Carlo Torriani

SWARGA DWAR

The conversion of a catholic missionary

presented by

Card. Simon Pimenta

PIME Publications, PIME Regional House, Eluru - 534 0-07, A.P., India

PART ONE

 MY PILGRIMAGE

APPEAL FOR A CHAPEL

          I came to India after nine years of priestly ministry in Italy in which I came to know a good number of people, especially youth of the movement MANI TESE, who now were waiting to get some news from me.

    MANI TESE is a voluntary organization born in 1964 at the time when the Food and Agricultural Organization of United Nations was conducting a Freedom from Hunger Campaign all over the world. MANI TESE was started by PIME (Pontifical Institute for Mission Extension) and I had been the first general secretary till 1967. After one year in England to get fluent in English and one semester at the Gregorian University in Rome, I reached India at the beginning of May 1969.

    In order to keep in tough with all the Italian friends it was expedient to make use of circular letters.

Letter No. 1. Pune, December 1969

Dear friends

I wish you a Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year.

I must tell you that here is missing all that particular Christmas atmosphere of our December. Here the climate is hot  as our summer and we miss all that feverish preparation of our Christmas.

You will forgive me for addressing to you a circular letter. But let us not waste time and space in apologies.

    May of you already know that I left Italy at the beginning of May and, after a stopover in Palestine to visit the Holy Land, I reached Bombay during the hottest month of India.  I was welcomed by Fr. Bruno Venturin, who since two years is in Bombay to start a parish in the suburbs of the city, after 32 years of missionary work in Andhra Pradesh.

    The first impact of the Indian reality it has been shocking also for me who had been prepared for it. Very often, working for MANI TESE, I had been lecturing and showing films on India and on developing countries. But when you see it with your eyes , reality always surpasses your imagination.

The first thing which strikes you is the number of people you find around you wherever you go, any time of the day or of the night: the roads are full, the trains are full, the busses are full, the airport in which you land is full. If you think that Bombay has more than five millions inhabitants and at least one million does not have a proper house you can understand why people live on the roads and on footpaths.

    I thought I was ready for this immersion, but when it happened I could not avoid a feeling of disgust and rejection. I remained a few days unwilling of  coming out of the house for fear of being crushed under the sheer weight of this reality and by the feeling of helplessness.

Slowly, slowly I got accustomed. But I still wander whether it has come through the grace of God or because I became insensitive.  This is the danger! I pray God that this habit does not extinguish my initiative.

    After this first introduction to the social reality of India, I got also a wonderful occasion of introduction to the Church of India. This was the national All India Seminar in Bangalore from the 15 to 25 of May. On the wake of the Second Vatican Council, all the trends of the Catholic Church in India gathered to consider what updating was needed and to draw a plan of action for the coming years.

There I came to know many bishops and the prominent religious figures of India. They had been ten days very interesting and full of contacts.

    In the first week of June, when the schools reopen in India, I came to Pune to start my theological studies for which I was granted visa to come to India. Here nothing really exiting: the usual life of a student and of a seminary. I live with some 200 other seminarians, coming from every part of India. We all go for lectures to the Pontifical Athenaeum, were also come some 200 Jesuit students from De Nobili College and other students from other congregations. Can you guess? I try my best to study, although it is not my vocation and in spite of my  no more green age.

     At last Diwali holiday came, the feast of light. In the first weeks of November I could go to visit Warangal, our mission in Andhra Pradesh, where I hope to go to work if I succeed to remain in India. Fifteen wonderful days in which, at last, I could see the India of my dreams. The villages of India, the missions, the remote areas without electricity, without pucca roads, where you have to walk on the margins of paddy fields, you have to wade small rivers. Where you can see the caste in the division of the villages, where the only literate person is the catechist, where many people suffer from tuberculosis.

I helped Fr Luigi Pezzoni, my seminary mate, in a dispensary to distribute medicines and to give injections to his leprosy patients. I visited  a score of missionaries in their own villages. I saw their social work: drilling of wells, small village schools, dispensaries, small boardings for tribal children.

I saw villages completely rebuild thanks to the help received from MANI TESE or other financing agencies.

For the first time I understood the social and symbolic function of a clean and well built chapel particularly in villages of dalits. Also if their houses are still made of straw and leaves, they fill proud to have a nice chapel, as a common place, where they can meet, they can take shelter during the cyclone. There the village feels to be a community, the dalits feel they are somebody, the poor start feeling the need for a better house for his family. Myself, when I was secretary of MANI TESE, I objected to giving financial help for building chapels. We were collecting money for fighting hunger, we could not divert it for building churches. I was thinking that building expensive churches was a sign of religious colonialism. But now I understood the social value of a chapel in a poor village. The chapel, in a village of dalits, si something more than a religious building: is a sign of civilization, is the first expression of solidarity, is the first incentive for progress. If it is not possible to give a decent house to all the families, a common house can be given to them. It is better for them to feel they brother, before they know they are owners.

The offerings you had given me before my leaving, I gave them to the missionaries I met. I thought to use them immediately and not wait when I will be posted there. The hands of the poor are the best bank. To one confrere who is in a particular need, I promise to collect for him the necessary funds for building a chapel. While I was in his residence, the heads of some villages came to ask baptism.

The father told me that since three years they were asking, but he could never attend to them since he has to look after thirty-five Christian villages and other five under instruction. I told that father that he could start building the chapel and that I will provide the funds: half million liras. It is to you that I appeal to help me to keep the promise. And if someone can afford alone the sum, he is free to choose also the name of the saint to whom to dedicate it in memory of a deceased person.

I greet all of you wishing you happy Christmas and Prosperous New Year.