Aid to the Church in Need: Brazil: Spreading the Faith with creativity and courage

Brazil: Spreading the Faith with creativity and courage

Posted by ACN News on 12/9/2009, 4:12 pm
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Spreading the Faith with creativity and courage

By Reinhard Backes

Shalom is probably the best known Hebrew word around the world. It means peace. In Brazil there is a community bearing this name that in recent years has become known well beyond the frontiers of the country. It all began in 1982 in Fortaleza, in the Northeast of this, the largest country in Latin America. Today this community, whose work is supported by the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), has 50 centres in Brazil alone, plus other houses in Chile, French Guyana and Uruguay, and also in Canada, France, England, Italy, Portugal and Switzerland and even as far afield as Israel, Algeria, Tunisia and Madagascar.

The mission of the Shalom community is to reach out above all to the younger generation, leading others to faith in Jesus Christ and providing them with a perspective that will give purpose and meaning to their lives. Its aim is to bring everyone the message of Christ and to spread the peace of Christ and the joy of the Gospel in societies torn by social injustice, exclusion, corruption and violence. And the way they have chosen to work with this is to reach out through a life in community, through prayer and proclamation, to all those "who are estranged from the Church but still open to being touched by the Heart of Jesus", as the founder of Shalom, the Brazilian Moysés Louro de Azvedo Filho, once put it.

Mr. Moysés Louro de Azevedo Filho (founder of the Catholic Community Shalom in Brazil) with Father Joaguin Alliende Father Joaquín Alliende, the president of Aid to the Church in Need

Rafael D’Aqui, who first came to know about the Shalom community nine years ago and actually joined it in 2002, describes his own experience like this: "One Saturday I went to a youth meeting. I immediately sensed that there was something new growing here and that I too would like to follow this path of evangelisation". Born in Brazil, he studied law and now organises the international youth meetings for Shalom in Rome. One day this 28-year-old wants to do something else, but for the present he is still looking for a job.
Says Rafael D’Aqui: "Later I want to get married and have a family". His work with Shalom is no obstacle to this, since the community embraces many different states of life and forms of missionary involvement.

In 2007 the Shalom community was formally recognized by the Holy See. Today over 11,000 people belong to this community, including priests and laity, married and single people. A few hundred of them live together in a permanent community and devote themselves entirely to the missionary work, while most stay in close contact with one of the 477 different prayer groups.

Moysés Louro, the founder, has presented the missionary ideal of the community at various major Church meetings, including the Synod of bishops in Rome at their meetings on the Eucharist in 2005 and on the Word of God in 2008, and also at the fifth General assembly of the Latin American bishops in Aparecida in 2007 and to a gathering of the pontifical laity council in 2008 at the Vatican.
Most of the time, though, Moysés still lives in his home town of Fortaleza, where he was born in 1959. Here in the centre of the town lies the original heart of Shalom, a snack bar with a bookshop and a small chapel attached. In the meantime, however, a complete "evangelisation centre" has grown up around it, with meeting rooms and assembly rooms, with a stage and radio studios for various different stations run by Shalom. Outside the city the community has also built an administrative and training centre, its so-called "Diaconia General".

And what about their future plans? Rafael D’Aqui shrugs his shoulders and replies, "We are not in a hurry; we’re ready to be led. Sooner or later we will receive whatever God chooses to give us."

Editor’s Notes:

Directly under the Holy See, Aid to the Church in Need supports the faithful wherever they are persecuted, oppressed or in pastoral need. ACN is a Catholic charity – helping to bring Christ to the world through prayer, information and action.
Founded in 1947 by Fr Werenfried van Straaten, whom Pope John Paul II named “An outstanding Apostle of Charity”, the organisation is now at work in about 130 countries throughout the world.
The charity undertakes thousands of projects every year including providing transport for clergy and lay Church workers, construction of church buildings, funding for priests and nuns and help to train seminarians. Since the initiative’s launch in 1979, 46.5 million Aid to the Church in Need Child’s Bibles have been distributed worldwide.

For further information please contact the Australian office of ACN on (02) 9679-1929. e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org or write to Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148. Web: www.aidtochurch.org

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Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148 ABN: 62 418 911 594
Ph/Fax (02) 9679-1929 e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org web: www.aidtochurch.org