Father Gian Paolo Pezzi: “Hope for the future, commitment in the present”

May the peace announced at Christmas accompany you at least

Dearly beloved,
may the peace announced at Christmas accompany you at least! In Palestine and Israel, in Russia and the Ukraine, in Sudan and South Sudan and in many other parts of the world, as well as here in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), this Christmas season is not characterised by rosy prospects.

Just before Christmas 2023, exactly on 20^th December, elections for president, parliament and regional authorities are scheduled. Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop of Kinshasa and President of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), has publicly expressed his doubts about the holding of these elections and his conviction that, if they do take place, “they will be neither transparent nor democratic”.

DR Congo is a country with immense natural and human resources, and it is these that arouse the greed of neighbouring countries – Uganda and Rwanda, in particular – which offer the international markets coltan, gold, diamonds, uranium, wood and now also nickel and lithium, which they steal from this nation, with the illusion of building a stable future of prosperity.

For more than two decades, North-Kivu has consequently been living in a situation of insecurity that fuels the discord of rival factions vying for its wealth, with a succession of crimes – rapes, thefts, murders, kidnappings, and vandalism – compounded by a massive displacement of people abandoning agricultural work, making social life difficult and causing serious damage to the economy, which is already mere subsistence.

In the face of the electoral campaign, the population is divided between those who pretend to believe the lure of candidates affiliated with the current president, Félix Tshisekedi, and hope to get a handful of pennies handed out at their rallies, and the lure of the opponents, who promise seas and mountains, with pledges of $20,000 for a church floor or a school roof renovation. Everyone knows that this is money diverted from public projects, but everyone plays along.

Discontent is rife everywhere and many are looking to the electoral ‘comedy’, almost wishing for a military coup, as in Mali and Gabon, as a last illusion before the country sinks into a bottomless abyss.

Despite everything, we continue to believe in a better future and in a stable peace that ensures a minimum of well-being for the people. For this reason, we have set up the Initiative for Peace and Common Good in North Kivu, an interfaith and intercultural project that stems from the realisation that only a strong cohesion – lacking until now – between religious denominations, social groups and other forces of civil society can open the way to peace and security.

It all began in the summer of 2022, when, while preaching the spiritual exercises to the diocesan priests, I commented on the passage in Matthew 7:24-27 – with the twin striking parables of “the house founded on the rock and the house built on the sand” – provoking them to ask themselves whether, in their Butembo-Beni diocese, the time had not come for an ethical-civic revolution – already called for more than twenty years ago by the then bishop, Mons. Emmanuel Kataliko – to build the ‘common house’ of a just and peaceful society.

The reaction of some led to a meeting open to all in January 2023. I agreed to open the meeting with a lecture entitled “Hope for the Future, Commitment in the Present”. On that day, 54 members of religious denominations and socio-cultural groups formed the Initiative. At the following assembly, in March, the “Interfaith Strategic Plan of the Initiative,” with nine challenges, was approved. In June, the Manifesto was promulgated, to make the Initiative known to the entire population. On that occasion, I took on the task of preparing a dissemination Newsletter in French and Kiswahili.

In the meantime, it was decided to adapt a room for our meetings in the Common House of the Diocesan Clergy (then still under construction). The project was successful, thanks to the help of friends, my home parish, the Italian NGO ‘Cuore Amico’ and the USA Cesar Foundation. The hall was inaugurated at the assembly on 7^th December. Unfortunately, an institution that had been willing to finance part of the project did not keep its promise. Some finishing touches, therefore, have remained outstanding. But we trust in the future.

As chance would have it, this last assembly took place on my 81^st birthday. I have asked my community to release me from future responsibilities, while continuing with my current commitments, which I would like to I would like to hand over, one by one, to younger hands. As long as my health lasts – more than good at the moment – there is no reason to withdraw the oars. Moreover, the willingness to work has not yet waned.

I would like to say, however, that I have always thought that the desire to ‘die on mission’ is a nice romantic dream, but not always a Christian one, because the consequences often fall on others.

A thought – read somewhere – does indeed accompany me. The “be vigilant” of Jesus, which resounds in the Catholic liturgy of these weeks of Advent, is not only about the end of times or the end of one’s life. It is also, and above all, an invitation to keep our eyes open and to read the signs of the times and the events that happen every day, always in order to love life, God, others, and not only “with all our heart” and “all our strength”, but also with “all the intelligence” we have been given.

Christmas and the New Year can also mean this ‘awakening’, which has little or nothing to do with woke culture, but much to do with the wisdom of the Bible and the traditions of peoples.

Merry Christmas and, as far as possible, a peaceful and serene 2024!

Father Gian Paolo Pezzi, mccj
Butembo, December 2023