journey of peoples and the epoch-making transformations, the Christian will be condemned to inactivity, to defend his own territory to the utmost, to confine himself to a ghetto, thus destined to be cast aside and trampled underfoot (Mt 5:139.
In Latin America this appeal is promptly taken up by the Bishops’ Conferences, religious, missionaries and basic Christian communities. Discernment not only helps to better understand the signs of the times, but because of the concern to contextualise pastoral choices, it leads to a better understanding of the local situations, those that more directly touch the life and problems of the peoples of Latin America.
Discernment of the times and local situations, in order to be effective, must not though be the work of a few or enlightened experts, but the result of constant and undaunted search by the whole community, supported by the experience and the ability of all, in the field proper to each one. It also has to be accompanied by scientific research, especially in the fields of sociology, anthropology and history, but always enlightened by God’s Word and faith, aware that God’s Spirit is present in history and continues to act and ‘blow’ where, how and when He wishes.
“I have always been impressed – writes Dom Franco – by the Gospel reading of the Easter event, where it tells of Mary Magdalene who weeps because she cannot recognise the living Master next to her. It seems to me to be the image of all of us every time we judge today’s history without taking into account Christ who is living and present in it” (March 1992).
Beginning from this faith vision, Dom Franco wants to seize the “hour” of God in human history. He knows that he has to act urgently, he wants to get acquainted and become familiar with, to get involved and to get people involved. He also wants to explain to others and let them all know the suffering of his people in Northern Brazil. Dom Franco alternates action with contemplation, days full of activities and times of silence, study and prayer, as he knows that a blind guide cannot be of help or a motivating force to others or make them open their eyes to the situation and become involved in creating the marvellous world God intended for all.
Dom Franco gets involved in this longing to research and to discern; he does not want to miss any opportunity. He is always on the lookout for identifying the “new”, ready for the conversion of his heart and for changing the structures, because he is convinced that “God is not dead even if often we place a heavy stone on his tomb so that he may not upset our plans with the idols of our self-deceptions. God is not wrapped away in a closet, for our own expediency. God cannot be labelled in any way, because He has the face of every person, He is a perpetual surprise and consults us all the time for providing an answer to the small and big questions of mankind” (February 1972, on one of his journeys to Brazil).

3. To reveal God’s heart

One of the tasks of the missionary is to announce the Gospel through his preaching, catechesis and life witness. Dom Franco spent a lot of time in preaching. He had a particular and personal style of announcing God’s Word. In his catechesis and homilies, in his courses of spirituality or of spiritual exercises he was able to charm the audience with similes and parables he made up on the spur of the moment or borrowed from others. He was able to simplify and make intelligible what was difficult and complex. With his people of Northern Brazil he also used to sing, as he knew the feelings of the people of the sertão well. What, though, was fascinating and enchanting at the same time were his gestures, which did not need explanation. Dom Franco believed that the merciful heart of God had to be revealed by his personal witness and that of the community.
An encounter with the poor, with every man and woman, had to be an occasion for encountering God and to experience the tenderness of his love. The word indeed warms the heart, but the gesture opens the eyes, moves to compassion and prompts to action.

* To reveal God’s heart by personal witness

We will underline just a few of the particular traits of his personality, especially those which reveal his great human feelings, heart and sensitivity.

a) First of all his humility: “I know I should have been a hero, but I am not at all ashamed to appear the way I am, without attempting to disguise my emotional frailty. I couldn’t care less of a faith that does not make one get involved or that is as cold as a stockfish. I wish my faith were always filtered through a warm humanity, without any rhetoric or pretension. I wish my being were perpetually charged with the light of the Gospel, polished according to its ever demanding requirements and refined according to its orientations” (February 1972, on his journey towards Brazil).

b) In a letter addressed to his relatives and friends at Christmas time he reveals his simplicity: “May the coming of the Baby… be rather an opportunity to discover in ourselves how that Baby is attempting to destroy in us our empty self-assurances and our thoughts so ever concerned about ourselves and our wellbeing, in order to make room to simplicity, imagination, gratuity, cleanliness of eyes and heart” (December 1987).

c) In a context of enormous epochal changes and great challenges, faced by injustices so evident and ever increasing in the Brazilian context, especially deep in the Northeast, the greatest temptation could have been to go ahead alone, to take over the place and the responsibility of others in order to make things happen more rapidly. But Dom Franco adopts the policy of listening to and of having respect for the other, in the patient confidence that the change will take place: “Even though there is no lack of disappointments, the difficulties of entering into this cultural world, so different from ours, make me ever more certain that the most needed skills for our work are the ability to listen and to have a pastoral patience” (December 1973).

d) When confronted with the affliction and suffering of a sick person, the punishment of a convict, the agony of a dying person, the bitterness of someone who has experienced injustice, what gives most comfort is the silent and supportive presence of a sincere friend. More than words is the fact of being there, the kind of look, the touch of the hand, the affectionate silence and the trustful smile. Of the many instances of Dom Franco’s supportive presence we recall one, when he was by the side of his friend Tonino: “I write you this letter by the bedside of Tonino, a great friend of the mission who is seriously ill. His peace of mind and his desire to live, the inner strength of his wife who is always next to him, are for me a great example and it helps me to make concrete my prayer and the Easter wish for all of us: May Christ’s resurrection help us to keep alive the flame of hope and to always find the reasons for living with love and to strive for life in a world that is overshadowed by death” (Easter 2001).

e) Who in their lives have not experienced the bitterness of tribulation or of the Cross? Often these visit us at unexpected times and circumstances, though the Cross only catches off guard those who have not had a deep experience of God. Acceptance of the Cross in Dom Franco’s spirituality becomes the occasion for a Easter experience: “As some of you have heard, this opening of the Synod has coincided with a serious accident… The car overturned and two people were thrown out of the vehicle… Unfortunately sister Vanda (34 years of age) was killed… The Lord has permitted us to start the Synod with an incident of sorrow and grief… I believe that, through this sad sharing, our Church will feel closer together. I believe that the Lord is near us to transform our wounds in events of life. As for me, in spite of so much heartache, I consider it to be an Easter experience” (Easter 2003).

f) Friendship is measured by the yardstick of trust and loyalty to people. The rejection of a person gives rise to a trauma in the one who suffers it. The rejected child will grow up with a great rebellion in his heart and will be dominated by the fury of a destructive vengeance. Someone who is rejected will always be looked at with suspicion and made to feel guilty. Dom Franco never made any differences between people. He accepted everyone and trusted everyone. Some confreres of his wondered about his openness and regarded him rather naïve and imprudent. In the logic of God’s heart, nevertheless, there is room for everyone, especially for those who were downtrodden and unable to develop their own skills and talents. The other, whoever it happens to be, man or woman, young or old, Indio or black, poor or rich… when accepted with love and respect becomes, in God’s hands, an instrument of salvation: “A process that leads us to trust in Him and to jeopardise our inner self together with the others, because He engages and saves us through others. God wears the clothes of the poor of this world. This way of talking must not be evasive, abstract, rhetoric, but has to come down to the concrete experiences of day-to-day life” (1972, first days in Brazil).

g) In Dom Franco’s spiritual perspective, action and contemplation had to support and nurture each other, that’s why in his diocese of Balsas he opens a place dear to his heart: “A House of Prayer. It will be a place of prayerful silence and contemplation of the face of Christ reflected in the suffering, struggle and hope of the poor. We are looking for a house to be used for this purpose and to accommodate a contemplative community in the middle of a poor neighbourhood; a house open to priests and religious, pastoral teams, youth and married couple who wish to make a prayer experience” (Easter 2002).

h) Finally his optimism and sense of humour. There was no meeting or gathering of friends which Dom Franco would not enliven with his anecdotes and jokes. He was always ready for this. With his presence of mind he would recognize when heaviness, misunderstanding or stalemate were getting the better of the discussion, so he strived to make everybody smile and lighten the mood, in order to carry on with better trust and mutual understanding. He had a wonderful sense of humour even about himself and his many initiatives and activities, in the knowledge that “Christ is at everyone’s side: for me, for you and for the people. And this is really beautiful! So that we may increase our joy of living and working and may savour it with that witticism that helps us to smile, to hope and to see our accomplishments and failures in a proper context” (September 1975).

* To reveal God’s heart through fraternal life

Personal witness is very important to discover God’s heart, but it is not enough. St. Daniel Comboni, founder of the Comboni Institutes and towards whom Dom Franco had a filial affection and from whom he drew charismatic inspiration, used to tell his missionaries that we go to heaven only if accompanied by others, so the missionary cannot go to heaven alone (W 6655).
In fact the easiest route to enter into the mystery of God’s heart is undoubtedly fraternal life, the community, the united family, the unified group, the people who live in harmony, the reconciled world.
By a deep theological reflection, the sixth inter-ecclesial meeting of the basic Christian communities, which took place in Trindade (Goias - Brazil) in 1986, stressed for the 1600 participants that the “Trinity is the ideal community”.
In order to know God, then, we must experience fraternal life. The person who gets closer to God is the one who commits himself to the search and the building up of community life, who makes himself an instrument of reconciliation, who breaks down the walls of hate (Ef 2:14), separation, suspicion, refusal, exclusion, the one who offers himself in the place of all this, so that all may have life in abundance, become involved in sharing and one in heart.
In this sense we can say that Dom Franco has been a staunch servant of communion and reconciliation among individuals, churches and peoples. All his experience as father, missionary and bishop was characterised by this Trinitarian spirituality: to be a docile instrument in the hands of God in order to smooth out the way, so that in our fraternal meeting God’s face may shine through.
We select two of the experiences mentioned by Dom Franco in his writings: the first happened at the beginning of his apostolic ministry, the second took place during the protest march of the Indios on the occasion of the Jubilee Year and the 500 years of evangelisation of Brazil.
At the beginning of his ministry, he affirmed with clarity and foresight: “Our first concern is to make of our work an experience of communitarian growth, in the belief that what counts most, even for effective pastoral work, is our being together around Christ and to make of our life an expression and witness of our quest for dialogue and communion” (Towards the end of 1972).
Recalling the landing of Pedro Alvarez Cabral, on 22 April 1500 at Porto Seguo, on the shores of the state of Bahia, the Indios of Brazil, together with many other organisations, first among them the afro-American, wanted to remember their view of history, one that did not speak of discovery, but instead of conquest. Dom Franco recalls: “We missionaries were accompanying the Indios in their peaceful march. When the police charged them, the head group of missionaries was surrounded by soldiers and placed under arrest together with other people. When I was informed about this, I – who was marching with other missionaries further down the line – got in touch with the colonel in charge of the operation for an explanation. His answer was to put me too under arrest, as I was the president of the Missionary Indios Council. (…) It was a great humiliation, but not a very painful one. I confess that I considered the experience as a grace from the Lord and one which has given us an opportunity to become more united with and supportive of many brothers and sisters of ours who for the past five hundred years had to endure exclusion and repression (June 2000).


III A SPIRITUALITY THAT LIVES ON

The foreword of a book written by Dom Franco, “Missionary Spirituality. Meditations” (EMI, Città di Castello, 1986) underlines the fact that we live in a context where the “mystical core” of every person is denied and humiliated by pragmatism, consumerism and the spasmodic pursuit of self-assertion. That’s the reason why relativism, subjectivism and fragmentariness are prevailing. We experience this problem within our own Church, religious and missionary Institutes and even our own families. The Vatican Council II has encouraged the renewal of pastoral work and theology, but it finds it hard to come up with satisfactory new results at spiritual level. There were, nevertheless, precious indications and experiences.

It is necessary to dare even further

It is necessary to discover a spirituality which is able to implement the great values of Christian life into the reality of the mission, the different cultural, social, political and ecclesial contexts. A commitment that has to involve everyone, religious and laypeople: men and women of both active and contemplative life.
Dom Franco’s experience is situated without doubt in this line of renewal. His way becomes a provocation for all of us.
It is high time to allow those motivations that are rooted in the depth of our heart to develop within ourselves, so that everyone, in the places where they live and work, in the circumstances they have to face, may translate such motivations into a spiritual life experience.
The memory of Dom Franco will become a memorial in the measure that his intuitions, his convictions and his accomplishments continue to be imbedded in the commitment of each one of us.
It is not a matter of imitating Dom Franco, as his was a one-time experience, but a matter of trying to share in his mystical experience and to exclaim with him: “I wish I were one of those shepherds who, on the first Christmas night, after the angels’ apparition, said to his companions: Let us go to Bethlehem to see this event that the Lord has revealed to us. Let us go to Bethlehem to find deep in ourselves the basic values that give meaning to our life: the flavour of what is essential and the taste of simple things, the joy of dialogue and solidarity, the desire to be free from the new forms of slavery of consumerism, the tenderness of kneeling down in front of a God who has made himself small in order to be with us on the hard journey of life. Let us go to Bethlehem to discover the frailty of a Child born in a grotto in poverty, the frightened face of the oppressed, the loneliness of the unfortunate and excluded, the bitterness of the last ones, the suffering of the immigrants. Let us set off without fear and let us make, everyone in his/her own environment, the choices which promote life” (Christmas 2000).