How to solve world problems

If you could embody the answer, the solution, to poverty and war, hatred and injustice in one person, it could easily be Fr. Giancarlo Bossi, the newly released Italian missionary in the Philippines. This interview with one of his missionary ‘confreres’ is compelling.

They talk of the abyss between the North and South of the world.  And the solution which is continually proposed is to send money and machines.  Rarely is the work of the missionaries and lay volunteers recalled, those people who go to educate and encourage development transforming men, families and customs.

Development is above all a consequence of education and education is a long term project.  This is why those who gift a few years or all of their lives to the poor is a model to be proposed for the youth who want to help the victims of hunger, dictatorships or war.  Sending vast sums of money to an illiterate population, unless it is a real emergency such as famine or war refugees, does not create development, only corruption! The catalyst for development lies in education, in human formation.

Father Giancarlo Bossi, in the parishes entrusted to him, created schools and working cooperatives, obtaining a twofold result: he opened minds to the modern world and taught his people to overcome divisions to collaborate, share and promote the common good.

He did this, fellow missionaries say, “not through great projects but through his willingness to listen to all those who approach him” and “to gain the trust and affection of all those who surround him.”

In short, missionaries such as Fr. Bossi should be held up to the schools, parishes, associations and youth groups, to the mass media as a positive example of how the first world can collaborate with the world’s poor.

We are drowning in our abundance. Others die because they have nothing or very little.  The Chinese have this proverb which is often quoted: “If you see a hungry man, do not give him fish; teach him to catch his own fish”.  But who from the rich world, goes to the poor world to teach them to teach? This is the missionaries’ example! Italy sends money, machines, business, but increasingly less men and women who know how to face the sacrifices and dangers for love of mankind!….

With powerful examples like these, that should change, and far beyond Italy.