Pat Connor explains how SVD and SSpS missionaries are working through VIVAT International to help the UN develop solutions to the world’s problems.
On Mindoro island in the Philippines, Fr Mehler SVD helps children with hare-lips and cleft palates. He has helped an average of 100 children a year to secure surgery. In Ngondi, Congo, Brother Fabien SVD, works for the prevention of HIV/AIDS and cares for its victims.. ..In Atambua, Indonesia, Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit (SSpS) care for hundreds of thousands of refugees from East Timor, concentrating especially on their health needs. In Chicago, SSpS Sisters work with a project to curb violence against women and children in the ghettos of the city.
These activities are but a few examples of what Divine Word Missionaries and SSpS Sisters are doing “on the ground” in many countries of the world. They take seriously Jesus’s command to “feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, cure the sick” etc. Blessed Teresa of Calcutta did the same thing, but she always insisted that, far more important than what she and her nuns were doing, were the efforts being made by people to change those structures of society that are the root causes of hunger, disease, homelessness and all the other ills that beset the human race.
I like to point up the difference between the two approaches to such ills by recalling that, during the pre-Civil War years in the U.S., the Catholic Church urged slave-owners to treat their slaves well, but never attacked the system or structure of slavery as such (because of not interpreting rightly St Paul’s admonition: “Slaves, obey your masters”). That was left to the Quakers and other abolitionists.
I can remember an unforgettable tableau at the 1976 Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia. On the stage, for one event, were Blessed Teresa and Archbishop Helder Camara of Brazil. They embraced – and I realized that I was looking at symbols of the Church’s never-ending double-barrelled attack on the evils of this world – Teresa with her one-on-one approach, picking the child out of the gutter in Calcutta, and Helder Camara, trying to change the unjust structures of Brazilian society, structures that doom so many people to lives on the margins of existence.
So it is that some Catholic religious orders, besides assigning their members to pursue the Teresa approach, have set aside members to work within the UN, helping that organization to develop systematic solutions to the world’s problems. For the Divine Word Missionaries, Fr Lawrence Correa, an Indian, is our man at the UN, and for the SSpS Sisters, Sr Gretta Maria Fernandes, another Indian, is their representative. The two together make up what is called an NGO – a non-governmental organization. The name of this particular NGO is “VIVAT International”. VIVAT means “For life!” It is one of almost 4,000 NGOs collaborating with the UN.
The Red Cross was the pioneer NGO, “present at the creation” of the UN. The Red Cross was a major partner of the UN in rebuilding war-shattered countries, and its relationship with the UN was a model of the sort of partnership that should exist between the UN and NGOs. The UN defines an NGO as “Any non-profit, voluntary citizens’ group which is organized on a local, national or international level.”
The SVD and the SSpS fit that description perfectly – especially the international ingredient. NGOs are usually task-oriented and run by people with a common interest. NGOs bring citizens’ concerns to governments, encourage political participation at the community level, provide analysis and expertise, serve as early warning mechanisms, and help monitor and implement international agreements. The Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan, is trying to expand constructive UN relationships with civil society and the private sector. He calls this partnership “the quiet revolution.”
The great advantage VIVAT International enjoys over many other NGOs is that it is in touch with over 10,000 SVD and SSpS missionaries throughout the world, missionaries who are trying to dismantle the unjust structures of society. For example, in June 2004, VIVAT International’s Fr Correra, SVD, visited SVD and SSpS members working in Mississippi and Louisiana. For more than 50 years these missionaries have been working towards racial harmony and peace and the development of African Americans. Nowadays, in the south, new communities, Vietnamese and Latinos, need the help of the missionaries. Fr Correa addressed these missionaries on how VIVAT International and they could collaborate more closely on achieving their common goal. On the other side of the world, in Papua New Guinea, VIVAT International’s missionary members are trying to address the culture of violence that prevails in that country, trying instead to promote a culture of peace, harmony and reconciliation.
There is a sense in which the work of VIVAT International involves a ministry of meetings! For it is in countless meetings all over the world that VIVAT International members can make their voice for justice heard and, in turn, hear the voices of other NGOs all working towards the same goal. Thus, in recent years VIVAT International’s representatives have attended meetings in Geneva (on social development); in Chile (on the HIV/AIDS problem, the greatest threat to development); in Bali, Indonesia (on sustainable development); in Dublin (on the debt crises and debt relief) – and so on.
Addressing the question whether VIVAT International is worth the candle, our Superior General, Fr Tony Pernia SVD said in 2002: “We SVDs and SSpS Sisters are becoming more and more aware of the world transforming dimension of our mission… we are beginning to see that our mission cannot be totally detached from the crucial problems of our world: poverty, injustice, war, gender inequality, HIV/AIDS, violations of human rights, ecology, racism, refugees, indigenous peoples. Our mission is basically one of witnessing to God’s kingdom, and entails creating a new heaven and a new earth. Terrorism, ethnic conflicts, religious wars no longer seem distant to us or things that do not concern us. We begin to see a religious, indeed a spiritual dimension, to all these problems, just as we begin to see a prophetic or a political dimension to our mission of proclaiming the Divine Word”.
Article Credits
This article first appeared in The Word ( October 2004), a Divine Word Missionary Publication.
