Seeking Justice, Seeking Peace

by Reverend Nelson Belizario, O.Carm.

From October 1 to 8, 2004, the Carmelite International Commission on Peace, Justice and the Integrity of Creation met in Kinshasa, Congo, for its annual meeting. Edgar Koning of the Netherlands, Telesphoro Chelo Dhebbi of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Antonio Silvio da Costa Jr, secretary to the Commission, and I were able to attend. It is the 31st year of a Carmelite presence in DRC. Sadly, on its 25th anniversary in 1998, on June 7th, 1998, robbers broke into their house of formation and killed Brother Jean-Floribert who was beginning his theological studies.

The International Commission met several times with the Commissary’s own peace and justice commission and we also met with the philosophy and theology students. It is a very young province with more than 30 in various stages of formation. They attend a college that is run by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

As we listened to their analyses and concerns, they were especially interested in several questions: What do people in your countries know about what is happening in the Congo? Are there ways in which our participation as an NGO (Nongovernment Organization) in the United Nations assists our ministry and assists our country in rebuilding? And how does our Carmelite charism of spirituality and justice shape our formation process? French and Lingala are the languages most frequently used in our discussions.

The former colony of Belgium, Zaire, is a very big country. For our confreres in the Congo, the war has been an overriding concern. It has deteriorated their economy, caused the deaths of over three million men, women, and children, and increased the military security. Police and soldiers were everywhere in the city. On a personal note, Father Chelo’s two sisters lost their husbands and their children in the eastern border wars and they themselves hid in the forests in order to survive.

The poverty of the people is matched only by the richness of its resources: gold, diamonds, and oil for starters, including minerals needed in cellular phones. From their perspective, the attacks on their country by Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi have been supported by interests in the EU and the USA. So while the resources are making others rich, the people of the Congo are suffering.

Kinshasa has added more than 2 million of their 6 million population in the last ten years. (We heard varying estimates of the population of the capital city, from 6 million to 11 million). Internal civil insurrections have also been common. But despite the hardships, the Carmelites in the Congo are excited about the future. Over half the country is under the age of 20. While they wanted us to be aware of the ‘misery’ of the people, they also emphasized that they are a suffering people full of hope. They seek to instill a respect for the rights of all peoples, to develop a model of citizenship as a foundation for national development, and they see social justice as a project of their faith.

We visited one site of 600 hectares, on the outskirts of the inhabited area of Kinshasa. They are trying to take a development theory that Father Chelo has been outlining in his studies and work in Rome and bring it into practice.

In 2005, they plan to open a medical clinic with special attention to the needs of women and children; connected with that center is an agricultural school where students will learn new ways of growing food and several ponds formed by a local creek will become a fish farm. Sunday morning, October 3rd, we arrived at 6:30 AM at Saint Laurent Paroisse in Kinshasa for Mass. The three-hour celebration began with a full church of over 1000 people and a choir of young adults that started rehearsing at 6 AM. Father Jacobs had invited us and the members of the Commissary’s peace and justice commission to concelebrate the Zairean Rite. It was a joyous time of prayer and reflection, song and dance, meditation and responding to Christ’s Eucharistic presence. Such a lingering prayer time contrasts sharply with many of my experiences where getting in and out in an hour is paramount.

The official minutes of the meeting will be published and will be available on the website. Among some issues of discussion is the development of a dialog among the mendicant order representatives in Rome as to how our mutual charism can guide us to continued renewal in the areas of lifestyle and witness. Several booklets of the Zelo Zelatus series are close to publication, including Carlos Mester’s on the liberation praxis of Jesus and Wilfred McGreal’s history of mendicants. The Titus Brandsma Bulletin, a twice a year insert in CITOC, is looking for several photo-essays of examples of social justice.

And the commission is hoping to have another three-week session of spirituality and justice in the Carmelite tradition in the summer of 2006, perhaps at Fatima. That conference especially is an opportunity for the promoters of peace and justice in each province to gather and share and is also open to all in the Carmelite Family, as was the workshop in Aylesford.

We thanked the General for his letter, God of Our Contemplation, which has provided all of us with insights connecting our charisms of prayer and service in the name of Christ. All the members of the Commission express our gratitude to the men of the Congolese Commissary who made us so welcome. We met at the Theresianum, a retreat center operated by the Discalced Carmelites. On a personal level, it was a time for meditation and prayer. There was no radio, TV, or newspaper that was easily available. One of the books I read, appropriately, was Constant Dolle’s Encountering God in the Abyss, a spiritual biography of Titus Brandsma. The Carmelites of the Congo are witnessing prophetically to the love of God in the midst of much human suffering and poverty. May we continue to find strength and perseverance in our prayers for one another.

The author, Father Nelson Belizario, O.Carm., currently serves as pastor of Saint Simon Stock Parish, Bronx, New York.