Fr. Antonio Grugni in India, the mission as a witness between the ill and families
by Piero Gheddo
Missionary work vital to keep the Indian Church open. The PIME priest, a cardiologist and leprosy specialist, has worked among the sick in the slums of Mumbai. On moving to Andhra Pradesh, he started an association for the rehabilitation of poor children, handicapped and leprosy sufferers
Mumbai (AsiaNews) - The Church in India, founded by the Apostle St. Thomas, is well established and enjoys an enviable health, despite the winds of persecution. Institutions and religious missionaries who refounded the Church in India in the nineteenth century are questioning whether it still makes sense to send foreign missionaries to a church that is enough in itself. The answer is yes, primarily because Catholics are about 2% of the Indian population and also because the missionaries help to make a Church that has a tendency to close in on itself, missionary. This is shown by his father Antonio Grugni, who arrived in the country in 1976 as a cardiologist and leprosy specialist and in 1989 became a PIME missionary priest.
The Milanese Missionary Institute in, present in India since 1855, has founded 12 dioceses there (three in Bangladesh) and has about forty members in India. Father Grugni worked among the lepers in the slums of Mumbai for the "Lok Seva Sangha" (Society for the good of the people), founded by Father Carlo Torriani in Mumbai to help the poor. Since 2005, Anthony has lived in Fatimanagar (Andhra Pradesh) where he started his group of volunteers, the "Sarva Press Welfare Society (Association of love for universal well-being).
Today the main problem of the church in India is to proclaim Christ to the Indian people without causing adverse reactions. Father Antonio says that he wants to live "mission as a witness." Missionaries have always evangelized building and relying on large structures. Few have attempted to evangelize as Jesus and the Apostles did, almost without any support structure and walking with the common people, witnessing to the Gospel without any feeling of superiority, but simply as a friend, a brother.
In 2005 his Father Grugni started his mission in Warangal. With a group of lay collaborators, he treats and rehabilitates poor and disabled children and those afflicted by leprosy, tuberculosis and HIV / AIDS. These activities are not carried out within deliberately built structures, but visiting patients and their families through a project funded by the Indian Ministry of Health. "The Sarva Prema- says father Antonio - not only takes care of the sick, but the whole family in crisis. We intervene with emergency measures, like giving food to those who do not have any, or long-term interventions such as sponsorships of children, pensions for the elderly, micro-credit to start a craft or trade. Homeless people build small brick houses (currently 100). Our patients and their neighbours understand that we are not social workers, but true friends who help them in their needs and often in our Christian faith grasp the motive of our actions. "
Father Grugni is convinced that the Church in India should also orient itself towards this "Mission as Witness", which he experiences in his life. Here in brief:
The value of personal contact in evangelization.
Jesus clearly shows the value of personal contact, which requires us to become involved in individual situations. It is not enough to teach a doctrine, we must transmit a strong experience of God and to do this we should get involved in the lives of others. Jesus, though he was rich became poor in assuming human nature to share the needs of men, identifying with the poor. It is not enough to do acts of charity for the poor, but we must also live an austere life, experience renunciation of the superfluous.
"The Church in Asia should not only teach but also to listen and learn from other expressions of faith. Mission is not the proclamation of absolute truths, but sharing a passionate and faithful love of God with humanity that has found its fulfilment in Jesus of Nazareth. The specificity of Christian mission is to show the world our experience of God in Jesus Christ and how this faith has transformed our lives, which burn with love. This is a form of proclamation of Christ that the Indian world is willing to listen, but it requires a daily conversion to the Lord Jesus. "
"The Church needs a minimum of facilities for work and be visible. The problem arises when institutions are increasing enormously in all areas. This affects the image of the Church, a powerful organization that is rich in funds from abroad (viewed with suspicion or envy), more oriented to social work than conveying a profound experience of God". In the national consultation on evangelisation organized in 1994 by the CBCI (Indian bishops’ conference), the conclusion reads: “a sense of dissatisfaction with the administrative style prevalent in the institutional Church is growing within the Church." The solution is to mimic as closely as possible Jesus and the apostles, the first mission in a totally non-Christian world. In the difficult situation in India, we must return to the method of Christ.
The fight against mammon. Jesus proclaimed that he came to liberate the poor and oppressed, he stood with the poor, the marginalized and publicans against the power of money. The challenge today in mission is not to be benefactors of the poor (as we have always done), but ourselves to be poor, if we want the option for the poor is to be credible. "It is not uncommon - says Antonio - visiting districts and cities, running into princely bishoprics (for the local standard of living), monasteries with all the luxurious comfort, with the clergy that drives around latest model car or motorcycle in the middle of people moving on carts pulled by oxen. " Bishop Matthew Cheriankunnel PIME, Bishop Emeritus of Kurnool, writes in the preface to Fr. Grugni’s "The Gospel of the Rose"; "The Church in India sometimes gives the impression of being a powerful institution, rich in prestigious structures, mainly concerned with self-image and survival, with the risk that this will become a counter-witness”.
"In the evangelization of Asia, the priority of silence, contemplation and prayer has not received due importance. The manifestation of a deep spirituality and prayer life of itself can have a value in evangelization and witness. The faith is spread by itself, if it is in the form of a humble service of compassion”. This is what we read in the Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Asia "in 1999 (No. 23). Father Antonio believes that "the testimony of prayer, service and compassion (sometimes silent), the communication of faith from person to person is the best method of evangelization in Asia." He cites the "Redemptoris Missio", which in no 42 says: "The first form of witness is the very life of the missionary, of the Christian family and of the ecclesial community”.
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