Celebrated in Burkina Faso on October 28, the 50th anniversary of the Chemin Neuf community invites us to discover “The Church, Family of God in Africa”, an ecclesial vision which underlines the importance of living together as members of the same spiritual family. Each believer is called to be a brother or sister to others,
Sharing faith, prayer and responsibilities, in a spirit of unity and mutual service. The Church, Family of God On behalf of our Church, Family of God, I extend a cordial greeting and our warm congratulations. Welcome to Burkina Faso to all the delegations from here and elsewhere,
In particular from the six African countries where the community is present. We will take the time to listen to others testimonials, to exchange. The Church must give meaning to being together in a context of terrorism. Be together. How can we be together when fear and trust have been tested? And in what manner?
Yes, it must be there to give meaning to being together. It must be there to respond to this thirst for healing the various traumas which have already been mentioned on several internal, external and multidimensional scales. Let’s just get into the minds of a traumatized population, who are fleeing, who are leaving everything behind,
From one moment to the next, who must flee. Let’s get into the minds of people who saw their parents killed. Let’s try to understand that serenity is not easy. The Church has a resource of healing, of peace for these people. It is also source of injury in the past and present,
And the original sin of this terrorism being, of course, considered to be the Libyan crisis with all those that followed. The Church is expected because there is a need for benchmarks for reconstruction, both individual and collective. The Church is expected because the world needs to generate reasons and resources for resilience
For the countries of the Sahel. Well, being a Family of God in a context of instability means being and remaining a peacemaker. An artisan of peace and reconciliation. Mediations, availability, commitment, collaboration, dialogue, well, it’s there. This is where we see the Church, Family of God.
To be a support of fraternity, a lever of solidarity between peoples, not only between the peoples of a region, of an ethnic group, but the peoples of Burkina Faso, the peoples of West Africa, the peoples of Africa, the people of the whole world. To be, of course, that hand that gives hospitality,
Without being afraid of the other. He is not a stranger, he is the guest. Consider the other, not as a stranger, but as a guest. Welcoming internally displaced populations, welcoming migrants in charitable care. The other is Christ who comes. And many initiatives must be taken in this direction.
And finally, the Church, Family of God, in a context of instability, is a Church that educates. A Church which lends itself as a lever of education. Without education, as has been said, the heritage of humanity, the heritage of the Church, the heritage of the Gospel will be lost.
So, the instruments of this communion which highlight, of course, the figure of the Church, Family of God, are, above all, institutional. These are institutional realities, but they are each of us. Because the Church is me, it’s you, it’s him. It is even the people who do not know that they are Christians,
The people who are disciples of Christ, without knowing it, in our good will. Community Manifesto for Peace in Africa Because, in recent decades, Africans have suffered so much from war, civil war or war between nations, from intercommunity and ethnic conflicts, from violence in all its forms. Because love chases away hatred and fear
And that the culture of war and violence can be transformed into a culture of peace and non-violence. Because this transformation requires the participation of all, peoples of all cultures, all religions, all beliefs, from Africa or elsewhere. Because in a fractured Africa, peace is an empty word, a mirage,
If it is not the fruit of listening, dialogue, forgiveness and reconciliation. Because the family is essential to the building of a society…. The term artisan speaks to me a lot. What is an artisan? He’s someone who makes art. And what is the art of peace?
It is this ability to invent from what exists but also from what does not exist. You need to have a very open mind to be an artisan, to be capable of creativity. To create. Either from what exists or from what does not exist. And how to be, specifically for peace?
So, we must be men and women who invent peace. Peaceful, peacemakers, pacifists. But deep down, we end up saying that a peacemaker is the one who has the capacity to think, to live and to give peace. He is a person who is first at peace.
And that brings me back to what I said at the beginning. This serenity in the midst of difficulties because we are men and women of hope. I will end by saying, paraphrasing Pope Francis who wrote to religious men and women to say who they should be,
Say that they should be experts in communion. And precisely, Father Anicet said, what the Church can bring to this world is to be a source and home of communion. And the pope says that religious men and women must be experts in communion. What is an expert?
An expert is someone who is called upon to say something sensible about his field, something very precise for which he has the intellectual expertise and also the practice which makes his expertise. How should the Church, and we, Christians, be experts in communion?
It is first of all by actually being ourselves, when people see us, they know that they are experiencing communion. That’s what an expert is. … You have to practice. Practice communion, communion in the family, communion in my Church, to be experts. So, what the Church of Africa can bring to the world,
The Church of Burkina, in this troubled moment in our three regions, is the expertise of communion. And that’s my dream. Thank you. Because the family is the first and irreplaceable educator of fraternity, of solidarity, of mutual attention to the weakest, to the most vulnerable. Because the Church pursues peace
And tireless research, hoping against all hope. Because the Church is already the bearer of this Good News of peace, God’s gift for a more just, more united world, and it proclaims it. Because the Church in Africa describes itself more as a family, a family of God where mercy and liberating forgiveness are practiced.
The mosques are full, the churches are full, the temples are full, but when you look at the behavior in society, it leaves something to be desired. And right now, I am taking this opportunity to challenge myself and others to question ourselves about the true meaning of religion,
So that we do not limit it only to worship. And even there, I think that if we prayed as we should, prayer would have this impact, it was going to be this light which was going to illuminate our paths, so that from light to light we could further illuminate our society
And build a nation of love and peace. So I am calling for us to truly live and share love because the basis of love, the basis of religion is love. And there is no true love without knowledge. There is no love without knowledge. Love rhymes with knowledge,
Even in our homes we say, I love you, because I know your qualities, I know your faults and I have accepted them and we move forward with them. I seek to improve, to make you correct your faults. You also seek to educate me so that I correct myself further.
It is in this knowledge of each other that we will be able to move forward. So, in order for us to truly love each other as we should, we must learn to know each other, and we must agree to sit down together. And I think that Burkina is a very good example
That we must do everything to preserve. When you come into many of our families you have a multitude of religions in the same families. But this does not mean that we do not sit around the same table, it does not mean that we do not share the same bread,
That we do not share the same pancakes, that we do not share the same everything. Since before us, our parents, our grandparents bequeathed us this wealth of human value, they bequeathed us this wealth of family love, they bequeathed us this wealth of going beyond our belonging to religion
And always seeking to do good. I could say that first of all, the ignorance of the other’s religion, or the other’s culture, is a place of suffering. When I don’t know how the others are, what their religion is, if I don’t know them, if I also don’t understand their culture, it’s very difficult.
And from there, I think that at the beginning of our relationship, today we can look each other straight in the eye, but it wasn’t easy, because I didn’t know very well, he was a Muslim, I was a Catholic Christian. I didn’t know the Muslim religion very well.
So, I could also say that the notion of family in Africa is not just the nuclear family. The notion of family in Africa is not the nuclear family. It’s the extended family. The extended family, and in this family, everyone must live for the other. Everyone lives for the other.
You don’t live for yourself. And the worst thing for a man or a woman in Africa, which I know more in Burkina, is to be without a family. When you’re not attached to a family, it’s difficult. And large families work to ensure that no member should be lost. No member should be lost.
So, if we come back to this dimension of the extended family, I can say, the woman’s place is very important because she forms the alliance between two families. There is what she has received. There is what she too must open up to receive from her husband’s family
In order to transmit the two values in terms of education of the children. And also get children to open up to the world. Be it in prayer, in tolerance and in mutual forgiveness. In Burkina, when we say Burkinabé, it means integrity.
So, being a family is to work to ensure that these children have integrity in Burkindi. Thank you. To welcome the different delegations from the countries who are here. Dear delegation leaders, please accept to receive the water. It is said in Africa that the family is sacred,
It is the place where we live fraternity to the end, it is the place where we share love, it is the place where we experience love, it is the place where we experience joy, it is the place where we share joy. But it is also the place where we share difficulties,
Or wash dirty linen in private. I was also touched by the intervention of the Jesuit father, where he insisted a lot on roots. So every brother or sister in every church must root themselves in their faith and that’s how, by rooting themselves in their faith,
They will show their love, because God is love and everyone must show the love they have for others. We were told about what is happening in the countries of Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso in terms of what does not bring peace, how people are dispersed or killed.
So the question was what do all those who claim to belong to one religion or another do with all these people who are injured, who have lost their loved ones, when we meet them on the road. What do we do to really show that we have this love,
That we have this compassion towards these brothers? Everyone is actually invited to peace but how do I seek peace for the world, for the country and for all humanity? And it felt like the family was coming together from all these countries that we represent,
From Uganda, from Chad, from Congo, from the Ivory Coast. We miss Madagascar a little bit. The children, wherever they left, to live the life they are given, need to see each other, to come together again, to make this Family of God together, and to realize that we are truly brothers and sisters.
When we are welcomed into each other’s homes, when I can feel that I have my place in the house of my brothers and sisters, when there is a room for me at my brothers’ and sisters’ house, it goes further and says something much deeper.
I would like to end with just one thing. Our world is fragile. And in fact, our brotherhood today, I believe, cannot be made up of good feelings alone. It cannot be light. It can’t just be “we like each other.” But how far will this “we like each other” go, actually, for real?
And I believe that the Lord, in the community, calls us to engage this fraternity more truly and more radically, because the brothers and sisters of the family need it. They need to see it. But what will remain of our fraternity faced with difficulties?
We are committed to our families, to our community, to our countries, to our region! We are committed in every place where the breath of the Spirit leads us, in every reality where God places us, there where he awaits us for his work of peace.
Peace on earth! Peace to men and women of good will! We are committed! We are committed to seizing this stage of maturity and growth as a time of grace, grace of hearts burning for mission and dialogue with all Christian denominations, Islam, and traditional religions. We desire to be peacemakers,
Working towards fruitful harmony, without tiring, responding to the call of Christ, of the Church, of the peoples of Africa. Yes, we are committed! We are committed to defending the life and dignity of every man and woman beyond ethnic, religious and cultural differences.
We want to make all our living spaces welcoming and fraternal homes. Yes, we are committed! We are committed to living charity, giving our time and sharing our material and financial goods. We want to put an end to exclusion and injustice by promoting the common good. Yes, we are committed!
We are committed to overcoming violence through non-violence, by choosing kindness in our speech and our way of being with others. We want to break the chain of personal or collective violence, violence against the most deprived, the most vulnerable. Yes, we are committed! We are committed to building social friendship and human fraternity,
By choosing to truly listen to others, to welcome them without prejudice, and dialogue, to walk together. We desire to be a reconciled diversity, acknowledging and welcoming the riches of our differences, whether ethnic, cultural or religious. Yes, we are committed! We are committed to following Christ, the true source of Peace,
To promoting unity and reconciliation. It breaks down the walls of separation. We desire to be men and women of prayer who engage their faith every day in the prayer of Christ, “That they may be one, so that the world may believe”. Yes, we are committed!
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