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

WHAT TO DO ?

 After I obtained my MA in Social Work from TISS (Tata Institute of Social Sciences) in June 1972, the question was: What to do, as missionary, in India? Neither there were clear instructions from my superiors, nor there were clear ideas in my mind.

    At that time among missionaries there was a lot of rethinking. The common expression was: “We must search for new ways”. The two factors at the root of this rethinking were: the end of the colonial era and the beginning of a new era in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council.

The big      question was: how a missionary can justify his presence and show that he is useful to those peoples and governments who had become master of their destiny in their own nations?

How to witness Jesus Christ after the Council had proclaim that there is freedom of religion and that all men can reach salvation also out of the visible Church.

    The chances my Institute could offer me were two: either to work in one of the many parishes in Andhra Pradesh were PIME started working in 1855, or be assistant to the parish priest of Our Lady of Velankanni, Irla, our parish in Bombay.

    I was convinced and I also wrote that “the situation in Andhra Pradesh needed some decantation and to allow this to happen it is advisable not to send other missionaries unless expressly requested by the local bishops”.

    In the Irla parish all the attention, at that time, was absorbed by the construction of a Marian sanctuary on a land from which slum dwellers should have been evicted.

    Then I decided to become myself a slum dweller in Janata Colony, the slum near TISS, in the middle of the residential area of Bhaba Atomic Research Center, where I had already started a weekly dispensary. I ask the few Tamilian Catholisc that I met there, to build for me a hut, two meter by four in corrugated tin sheets. In August 1972 I started residing there, day and night. Beside the weekly dispensary, I started an adult education class, I helped the Catholics to build a small chapel, in which they were happy to have me celebrating the Mass for them, since they were Tamilians and in the parish the Mass was celebrated in Marathi or in Konkani.

 Letter No. 4, Bombay, December 1972

     Also this time I have to use a circular letter to reach all of you.

I remain a long time in doubt whether to write and what to write. When yourself do not know what to do or whether there is any future to what you are doing, then you wander whether it is worth writing about.

But there is one piece of good news that everyone will like. Although I am no more a student, that means I have finished my MA in social work and I am not enrolled in any other university, my visa to stay in India has been granted. That means that the Government of India is not against missionaries by principle, but, as any other government, they reserve the right to judge on the bona fide of the applicant.

    In June I finished my studies and I started working in a slum near the college where I was studying. Up till now it is more a presence than a real work. It is my intention to live with the people and to move with the people. If I wanted to offer them services like a school, a hospital, a house, it would have been enough to ask finances from abroad and it would have been relatively easy. But if we want to help people to change ideas, customs, dreams, then we must take it easy, with patience and constancy. Let time take its own time.

    I am not against giving financial help. That too may be necessary. Many times I heard people saying that Christianity had been established in India only because of the economic superiority of the West and also now it is too much dependant on foreign help.

It is easy to answer that this fact too is due to the Christian spirit of charity. But how will we answer to the question of a friend of mine, student: “What will the missionary do without all that money which is coming from abroad?”

    We know that Jesus Christ did not count on some economic power, but only on the power of the cross. Peter and John did not have silver and gold when that cripple man begged for help. Jesus also said that the Kingdom of God belongs to the poor, so if we do not stay with them we risk to remain out.

Everybody knows that there is distinction between material poverty (misery) and spiritual poverty {full reliance on God), but very often one is the condition of the other, and those who live in one feel very mush sympathy with those who live in the other. For these reasons I chose to live among the poor, as a first step to condition myself to share and to rely only on God.

    Only now I realize that I am not sending to you news, but I am making a sermon. This is the original defect of priests: when they open the mouth, they make a sermon.

I am sure: you would like to know what I am doing. To tell the truth: I am doing very little. Also my confreres tell me this: “Why are you wasting time in a slum in Bombay? Come to Andhra where entire villages ask to become Christians.”

I live. I live in India, and this is already a great thing. Now I realize, as St. Vincent de Paul was saying, how difficult it is to be worthy to serve the poor and to give help to them. A long preparation is needed.

Sometime is enough our presence, as rich Westerners, to make them beggars and parasites. It is very difficult to live in community with them without making them dependent.

I also realize that my pride and my egoism are hidden in every action of mine. I discover that my doing something good for the other is nothing else but my need of action, my need to show off., of satisfaction, of success. It is a way to escape the feeling of being useless.

    Well, instead of sending you news I am sending you a shred of my soul. The news you can always find on the missionary magazines to which I also contribute. I wanted to send you a personal letter with the risk of looking egocentric. Take me as I am. If you like me send me an answer: it is because of you that I remain in India. If you do not like me, throw this paper in the basket and forgive me.

Happy Christmas to all of you.