After 6 hours of waiting due to bad weather, the small four-seater plane departed from Boa Vista towards the Catrimani Mission (about 150 kilometers in a straight line), an area within the State of Roraima, in the land of the indigenous people Yanomami which is part of the greater Brazilian Amazon.
By Juan Pablo De Los Ríos *
In this region the Italian Consolata missionaries, Giovanni Calleri and Bindo Meldolesi founded, in 1965, a very special mission on the banks of the Catrimani river. And it is there that the Consolata missionaries have been present among the Yanomami indigenous people for almost 60 years, accompanying some communities of this ethnic group, experiencing in simplicity and closeness the inevitable encounter between a culture based on centuries-old traditions that lives in harmony with a challenging environment like the Amazon forest and a westernized culture based on the consumption and exploitation of everything that can generate profit and economic gain.
A few days of visit are obviously not enough to understand all the dynamics that the missionaries have developed in all these years in the territory, but they give us some elements that makes us appreciate the choice of this missionary team to be present among the Yanomami in simplicity, almost in silence, and without great claims in terms of pastoral successes (understood as the number of baptisms in the year or in the construction of chapels and worship centers, etc.).
In addition to being present in the area in an attitude of dialogue and providing some services such as healthcare or solving some of the basic daily needs, their objective is to help strengthen and preserve their traditions with formation meetings on specific issues that concern the community, especially with young people and women, so that they may face the challenges that come from the invasion of the illegal “garimpeiros” who cause the destruction of the environment, the pollution of the rivers and threaten the very existance of the Yanomami communities. This, combined with the difficulties of providing healthcare, is creating a disastrous humanitarian crisis.
Without a doubt, those who benefit most in this encounter and dialogue of life are certainly the members of the missionary team itself, and our two Institutes, because it enriches our charism ad gentes in a dialogue of spirituality with a people who, despite not having the word “religion “, nor religious and liturgical structures in the strict sense, possess a cosmology that defines the human being as one who carries within himself an immortal gift. The Yanomami believe that the Transcendent, the Craftsman (Omama) who created the world and everything that coexists in it, is also the mentor of a dignified and infinite life.
A big thanks to the Catrimani Missionary Team (Fr. Bob Mulega, Fr. Filbert Nkanga e Br. Ayres Osmarin; Sr. Mary Agnes, Sr. Suzana Kihoo and Sr. Argentina Paulo) for the welcome and brotherhood that we have experienced in these days; and moreover, because they encourage us to continue to deeply believe that our missionary charism and the spirituality of consolation, inherited from our Founder, the Blessed Giuseppe Allamano, who will be proclaimed a saint on 20 October, are still valid and relevant for today’s world. Here we learn to welcome the good and recognize it in everyone and in everything; but at the same time to identify evil through the cry of the people and of the earth, our “Common Home”, because, as Pope Francis says, “everything is interconnected”, the visible world and the invisible or spiritual one.
* Father Juan Pablo De Los Ríos, IMC, General Councilor for America.
