The eve of Vanimo, the missionary frontier awaiting Francis

The city where the pontiff will go tomorrow is located in a particularly remote area. Francis has expressly asked to add this stop to be able to meet the faithful of the diocese, but also the priests and religious of the Argentine Institute of the Incarnate Word in the parish of Baro, where he has contributed to the construction of a secondary school. The presence of Indonesian missionaries also among those who fled from across the border.

Vanimo (AsiaNews) - Dear Pope Francis, why don't you come to Vanimo? Perhaps Father Martin Prado, missionary of the Institute of the Incarnate Word, did not expect that the Pontiff would take that invitation literally. Because Vanimo is the outskirts of the outskirts of a country on the other side of the world. And the mission in Baro, where Father Martin is staying, is itself a periphery of Vanimo.

It takes another half an hour from the small airport of this small town made up of a few brick buildings, a few warehouses, a few houses scattered here and there, between ocean and forest, and a road winding its way to the mission, a few kilometres from the border with Indonesia.

Here Pope Francis, tomorrow afternoon, will pay a lightning visit to a small group of Argentine missionaries and sisters (Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matará) who look after the parish, the school complex and a home for girls victims of violence, which the Pontiff has been discreetly helping for years.

The secondary school, in particular - the only one in the area - was built and inaugurated this year thanks to Francis‘ interest and funds from the Italian Bishops’ Conference.

‘When we went on pilgrimage to Rome in 2019 with a small group of parishioners, we fortunately managed to meet the Pope,’ says Father Martin, 36 years old from Mendoza, a large family, two brothers who are priests and a sister who is a nun: one is a monk a few kilometres from Vanimo, on the border with Indonesia, while his sister is currently the provincial superior in Papua New Guinea: ’We explained to him the meaning of the gifts we had brought him and invited him to come to Vanimo. An invitation that, evidently, Francis did not drop, explicitly asking to include this stage in this year's trip.

‘He wanted to return the visit to these simple people,’ comments Father Martin, as he walks around the mission overlooking the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. His Institute arrived in Vanimo in 1997, at the invitation of then PIME missionary Bishop Cesare Bonivento, who was succeeded in 2018 by a local bishop, Francis Meli. Father Martin joined his confreres ten years ago to devote himself in particular to proclamation and education: two paths strongly intertwined with each other.

‘We are here to promote men and women in the image of God, through Jesus, in their culture and tradition’. And so, he who is the director of the schools and who aspires to make it anacademy, also spends long periods in the bush, in the forest, reaching remote villages with very small communities scattered over an immense territory on foot: ‘I accompany them first of all spiritually and celebrate Mass, but I also take some medicine with me: many of them have no possibility of being cured’.

It is recreation time in Baro: dozens of children swarm into the courtyards to play or have a snack sitting on the roots of imposing trees by the sea. Sister Sacrifice and Sister Virgo watch them from a distance.

Both Americans, they are respectively the headmistress of the primary-middle and high school. Truth, goodness and beauty are the three cornerstones around which they seek to realise an educational pathway that they would like to be as ‘holistic’ as possible: ‘We want to form people capable of thinking, of making connections, of developing a critical spirit, not only of storing notions’, says Sister Virgo, as she shows us the new building of the secondary school started this year with about 90 students, equally divided between boys and girls: ‘And in all subjects we try to offer a Christian perspective, to form them also in values and principles’.

Not only that: among the subjects introduced is also music. And this has created a real miracle. In fact, thanks to the involvement of maestro Jesús Briceño, a member of the El Sistema project - the extraordinary network of youth orchestras born in Venezuela and spread all over the world with millions of children and young people involved - the ‘Queen of Paradise’ Orchestra was born, the first and only one in Papua New Guinea. ‘When I arrived here for the first time in 2018, there was no instrument,’ says the maestro.

’The children did not even know what a violin was. Today the orchestra has 80 members aged between 10 and 18, to which some 40 may soon be added. ‘At the beginning,' intervenes the parish priest, Father Miguel de la Calle, a great fan of the El Sistema method, “we used to go to the villages together: I would celebrate Mass and Jesús would teach music”. Little by little, and with many difficulties, they managed to get the musical instruments, except for the double basses, which will probably arrive on Pope Francis' plane. In 2021, they performed in front of the government and parliament.

‘They were all men,’ Father Miguel points out. ‘Our orchestra, on the other hand, is made up of at least half of girls who are very receptive and often very talented. For them it also means gaining more self-esteem and is an opportunity for emancipation'.

Many musicians are also students at our secondary school,' Briceño points out, ’and they are often the ones who achieve the best results. Making music means discipline and harmony, human and spiritual growth. And this has an impact on their whole life’. They prepared to perform in front of Pope Francis.

‘It is unimaginable the grace we will receive! - lights up Sister Virgo - the people here love the Pope and this visit makes them feel part of the Church. We are preparing ourselves, first of all with prayer, so that this visit will enter deeply into our hearts’.

Also rejoicing at Pope Francis' stop in Vanimo is former Indonesian Consul Widayatmo in Papua New Guinea, who lived for a long time in the early 2000s in this town not far from the sensitive border with his country. He recalls that there is a significant Catholic community here, made up of ethnic Chinese Malaysians who worked in the lumber mills at the time, Australians and Indonesians who had fled from the ‘other’ Papua across the border.

‘It was Msgr. Bonivento,’ he recalls, ‘who went to Jakarta to meet Card. Julius Darmaatmadja, then President of the Episcopal Conference, asking to send some Indonesian missionaries to serve pastoral works in the diocese of Vanimo, alongside those of Indian origin. The first to arrive was Fr Edi, a Missionary of the Holy Family. Today, there are also the Sister Servants of the Holy Spirit and the Indonesian Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in Papua New Guinea'.

(co-authored by Mathias Hariyadi)